Shared Life Education in Israel’s Public Education System | February 2016
The Inter-Agency Task Force on Israeli Arab Issues is pleased to present our latest Briefing Paper: Shared Life Education in Israel’s Public Education System.
While Israel’s separated public education system is enabling Arab and Jewish students to preserve their respective culture, language, and identity, it is also a primary contributor to lacking familiarity between the two communities, and a challenge to equal opportunity. This barrier to social cohesion and to the socio-economic integration of the Arab community in Israel is increasingly being addressed, and in recent years the educational sphere has seen an upsurge of programs, now comprising the field of ‘Shared Life Education’ (SLE). The amount of these programs in public schools has particularly increased in the two years since Operation Protective Edge in Gaza (2014) and the rise in tensions between Jews and Arabs within Israel – youth included – that followed.
In light of developments in the Ministry of Education’s approach to SLE, its increased cooperation with civil society bodies, and the significant growth in civil society SLE programs in the public education system at large, the current paper will provide an overview of the SLE field, including its objectives and guiding principles; opportunities and barriers to system-wide implementation and SLE models and methods. The Appendix presents a representative mapping of SLE programs in public schools by models and methods.
View and download the briefing paper here.