Pixel International Conferences

Educators should be first and foremost involved citizens and, hence, they should be aware of social issues and have a clear political stance (Apple, 2013). To this end, they must be familiar with various social issues, among them inequality and the struggle for social justice, exclusion and silencing of particular groups, racism, multiculturalism, gender issues, and environmental sustainability. Based on this approach, in year 2007 Seminar Hakibbutzim college, the largest teacher education college in Israel, added a module to the requirements for earning a teaching certificate, namely, the Social Activism Program, which aims to increase the political awareness and the social involvement of the college’s future graduates (Yogev & Michaeli, 2009). A fundamental feature of this program is the combination of academic coursework and field experience in community-based social involvement. The academic courses provide the theoretical and conceptual framework regarding issues related to critical thinking, whereas the community-based activity takes the form of active involvement in one of the many and varied volunteer frameworks to which students can be referred. The program set out to accomplish an additional goal, namely, to help faculty members design teaching and learning methods that transcend the walls of the classroom and college and encompass the entire Israeli social reality. Thus, learning takes place at the site of social activity and in the educational frameworks to which the children belong, as well as in the children's homes and other locations in the relevant communities. The insights we present here are based on having taught this program to thousands of teacher-trainees over the years, and on our collaboration with hundreds of organizations for social change and state-funded welfare institutions. In addition, the program's efficacy was evaluated several times, in order to better understand the challenges ahead (Yogev & Michaeli, 2011). The program serves as a model, because it merges academics with fieldwork and integrates theory with practice, an approach that is of utmost importance and necessity in the realm of teacher education. The program provides an innovative way to learn about social issues and conflicts and gives new meaning to the students' volunteer work.

Keywords: Teacher education, social activism, political education, critical pedagogy;