Education across the divide: Shared learning of separate Jewish and Arab schools in a mixed city in Israel

Abstract

This article examines the impact of contact-based educational encounter strategies of shared learning on Jewish–Arab relations in Israel. It analyses a programme of education for shared life that takes place in a mixed (75% Jewish/25% Arab) city at the centre of Israel since 2012. The programme aims to mitigate Jewish–Arab relations in the city amidst tensions resulting from the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, unequal power relations and hostilities between the groups. Uniquely, it assimilates shared life education into the generally separate educational system in the city, and uses methods of shared learning – adopted and adjusted in part from an educational approach developed in Northern Ireland. Given the inequalities between Jews and Arabs in Israel, in education as well as more generally in socioeconomic parameters, this article studies the prospects of success in achieving educational and social cohesion goals through face-to-face contact and shared learning. The research is based on over 25 interviews as well as observations throughout the programme’s activities.