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"Learning Each Other's Historical Narrative"
in Israeli and Palestinian Schools
A Joint Palestinian and Israeli Curriculum Development Project
January, 2002 - December 2007
Prof. Sami Adwan, Bethlehem University
Prof. Dan Bar-On, Ben Gurion University
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Contents
Executive Summary of "Learning Each Other's Historical Narrative" in
Israeli and Palestinian Schools 
Project Goals
This project of the Peace Research Institute in the Middle East
(PRIME) focuses on teachers and schools as the critical force over the long
term for changing
deeply entrenched and increasingly polarized attitudes on both sides of
the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The goal of the project is to "disarm" the
teaching of Middle East history in Israeli and Palestinian classrooms.
Specifically, teams of Palestinian and Israeli teachers and historians will
develop parallel historical narratives of the Israeli and Palestinian communities,
translate them into Hebrew and Arabic, and test their use together in both
Palestinian and Israeli classrooms. Unlike other projects that are limited
to revising existing Israeli and Palestinian texts, the PRIME project aims
at engaging teachers on both sides in an entirely new collaborative process
for teaching the history of the region.
At this stage in their polarized history there is not enough common ground
for Israelis and Palestinians to create a single historical narrative. Rather,
the project is designed to expose students in each community to the other's
narrative of the same set of events. For the first time, students in each school
system (beginning with 15 and 16 year olds) will not only learn what shapes
their own community's understanding of historical events, but be required to
confront the historical perspectives and contexts that shape the other community's
sense of reality.
The project may, at a later stage, develop multiple narratives of events within
each community, reflecting the fact that neither the Palestinians nor the Israelis
have a monolithic view regarding the history of the region. The goal, in other
words, is not necessarily to create a single "bridging" historical
narrative that is shared in common by both communities, but to break down stereotypes
and build more nuanced understandings by the next generation of citizens of
the two states in the region: Israel and the future Palestinian State.
Project Status
Given the current political tensions, work is progressing "under
the radar" of
both the Israeli Ministry of Education and the Palestinian National Authority,
in the hope that the PRIME shared history booklet will be ready for more wide-spread
use in schools when a future peace agreement is finally concluded.
During the first year of the project, an initial version of the history booklet
covering three historical events was developed and translated into Hebrew,
Arabic and English. During the second year the initial booklet was tested in
both Israeli and Palestinian classrooms and additional material was developed
for a second booklet covering three additional historical events. Remarkably,
the Israeli-Palestinian collaborations that enabled these achievements took
place despite the extraordinary difficulties imposed on project participants
by ongoing and intensifying violence in both the Palestinian territories and
Israel.
Unexpectedly, the initial PRIME history booklet has already been translated
into Italian, French, German and a variety of other languages for use in European
communities seeking to build bridges of understanding between their citizens
and rising immigrant Islamic populations.
During the third and fourth years of the project two additional booklets covering
three more historical events each will be developed and classroom tested. In
the fifth year, a Teacher's Guide will be developed, and each of the original
teachers in the project will train an additional teacher.
At the end of the fifth year, a 5-day educational workshop by a team of independent
US evaluation and curriculum development experts will provide guidance to Palestinian
and Israeli evaluators in observation techniques, data collection, and development
of appropriate comparison factors and methods of measurement.
A complete and professional evaluation of curriculum materials and teaching
methods developed during the first five years of the project will take place
in the sixth year, comparing classes taught with PRIME's shared history booklet
to classes taught by the same teachers using traditional texts. Evaluators
will also study the effectiveness of methods and materials developed during
the project to train new teachers.
After the evaluation is complete, a 5-day workshop for project directors and
evaluators, facilitated by independent US experts in the United States, will
review evaluation data, assess preliminary conclusions, and discuss implications
for the future. A final report, a revised history booklet covering all nine
historical events, and a revised teacher's guide and instructional video will
be published.
PRIME will also hold an international conference to promulgate the results
of the project. If the project's results are promising, a plan will be developed
to expand the number of Palestinian and Israeli schools utilizing the PRIME
Shared History Booklet and to gain official approval by the Israeli and Palestinian
Ministries of Education to make the Booklet part of their standard curriculum.
Project Funding
The budget for this six-year developmental project is $2,000,000.
The project was initiated with $158,850 in State Department funding from the
Wye River Foundation. Since then, PRIME has raised an additional $743,367,
including private foundation and government grants, as well as in-kind donations
(primarily in the form of professional salaries and organizational overhead).
These commitments totaling $902,217 cover all budgeted project activities for
the first three years of the project (though 2005).
Project Management
The project is managed under the auspices of The Peace Research
Institute in the Middle East (PRIME), a joint Israeli and Palestinian initiative.
Its
co-directors are Sami Adwan, Prof. of Education, Bethlehem University and
Dan Bar-On, Prof. of Social Psychology, Ben Gurion University.
PRIME does not take political positions. It focuses on projects that will
help create a social infrastructure capable of sustaining peace between Israelis
and Palestinians in parallel with the implementation of formal political agreements
that will enable the establishment of a Palestinian State alongside the State
of Israel.
It's work is based in part on Prof. Bar-On's pioneering research on methods
of reconciliation between the children of Holocaust survivors and children
of Nazi perpetrators and how these techniques (called To Reflect and Trust
or TRT) might be applied in other post-conflict situations. PRIME's projects
also draw much from Prof. Adwan's research on Palestinian and Israeli school
textbooks and his experience with people-to-people dialogues in the region.
The evaluation component of the project will be managed in partnership with
an independent, United States 501c)3 organization with appropriate expertise
to provide guidance to PRIME evaluators and to independently review PRIME evaluation
data. Discussions are proceeding in order to complete the structuring of this
partnership.
Six-Year Developmental Workplan
"Learning Each Other's Historical Narrative"
in Israeli and Palestinian Schools
The project is jointly directed by Sami Adwan and Dan Bar-On, the Co-directors
of PRIME. They are assisted by two history professors, Prof. Adnan Massallam
(Bethlehem University) and Prof. Eyal Nave (Tel Aviv University and the Kibbutzim
Teachers Seminar in Tel Aviv).
These four project leaders were responsible for selecting a project team,
including six Palestinian history and geography teachers, six Jewish Israeli
history teachers and six international observers. The Palestinian teachers,
who are from Hebron, Bethlehem and East Jerusalem, had never before participated
in dialogue encounters with Israelis. Several of the Israeli teachers, who
teach in high schools in the center and north of Israel, had participated in
previous encounters with Palestinians.
Historical events considered by the project team for presentation in PRIME's
shared history booklet included: Jewish immigration to Palestine, the Balfour
Declaration, the British Mandate over Palestine, the events of World War I,
the events of 1929 and of the 1930’s, Britain’s role in Palestine,
the impact of the Holocaust on Palestine/Israel, World War II, the 1948 war,
the issue of Palestinian refugees, the 1967 and 1973 wars, 1976 Land Day, Lebanon
invasion/war, the Intifada, Peace Talks (Oslo and others). A final list of
events will be agreed upon by the teachers together with Israeli and Palestinian
history experts.
The teachers’ experiences, such as difficulties, problems and challenges
in writing and using the Booklet in their classrooms, as well as the pupils’ responses
and feedback are being documented by the observers. This will make it possible
to assess the booklet and classroom work in order to revise the written materials
and develop appropriate pedagogic techniques and methods for training additional
teachers.
Curriculum Development, Classroom Testing, and Teacher Training
Year 1 - 2002
During the first year, Israeli and Palestinian teachers met in
three, 3-day seminars and developed two respective narratives covering three
historical
events. The participating teachers also trained in how to use these materials
in their classrooms. The training included learning the materials and
discussion of educational methods for their implementation.
Palestinian and Israeli narratives were initially both written in English
and then translated and published in Arabic and Hebrew. Teaching both narratives
in the students' native languages assures that they will learn each other's
narratives without language difficulties and barriers. Publishing the two sets
of narratives in English also assures that they will be shared with a wider
set of interested constituencies.
Year 2 - 2003
The teachers began to introduce the initial two-narrative history
text into their classrooms, and they participated in three, 3-day seminars
over the
course of the year in order to evaluate their classroom experiences.
Pre-classroom interviews with teachers and pupils were conducted. Observation
techniques
and documentation of pupils’ and teachers’ reactions/responses
during the discussion of each other's narratives were also employed.
Year
3 - 2004
Classroom testing of the initial history booklet has continued,
and the teachers have participated in three, 3-day seminars, developing a
second set of Palestinian
and Israeli narratives covering three additional historical events. This
second history booklet is being published in English, Hebrew and Arabic.
Year
4 - 2005
The teachers will test the Hebrew and Arabic versions of the
second history booklet in their classrooms and will revise and publish final
versions of
the first and second history booklets based on their teaching experience.
The teachers will also participate in three, 2-day seminars, developing
a third set of Palestinian and Israeli narratives covering three additional
historical events, which will be published as a third history booklet in
English, Hebrew and Arabic.
Year 5 - 2006
The teachers will test the Hebrew and Arabic versions of the
third history booklet in their classrooms and will then revise and publish
a final version
of this booklet. The teachers will also participate in three, 2-day seminars
to develop and publish a Teacher's Guide, based on lessons learned from
classroom testing.
Using the Teacher's Guide, the initial group of six Israeli and six Palestinian
teachers will train twelve new teachers in four, 2-day seminars. Two observers,
one Palestinian and one Israeli, will monitor the effectiveness of teacher
training methods and report their findings to evaluators in 2007.
Newly trained teachers will also begin teaching the dual-narrative texts in
their classrooms, which will serve as a basis for evaluating the effectiveness
and scalability of teacher training techniques and lead to revisions of the
Teacher's Guide, a final version of which will be published in 2007.
At the end of this year, a 5-day educational workshop will be facilitated
for project evaluators at PRIME by a team of six independent US evaluation
and curriculum development experts. These experts will develop methods of training
observers in observation techniques and data collection, and they will assist
evaluators in developing appropriate comparison factors and methods of measurement.
The professional Israeli and Palestinian evaluators will then establish evaluation
criteria and develop appropriate interview, questionnaire and observation tools.
Evaluation,
Report and Conference
Year 6 - 2007
A formal evaluation of the use of the shared history booklet
in Israeli and Palestinian classrooms will be conducted during the sixth
year of the project
by a team of 18 Palestinian and Israeli observers and four Israeli and
Palestinian professional evaluators.
The evaluation will compare classes taught with the PRIME shared history booklet
to classes taught by the same teachers using traditional texts, and will measure
differences in student learning and attitudes. Eight Israeli and eight Palestinian
teachers, including both those originally in the program and some newly trained
teachers, will each teach two history classes: one using the PRIME shared history
booklet and one using standard texts.
Sixteen observers will be trained in three, 2-day seminars, and each trained
observer will then be assigned to a teacher of the same nationality to monitor
both classes taught by that teacher over a period of 8 weeks. The observers
will also administer pre-class and post-class questionnaires to teachers and
pupils, and conduct selected pre-class and post-class in-depth interviews.
The observers will then report their findings to the professional evaluators
for summarization and preliminary evaluation, along with findings from the
two observers of new teacher training techniques and materials that took place
in 2006.
Following completion of evaluation activities, US evaluation experts will
hold a second 5-day workshop in the United States for project directors and
evaluators, along with additional resource people to review the evaluation
data and assess preliminary conclusions. The workshop will also discuss implications
of the evaluation for achieving project goals of wider use, and eventual institutionalization,
of the PRIME shared history booklet and teaching methods in both Israeli and
Palestinian schools. In addition, the workshop will consider appropriate next
steps to achieve these goals.
The results of the six-year development project and the project evaluation
will be summarized in final report and presented at an international conference
in October 2007. Project teachers, observers, and evaluators will participate,
along with up to 40 experts in education, psychology, history, conflict resolution
and peace education from the Palestinian and Israeli communities and from overseas.
Indicators of Success and Potential Future Activities
Indicators of project
success will include:
- Participation by Israeli and Palestinian teachers over all six years
of the project
- Achieving consensus agreement on final Palestinian and Israeli
narrative texts and translations
- Documentation of more open and tolerant
attitudes among students introduced to the shared history booklet as compared
to those who use traditional
history texts
- Development of materials and methods that can facilitate
effective scaling of teacher training to expand use of the shared history
booklet
throughout
both Israeli and Palestinian school systems
- Positive comments from
principles, teachers, and parents regarding their students' use of the
shared history booklet
- Interest among conference participants (and others
not involved in the development project) in expanding use of the shared
history booklet
in more Israeli and
Palestinian schools.
If the development project is deemed a success, a variety of additional activities
will be launched to expand use of the shared history booklet. Teachers who
participated in the development project will help recruit and train additional
teachers. At the same time, efforts will be undertaken to gain support for
use of the shared history booklet from a wider circle of school administrators
and parents. This will require partnerships with grassroots organizations that
can help reach out to teachers, students, parents, school administrators and
community leaders to build support for institutionalization of the new curriculum
by both the Israeli and Palestinian Ministries of Education.
At the same time, the shared history booklet could be expanded to include
four narratives (two Israeli and two Palestinian) in order to demonstrate that
neither community has a monolithic view of critical historical events. The
goal of the project, in other words, is not necessarily to create a single "bridging" historical
narrative that is shared in common by both communities, but to break down stereotypes
and build more nuanced understandings by the next generation of citizens of
the two states in the region: Israel and the future Palestinian State.
PRIME could also test the possibility of using the same shared history booklet
developed for Palestinian and Israeli classrooms in other communities. For
example, a few American Moslem and American Jewish educators have expressed
interest in using the Arabic and Hebrew versions of the booklet as part of
a language curriculum, and the English translation as part of a history curriculum,
in their community schools. Eventually, it is hoped the booklets could be tested
for use in schools in Arab countries.
Web-based linkages could be set up so students using the same shared history
booklet in a variety of countries could talk directly to each other about what
they are reading and thinking, as well as possibly develop personal relationships
that would help increase interest and involvement in future student exchanges.
Such interaction, in turn, could provide a broader international network of
support and funding for institutionalization of the curriculum in Palestinian
and Israeli schools
Project Timeline
- January - June 2002: Selection and preparation of initial narratives
covering three historical events (completed)
- July - December 2002: Translation,
design, and printing of initial booklet (completed)
- January - December
2003: Testing of initial booklet in classrooms (completed)
- January – June
2004: Continued classroom testing of initial booklet, and development
of narratives covering three additional historical events (completed)
- July
- December 2004: Completion and publication of second booklet.
- January - June 2005: Classroom testing of second booklet
and publication of revised first and second booklets.
- July - December 2005: Development of narratives covering
three additional historical events and publication of third booklet.
- January
- June 2006: Classroom testing of third booklet and development
of Teacher's Guide.
- July - December 2006: Revision and publication
of third booklet and Teacher's Guide; Training of twelve new teachers,
and training seminar for evaluators
- January - June 2007: Evaluation of
PRIME teacher training methods and of classroom work using PRIME booklets;
seminar in US to review project evaluation and future
potential
- July - December 2007: Final project report is published,
including revised Teacher's Guide; international conference to promulgate
project results.
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