Social justice attitudes in a deep divided society: the case of Jewish Arab bilingual schools in Israel

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper uses Israel as a case study to investigate the contribution that schools have on their graduates’ social justice attitudes. Using (Ajzen, I. 1991. “The Theory of Planned Behavior.” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 50 (2): 179–211. https://doi.org/10.1016/0749-5978(91)90020-T) theory of planned behaviour alongside the social justice scale developed by (Torres-Harding, S. R., B. Siers, and B. D. Olson. 2012. “Development and Psychometric Evaluation of the Social Justice Scale (SJS).” American Journal of Community Psychology 50 (1-2): 77–88. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10464-011-9478-2), this study aim is to investigate whether Jewish Arab bilingual elementary schools who foreground social justice as part of their educational mission contribute to their graduates’ attitudes towards social justice. In order to carry out our investigation, a quantitative method was used and two types of schools were chosen: state schools, whose main objective is to create solidary among the Jewish majority in society, and Jewish-Arab bilingual schools, whose aim is to promote understanding among Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel and a social justice agenda. Our hypothesis was that perceptions of social justice would be significantly higher among Jewish Arab bilingual schools’ graduates when compared to state schools’ graduates.