Towards a “Well Rounded” Cohesive Teacher Education Program: The Silent Reform of Teacher Education Practices in Israel

This chapter describes four initiatives implemented in Israel’s teacher education in the last decade. In contrast with previous reforms, these initiatives aim at improving teachers’ practice and not just student teachers’ theoretical knowledge. The chapter begins with a short introduction describing Israel’s educational system and the main challenges it has to address. The second part focuses upon teachers: their qualifications, career and social status. The third part reviews teacher education and professional development, and the fourth part describes previous reforms in Israeli teacher education. Current initiatives to reform teacher education and professional development are introduced in the fifth part. These initiatives are: (1) Using non-cognitive selection criteria for student teacher candidates. (2) Introducing one-year residency programs for advanced student teachers. These programs involve partnerships between academic institutions and schools. (3) Establishing frameworks that support beginning teachers and encourage them to become change agents within their schools. (4) Allowing practicing teachers to participate in Professional Learning Communities instead of traditional forms of continued professional development. All of the initiatives are still in a pilot stage and have not yet been officially declared as new policies. Therefore, we call them the silent reform. The role of the MOFET Institute in the development of these initiatives is elaborated in the sixth part. The chapter concludes with an explication of the new conceptualization of teacher education underpinning the initiatives described in the chapter.