Secondary Students’ Evolving Relationships and Connections with Israel

Abstract This article presents a qualitative practitioner research study designed to understand how a morally complex Israel curriculum impacts the nature of secondary school students’ relationships with Israel. The research was conducted with 31 students enrolled in an elective about Israeli society at a Jewish high school in Canada. At both the start and conclusion of the course, students used a predetermined list of relationships to determine the one that most closely reflects the way they relate to Israel. At both junctures, students also wrote explanations justifying their decision. Results from the beginning of the course showed that 19 students chose relationships that reflected a personal and emotional bond with Israel and 12 students chose relationships that prioritized intellectual connections to Israel. When the survey was administered at the end of the course, none of the 19 students who initially chose personal relationships changed their responses to intellectual ones but 7 of the 12 intellectual responses changed their response to personal relationships. The data indicates that a curriculum built around morally complex narratives and texts in Israeli society can help lead to the formation of strong emotional bonds between students and Israel.