Teachers’ responses to students’ informal political dialogue: Charting the grey areas in school

Abstract

Recess, the bus ride home, the school corridor and other grey areas are ambiguous for both teachers and students and fall under less institutional regulation. The purpose of this study was to examine the ways teachers would react when they encounter students’ informal political comments in the grey areas. We presented vignettes to 71 Palestinian teachers and 64 Jewish teachers in Israel and asked them what they would have done in a similar situation in their classroom. Teachers’ reactions were on a continuum ranging from avoidance and passivity to engaging in multidimensional mediation. Differences between Jewish and Palestinian teachers were found, and they reflect power relations between the Jewish majority and the Palestinian minority, which involve Palestinian teachers being more reluctant to engage in controversial public issues due to their minority status.