Non­fic­tion

What We Now Know About Jew­ish Edu­ca­tion: Per­spec­tives on Research for Practice

Robert Louis Good­man, Paul Flexn­er, and Lin­da Dale Bloomberg, eds.
  • Review
By – November 10, 2011

In 1992 Stu­art Kel­man edit­ed a ground­break­ing col­lec­tion of research arti­cles enti­tled What We Know About Jew­ish Edu­ca­tion. This com­pendi­um was par­tic­u­lar­ly use­ful at the time because there was lit­tle research being con­duct­ed in the field of Jew­ish edu­ca­tion, and the results of what research was being done were not read­i­ly avail­able. Six­teen years lat­er, echo­ing Kelman’s book, What We Now Know About Jew­ish Edu­ca­tion pro­vides a use­ful snap­shot of not only the cur­rent field of Jew­ish edu­ca­tion, but also how the field of Jew­ish edu­ca­tion­al research has evolved. The sheer growth in quan­ti­ty of authors (six­ty-six com­pared to thir­ty-two in the 1992 vol­ume) is but one indi­ca­tion of the changes that have tak­en place in the field in the inter­ven­ing years. 

The core of the book, arranged in sec­tions based on Joseph Schwab’s four com­mon places of learn­ing — Learn­ers, Edu­ca­tors, Cur­ricu­lum, and Con­texts — is sand­wiched between an open­ing sec­tion on issues in Jew­ish edu­ca­tion and clos­ing sec­tions on plan­ning and change. In addi­tion to the wealth of infor­ma­tion found in each arti­cle, read­ers can delve more deeply into each sub­ject through the anno­tat­ed bib­li­og­ra­phy, sup­port­ing ref­er­ences, and online resources.

Jef­frey Las­day is a past exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Coali­tion for the Advance­ment of Jew­ishE­d­u­ca­tion (CAJE). He has a B.A. from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Pitts­burgh, an Ed. M. from Har­vard Grad­u­ate School of Edu­ca­tion,. and is also a grad­u­ate of the Senior Edu­ca­tors Pro­gram at Hebrew University’s Melton Cen­ter for Jew­ish Edu­ca­tion in the Diaspora.

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