Looking at knowledge and learning as cultural, historically specific processes, the author considers the challenges of Arabic instruction in Israel related to Arabic proficiency in the Jewish school sector and the underperformance of Arab university students at Arabic grammar. He examines practices of Arabic instruction in specific contexts, to show how instruction for Israeli Jews fails to achieve its intended results and how and why it is allowed to fail, due to the debased value of Arabic in the economy of knowledge in Israel, and the underperformance of Arab university students in Arabic grammar due to the political economy of Israel, the dynamics of schooling in the Arab world, the structures of Arabic grammatical scholarship, Arabic’s sociolinguistic reality, and the dynamics of Arabic language instruction. He describes the context of Israel’s schooling system; Arabic instruction in the dominant, Jewish sector, specifically in the mainstream Hebrew public school system and the universities, as well as influences on it; Arabic instruction in the marginalized, Arab sector, focusing on tertiary education and the dynamics that alienate Arabs from Arabic; specific aspects of Arabic-grammar instruction to examine why Arab university students struggle with Arabic grammar and are outperformed by Jewish students; and the systemic nature of fields like Arabic instruction and the analytic benefits of considering learning and instruction as fields of social practice, as well as the cognitive dynamics underlying learning. Annotation ©2017 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com)
In Arabic Instruction in Israel Allon J. Uhlmann offers a systemic account of two shortfalls of Israeli Arabic instruction, namely the failure to inculcate proficiency in Jewish school and university students, and the alienation of Arab university students from Arabic grammar.
