Religious Influences as a Critical Factor on the Selection of Children’s Books by Religious Preschool Teachers
Submitted by:
Idit Lajos
Abstract:
The goal of the study was to examine the criteria according to which a religious
preschool teacher chooses books to read to her pupils. The study was conducted using questionnaires distributed to preschool teachers in the public-religious educational system, in various towns across Israel. The study employed a mixed methodology: combining qualitative and quantitative research(Plano, Huddleston-Casas, O’neil Green, 2008). Semi structured questionnaires developed specifically for the purpose of the study were the research tool.
Books are read to preschoolers on a daily basis, by teachers of all education tracks (Aram, 2005).
Public-religious schooling in israel, is considered public for all intents and purposes, and as such is committed to the cultural and moral values delineated by the Israeli Ministry of Education. The nature of its educational themes and material, however, is religious. The hypothesis of this study was that often, when choosing books to be read out loud, the preschool teacher will experience a conflict between aesthetic-poetic criteria and moral-didactic ones. When such a clash occurs, the religious teacher is likely to choose the book that corresponds with the didactic-moral criteria, that is, correlating with the values of the class and the teacher, even if it is inferior, from a literary perspective.
Findings revealed that children’s literature is perceived by all teachers as a readily-available source for teaching religious topics, for instilling values and as a means of introducing Hebrew culture (Lehman-Elkad 2009). The study data was collected through the questionnaires and the links between them were examined (Nachmias and Nachmias, 1998).
Processing of the data was made in three parts:
Part 1: Referred to the analysis of the open questions by sorting and categorization of statements according to the criteria listed in the literature ( Poyas, De malach, 2006).
Part 2: Referred to the analysis of question number 5. The processing was made according to rating the importance of all of the criteria between 1 - 3, where 1 is most important, 2 is Medium important and - 3 indicates a low level of importance.
Part 3: referring to question 6, in which the subjects had to refer to the rating criteria from 1 to 5 - with 5 representing the most important and - 1 representing not important at all .The averages were calculated according to the Likert scale.