Tmuno't, ya'ani pictures' Jewish-Arab Shared Education in Israel as a multilingual setting

The talk will report on a study that examined a Shared Education program recently implemented in Israel, based on the Northern Ireland model. It is part of a larger research project that promotes a new multilingual education policy for Israel, funded by the Israeli Ministry of Education. Shared Education is an educational approach that promotes partnerships between schools from different educational streams with the aim of promoting educational and reconciliation outcomes. In this study, Jewish and Arab children in a mixed Jewish-Arab city, met in order to learn English together over a period of 5 months. English is taught in Israel as a foreign language for both Jewish students- native speakers of Hebrew and Arab students, native speakers of Arabic. The sixth graders were from two schools- one Jewish and one Arab; the seventh graders were students of two Jewish schools which include a small population of Arab students and Arab staff members. Based on a coding system developed for the purpose of this study, we analyzed patterns of language use (English, Arabic, Hebrew) and the way children perceive the meetings as an arena to meet 'others' and their language. Findings show that the shared education setting enabled rich and varied interactions between the three languages, with translanguaging serving a range of purposes- pedagogical, communicative, social and emotional, as well as situations of discomfort and concern vis-à-vis the 'other.' The findings will be discussed in terms of their theoretical contribution to the concept of translanguaging and its role in complex education settings, as well as their practical implications for the role that Shared Education and contact play in the promotion of pluralism.