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Authors: Adam Haisraeli
Keywords: teacher education, social activism, critical pedagogy, political education
Abstract: Educators should be first and foremost involved citizens and, hence, they should be aware of social issues as diversity and have a clear political stance (Apple, 2013). To this end, they must be familiar with various social issues, among them social diversity, inequality and the struggle for social justice, exclusion and silencing of particular groups, racism, multiculturalism, gender issues, and environmental sustainability. In the classroom, educators are obliged to deal with current conflicts and to present the underlying ideas as a way to shape educational identity. This approach is based on the principles of critical humanist pedagogy, which aims to conduct educational dialogs and expose the social hierarchy and power structure (Shor, 1996; Freire, 1985). Nowadays, and more than ever before, Israel, European countries and other countries worldwide are facing the challenge of promoting ideas of social equality and reducing the spread of racism and xenophobia. Teachers, as well as educational institutions, can play an active and leading role in promoting these values (Aloni & Weintrob, 2017). Based on this approach, in year 2007 Seminar Hakibbutzim college, the largest teacher education college in Israel, added a module to the requirements for earning a teaching certificate, namely, the Social Activism Program, which aims to increase the political awareness and the social involvement of the college’s future graduates (Yogev & Michaeli, 2009). A fundamental feature of this program is the combination of academic coursework and field experience in community-based social involvement. The academic courses provide the theoretical and conceptual framework regarding issues related to critical thinking, whereas the community-based activity takes the form of active involvement in one of the many and varied volunteer frameworks to which students can be referred. Thus, hands-on volunteer work enables students to become familiar with and involved in the social issues pertinent to the specific community or youth group, while at the same time, the academic course serves as a means for students to analyze their field-based experiences and formulate an overall understanding of the social reality. In the course of the volunteer work, students receive educational guidance from professionals at the social organization with which they are affiliated; thus, they are exposed to aspects of informal education and volunteer frameworks, the very frameworks in which kindergarten- and school-children spend their after-school hours. In addition to its broad educational effect (approximately 600 teacher-trainees per year), the program set out to accomplish an additional goal, namely, to help faculty members design teaching and learning methods that transcend the walls of the classroom and college and encompass the entire Israeli social reality. Thus, learning takes place at the site of social activity and in the educational frameworks to which the children belong, as well as in the children's homes and other locations in the relevant communities. Faculty members who teach the academic courses of the program face the challenge of linking theory with practice and applying the lessons to the context of daily life. Accordingly, performance evaluation of both the students and the faculty members in these courses is based on their ability to fashion an overarching view, informed by all they have learned from both the personal experiences and the academic materials discussed. Methodology: The program has been functioning successfully over the past ten years and, as mentioned, is part of the required coursework that each and every student in the college must complete. Different variations of the program have been implemented in other teacher education colleges in Israel. Furthermore, the Israeli Ministry of Education intends to adopt the program as part of its official teacher education policies, thus requiring the program's implementation in all teacher education colleges in Israel. The insights we present here are based on having taught this program to thousands of teacher-trainees over the years, and on our collaboration with hundreds of organizations for social change and state-funded welfare institutions. In addition, the program's efficacy was evaluated several times, in order to better understand the challenges ahead (Yogev & Michaeli, 2011). Conclusions: The program serves as a model, because it merges academics with fieldwork and integrates theory with practice, an approach that is of utmost importance and necessity in the realm of teacher education. The program provides an innovative way to learn about social issues and conflicts and gives new meaning to the students' volunteer work, because it enables them to conceptualize what they have learned from this experience. We have found that – with certain adjustments– the program can be successfully implemented in other teacher education colleges and institutions. This development supports the claim that teachers are also educators and social activists. In this session, we will present the Program for Social Activism and its underlying educational, social, and values-based rationale. We will also describe in-depth two of the voluntary activities available to students, as well as two of the academic courses of the program that require teacher educators and students to draw conclusions from the combination of theory and practice.