Teaching and Learning in Jewish Day Schools

This volume is focused on teaching and learning, and seeks to better understand how day schools are educating diverse Jewish youth in a variety of content areas. In light of the difficulties initiating, evaluating, and sustaining educational innovation as well as understanding classroom practices more generally, this volume takes stock of what is happening in contemporary Jewish day school classrooms and among Jewish day school students and teachers. The authors of this volume directly confront and question some bedrock principles of Jewish education and some address how day schools intersect with broader societal issues, including race and gender. They point to themes and topics that scholars and practitioners are grappling with and reveal potential future directions worthy of attention: What do we know and what can we learn about what students are learning in Jewish day schools? What do we know about the alignment, or lack of alignment, between desired and actual student learning outcomes? What do we know about teaching and learning in specific core subject areas (e.g., Bible, Rabbinics, Hebrew, etc.) in day school education? What do we know about developmental (i.e., “whole child”) outcomes beyond, outside or across the content of subject areas? How do broader social and environmental factors in the Jewish day school contribute to learning? How do social categories such as race, ethnicity, class, and gender shape student learning and school culture?