Using Research to Inform Classroom Learning
When Dr. Esther Friedman was a Mandel Center Doctoral fellow, Ilana Horwitz, Assistant Professor and Fields-Rayant Chair in Contemporary Jewish Life at Tulane, and program director of the Doctoral Fellows Program, asked her what support the Mandel Center could provide. Having long admired Professor Ziva Hassenfeld’s work, which related not only to her own research interests but also methodologically dovetailed with her approach, Esther asked to be introduced to Ziva to explore the possibility of collaborating on research with her.Ziva’s research focuses on interpretive stances of elementary school-aged students and the need to understand and honor their interpretive identities. Esther’s work on the ways Bible teachers’ beliefs may change and evolve as a result of challenging ideological interactions with high school students uncovered the important role that teacher assumptions played in their pedagogical decision-making. Looking at where their research overlaps, Ziva and Esther designed a study to understand the interpretive stances of new 9th grade students who were studying in Jewish day schools for the first time.
This was a unique opportunity to study the interpretative stances of novice Bible students who were old enough to have mature interpretive identities as readers and interpreters outside of Jewish studies. They combined their two perspectives: Ziva, the researcher who conducted think-aloud interviews via Zoom, and Esther, the classroom teacher-researcher. Together they explored how these students make sense of biblical texts and how they act on their interpretive proclivities and identities in the classroom context.
Esther and Ziva presented their findings in a session titled, "What I Thought I Taught, and What My Students Actually Learned," at the Prizmah Creative Spirit Conference, January 8-10, 2023, in Denver, Colorado. The presentation focused on how academic research can help make student thinking visible in the Jewish studies classroom and to the Jewish studies teacher. Participants in the session had the opportunity to experience and engage with qualitative research methods and data analysis firsthand, temporarily taking on the role of researcher and analyzing authentic data in real time.
Participants in the session were also given the opportunity to experience the student experience by participating in a think-aloud exercise and reading the same text the students read for the research (the story of Joseph’s slavery in Potiphar’s house). This presentation offered a compelling case of how research can inform practice and how practice can inform research.