Positive weighing of the other's collective narrative among Jewish and Bedouin-Palestinian teachers in Israel and its correlates.

Abstract

Teachers play a pivotal role in the educational discourse around collective narratives, and especially the other's narrative. The study assumed that members of groups entangled in a conflict approach the different modules of the other's narrative distinctively. Jewish and Palestinian teachers, Israeli citizens, answered questionnaires dealing with the narrative of the other, readiness for interethnic contact, negative between-group emotions and preferences for resolutions of the Israeli-Palestinian (I-P) conflict. Positive weighing of the other's narrative among Jewish teachers correlated with high levels of readiness for interethnic contact and low levels of negative between-group emotions, across the various modules of the Palestinian narrative. Preferences for a peaceful resolution of the I-P conflict and rejection of a violent one were noted in two of the modules. Among Palestinian teachers, positive weighing of the other's collective narrative was exclusively noted for the Israeli narrative of the Holocaust, and this stance negatively related to negative between-group emotions and preference for a violent solution of the I-P conflict, and positively related to readiness for interethnic contact and preference of a peaceful resolution of the conflict. Practical implications of these findings for peace education are discussed.