Role perceptions of educators of preschoolers regarding community violence and sociocultural trauma in Arab-Palestinian society in Israel

• In Event: Victimology Working Group Panel 1 Consequences of Victimization

Abstract

The past two decades have seen a sharp increase in the rates of crime and violence in the Palestinian society in Israel. This trend has broad negative consequences for the Palestinian community. It turns individual extreme events into a daily collective experience of all Palestinians in Israel – a sociocultural trauma which affects the sense of community and produces new patterns of experiences and attitudes.
The present study addresses the perceptions of early childhood educators regarding community violence and sociocultural trauma in Palestinian society in Israel. This qualitative phenomenological study was based on 15 semi-structured in-depth interviews with educators of 3–6-year-old children in Palestinian society. The analysis of those interviews raised four main themes. (1) educators’ encounter with community violence in two contexts: outside and inside the preschool. (2) dilemmas of Palestinian preschool teachers following their encounter with community violence. (3) participants’ perceptions of their challenges as Palestinian teachers (4) participants’ perceived role as early childhood educators.
The discussion addresses the four themes while moving from the past through the present to the future. This movement paints a broad picture of the participants’ perceptions and experiences, representing the relation between community violence and the Palestinians’ sociocultural trauma. The discussion focuses on the following issues: fear and hypervigilance as teachers and citizens; perceiving the preschool teacher’s role as a “compassion ambassador” and as promoting education for values; an ongoing collective trauma rooted in the events of 1948; and othering and as expressions of individual and collective resilience.
This study is exploratory in that it addresses violence in Palestinian society in Israel as both a present-day individual and collective trauma and as part of an ongoing collective trauma. In that, it contributes to narrowing the gap in the literature regarding the work of Palestinian preschool teachers in the context of collective trauma.

Authors

• Malak Mofeed Ganayem, M.A graduate - Hebrew University Of Jerusalem

• Iris Zadok, The Hebrew university of Jerusalem