This paper deals with the policies and practices employed in the teaching of Arabic and Hebrew at a school belonging to the “Hand In Hand Centre for Jewish-Arab Education in Israel”. Its focus is on strategies that the school has developed in order to support the acquisition of biliteracy.
The “Hand In Hand Centre for Jewish-Arab Education in Israel” is a grass-root movement of bilingual, bi-national primary schools in which Jewish and Arab children study together. The first school was open in Jerusalem in 1998. Currently there are 4 schools throughout the country
The schools’ rational is, that by implementing a curriculum which puts emphasis on the equal presentation and representation of the cultural heritage, religious beliefs, and historical narratives of both communities, equality, understanding, respect, reduction fear & prejudice, would be achieved.
The linguistic & cultural goal of bilingualism was perceived as a bi-product that would come about as a result of the equal amount of time and resources allocated to both Arabic and Hebrew in the curriculum.
However, there are a number of challenges such as the hegemony and dominance of Hebrew, the imbalance in knowledge of the two languages among the teaching stuff and the parents population (the Jewish teachers and parents have little or no knowledge of Arabic while the Arab teachers and parents are virtually bilinguals), the absence of bilingual teacher-training programs and lack of bilingual teaching materials production, that have to be addressed before bilingual schooling could become a success.
The schools are searching for ways to overcome some of the above mentioned challenges. One example is the repurposing of teaching materials. Children’s fiction books and teaching materials created for monolingual learners are being adapted so that they would become relevant for bilingual learners.
The empirical data for the study were acquired at the ‘Gesher al Havadi’ school (Bridge over the Wadi), located in the Arab town Kfar Kara. They consist of reports from classroom observations of language-lessons, interviews with teachers and headmasters, and analysis of samples of written assignments in Hebrew produced by Arab and Jewish students.