Keywords

Background

In 2013, the Israeli Ministry of Education (thereafter “the Ministry”) issued a national educational reform entitled “Israel Graduates: Transitioning to Meaningful Learning.” The story of this reform offers a fascinating opportunity to examine how many of the ideas discussed throughout the book unfolded in a recent system-wide effort to improve learning and instruction. The reform was aligned with progressive pedagogical approaches and was committed to incorporating 21st century skills into curricula of all school subjects. According to the policy documents outlining the principles of the reform, schools must work toward the goal of meaningful learning and make sure it happens across all years of schooling. According to the program, “…[in] meaningful learning students raise questions, identify sources of information, process information, and generate new knowledge relevant to their everyday lives and to life in the technological era of the 21st century. The goal of meaningful learning is to develop critical thinking, creativity and independent learning, and to encourage personal growth and social involvement” (Israeli Ministry of Education, 2014). Thus, the program’s building blocks are higher-order thinking (HOT), deep learning of topics that interest students and meet their needs, active learning that takes place either individually or in small groups, and experiential learning. The program also emphasizes excellence and the maximizing of individual potential, along with the development of good values and spiritual growth. The Ministry published a master document with the overall policy of the program for all grade levels with reference to different population segments (Israeli Ministry of Education, 2014). Officially, the program’s implementation began in September 2014 after the Ministry had undertaken many preparatory steps to facilitate its systematic implementation. In fact, the Education Minister, who initiated and led the program, resigned after only 18 months in office. The next Education Minister preserved most of the program’s components, at least at the beginning of his term. Over the next couple of years, however, the new Education Minister replaced the Ministry’s Director General and other senior officials who had initially led the reform. At the time of this writing, it is still too early to determine whether and to what extent the program’s implementation will continue over the next few years.

As stated, one of the program’s building blocks is teaching that fosters independent and active learning involving students’ thinking, creativity, and inquiry. Hence, the program is relevant to the overall topic of this book. Another building block refers to assessment. Based on the assumption that in order to change teaching methods, it is necessary to implement concurrent changes in assessment methods, the program also included the implementation of extensive changes in assessment.

The new assessment methods were meant to limit the tendency to rely on high-stakes standardized achievement tests. Instead, they were aimed at testing the outcomes of meaningful learning and at providing greater weight than before to school-based assessment, highlighting teacher’s discretion in assessing their students’ achievements. In elementary schools, these changes meant the cancellation of the external high-stakes MeitzavFootnote 1 examinations, changing them to internal, school-based tests. In high schools, there were even more substantial changes regarding the matriculation certificate. These changes resulted in (a) a reduction in the number of external exams; (b) a cancellation of all matriculation exams in the tenth grade; (c) the introduction of mandatory community service; (d) a reduction in the amount of material covered by the external examinations; and (e) an increase in, and diversification of, school-based assessment methods (Israeli Ministry of Education, 2014). Because the data in this chapter concerns the two latter changes (d and e), I will explain them with some elaboration in what follows.

Deep, active, relevant, and meaningful learning involving HOT takes longer than passive learning focused on rote learning. In order to support teachers in engaging their students in meaningful learning, the Education Minister instructed schools to reduce the amount of content studied in all subjects in about 25%. Afterward, the National Subject Supervisors (who lead instruction and assessment in each school subject) were asked to divide the remaining content into two unequal parts. The larger part consisted of 70% of the material. This part consisted the mandatory knowledge and skills of each discipline that schools needed to teach. This part would also become the target of the external matriculation exam that students would need to take in each school subject. The remaining 30% was taken out of the category of “mandatory studies” and was allocated to a category named “elective and elaboration.” The idea behind the “elective and elaboration” part was to provide schools and teachers with autonomy to select topics, to design methods of learning and instruction, and even to design their own assessment methods. Accordingly, an important innovation of the reform was that 30% of the final grade, which had previously been included in the external matriculation exam (and therefore addressed mandatory, prescribed parts of the curriculum), became an internal grade given by each individual school (and therefore addressed the curriculum in a much more relaxed and flexible way). For this part of the final matriculation grade, the Ministry encouraged schools to develop alternative assessment methods such as inquiry papers, final products of project-based learning, portfolios, etc. (Israeli Ministry of Education, 2016). An analysis of this component of the reform using the model suggested by the Van Leer Education Group (2007) indicates that it is clearly a step toward more pluralistic and thinking-rich learning (see Chap. 2).

When we try to assess the effect of the “Israel Graduates” reform on curricula and on the quality of teaching and learning in the upper grades, it is important to pay close attention to two significant points that, for some reason, have eluded the public discourse regarding the reform. The first one concerns the scope of the reduction in the curricula of the various school subjects. In fact, the scope of the mandatory curricula was cut twice: first, as mentioned earlier, only 75% of the original scope of the curricula remained in place. However, at a later stage, this material was further reduced by 30%. Cumulatively, only 52.5% of the initial content that was mandatory before the beginning of the reform’s implementation process still remained. The second significant point concerns the speed of the decision-making on cutting the material and the extent of deliberation that went into that process. In the past, curricula in Israeli schools were the outcome of orderly, profound, and meticulous work conducted by subject-specific curricula committees. Based on long (at times, too long) discussions between subject matter experts and educators, these committees determined what schools needed to teach in each school subject. The committees also determined the learning sequence that schools needed to follow in order to support the construction of students’ coherent knowledge. By contrast, the command to reduce a large part of the curriculum in each subject in order to adapt it to the so-called “70/30 Reform” forced the National Subject Supervisors to work on a very tight schedule. The outcome was that curricula underwent massive cuts without any systematic discussion on what should stay and what should go. Furthermore, the Ministry conducted no general discussion of the question of what Israeli schoolchildren should know in each of the school subjects in the first third of the twenty-first century and of what are the criteria for high-quality knowledge. I would like to stress that, in writing these words, I do not mean to say that there was no need for dramatic changes in the curricula, on the contrary. As stated in Chap. 2, the current changes regarding knowledge and information along with the ongoing digital revolution definitely require fresh thinking about the goals of education and about what schools need to teach. Such thinking may have resulted in an updated list of school subjects, in an updated scope of what needs to be taught in each school subject, and in defining new learning areas. Accordingly, the Ministry could have conducted an orderly and thorough process of comprehensive thinking which may have led to an improved and updated curricula. Instead, however, the Ministry took the pre-existing curricula, whose rationale was shaped in the second half of the twentieth century and, in order to presumably adapt teaching and learning to the 21st century, quickly chopped them into pieces and threw some of the pieces away. This process dismantled the structures of the old curricula, which, even if they were not up-to-date, at least had an internal logic and coherence. In other words, instead of updated curricula providing a systematic approach to current schools’ needs, this process left the school system with piecemeal curricula based on the needs and approaches of the 20th century. These events are significant as they frame the context of the data presented in the next sections. It is important to understand that the data, describing teachers’ experiences while implementing the “Meaningful Learning” Reform, were collected in the context of these changes to the curricula.

In 2016, the Israeli National Authority for Measurement and Evaluation in Education published a comprehensive report assessing the first year of the program’s implementation (National Authority for Measurement and Evaluation in Education, 2016). Some of the findings are extremely relevant to the data cited in this chapter, and therefore I shall provide the gist of the report below. The report demonstrated that the initiation of the reform had considerable impact on the educational system’s interest in pedagogy, and that it provided a new language to discuss learning and instruction. The program introduced the concept “meaningful learning” as well as a whole galaxy of other concepts explaining it. In addition, the program resulted in a focus on implementing meaningful learning and in giving priority to organizational processes that supported it across the system: from the level of the Ministry’s headquarters to the level of individual schools and classrooms. Numerous professional meetings discussing meaningful learning took place throughout the school system, attended by senior officials from the Ministry, as well as by district and school leaders. Professional knowledge and instructional tools were developed and disseminated. “Meaningful learning” became a central and prevalent concept in the pedagogical discourse throughout the school system; anyone still unfamiliar with the term was looked upon as a recent arrival from another planet.

At the same time, the report clearly states that the professional development (PD) programs intended to help teachers implement meaningful learning in their classrooms have not yet met needs and that the steps made to train instructorsFootnote 2 in meaningful learning and alternative teaching methods have been insufficient. By many indices, the assessment findings from high schools were less encouraging than from elementary schools. For example, when it came to teachers’ PD, a Likert-type scale concerning teachers’ views of the contribution of the PD courses showed an inverse relationship. Scores obtained from teachers in the higher-grade levels were lower than the scores from teachers in the lower-grade levels (from 70% in elementary school, to 64% in junior high school, to 57% in high school). This would seem to indicate the need for more sources of PD and/or improving the quality of existing ones for the upper grades. During the surveyed year (which was the first year of the implementation of the reform), a significant number of teachers participated in various formal PD programs (either at PD centers or online). In addition to positive assessments of these programs, the survey found that more than 80% of the teachers reported a need for additional instructional tools in order to be able to teach according to the principles of the reform. As noted, the study found that the need for PD was greater among teachers in the upper grades. The responses of school principals indicated that they, too, felt there is room for improvement in PD: only 50% of elementary school principals, 41% of junior high school principals, and 27%(!) of high school principals thought that their teachers have the knowledge and tools to teach according to the principles of the Meaningful Learning Reform. Furthermore, the students’ own evaluation of the relevance and value of their learning was hardly encouraging: about two-thirds of elementary school children and only one-half of junior high school children (and fewer still high school students) reported that they have a clear sense that their learning is very relevant and highly valuable or that it is challenging.

Regarding the change in assessment methods in the upper grades (the “70/30 Reform”) described earlier, most students reported that they do not understand what they are expected to do according to the new guidelines. Based on what they did understand, they did not think the method is appropriate. While the “70/30 Reform” was not met with a great deal of opposition, the principals, teachers, or students also did not greet it enthusiastically. The study found that during the first year of implementation, it was not clear to teachers how exactly they needed to execute the “70/30 Reform.” Teachers reported that they needed additional instructional tools and further guidance in order to be able to execute it successfully. In addition, it seemed that this change placed a greater burden than before on teachers and students: the 30% assessed by alternative methods did not reduce the effort needed to prepare for the traditional exams, but rather added to it. Some National Subject Supervisors did not reduce the amount of material the students were expected to know as the program called for, and this added greatly to teachers’ and students’ workloads. The quantity of the material was supposed to have been reduced to make room for better quality of learning, but this did not happen. In addition, the implementation process failed to reduce the pressure issued by various entities (such as districts) to raise test scores.

Many researchers agree that PD is the most important component in a pedagogical reform. It is therefore important to listen to what the report has to say about PD:

Research findings indicate a wide gap between the ideal and the real in the most important resource of all, i.e. PD (workshop sessions, seminars, and so on). The PD programs in the various school subjects for all grades are still failing to meet schools’ needs regarding how to translate the ideas of meaningful learning and alternative assessment into classroom practice. The reform expects teachers to demonstrate creativity and to develop new instructional materials and approaches. Yet, some teachers need guidance, mentoring, and more formal and intensive processes of acquiring new teaching strategies. A significant number of teachers does not participate in any PD program. While those who do participate usually express satisfaction with their programs, many of the participants as well as non-participants explicitly say that they still lack sufficient instructional tools to promote meaningful learning. The opinion of school principals regarding this issue is truly negative. It seems that the issue of PD needs special attention and substantially greater resources. (National Authority for Measurement and Evaluation in Education, 2016, pp. 12–13)

In the summer of 2018, the National Authority for Measurement and Evaluation in Education published a more updated study on the same topic. Several paragraphs in the section summarizing the findings of the new study (“conclusions and implications”) are also highly relevant for the present discussion (emphases appear in the original document):

Four years after the National Authority for Measurement and Evaluation in Education had begun to collect data and three years after launching the Meaningful Learning reform, no indications were found for an increase in students’ evaluations regarding most of the result indices- relevance of studies and how valuable they are to the students; students’ involvement in their studies; emotional-motivational aspects of learning; students’ ability to execute learning strategies; and more. (National Authority for Measurement and Evaluation in Education, 2018, p. 137)

During the first three years of the evaluation study, patterns of a slight decrease were found in most indices. In the fourth year, slight increases were recorded, but in most cases, they marked a return to the levels measured before the beginning of the reform. In general, it seemed that more meaningful learning took place in elementary schools than in high schools. This pattern is similar to the one recorded before the reform, when, according to teachers’ reports, an invert relationship was found between students’ age level and the amount of meaningful learning and the school conditions that supported it.

Data from the higher grades pointed to another invert relationship: a considerable increase in practices of diverse alternative assessment methods, together with a decrease in the various indices representing meaningful learning. Indeed, without necessarily pointing to a causal relationship, it seems that like the findings from previous years, findings from the fourth year of the implementation support the claim that the crucial issue is the quality of teaching-learning-assessment processes, rather than their prevalence or level of diversity.

A recurrent pattern in the data points to gaps between the prevalence of deep and complex elements of the reform and more superficial elements that are easier to apply. For example, teachers’ reports about the frequency of inquiry learning among students are much higher than their reports about teachers’ own learning of how to support students’ inquiry processes. Likewise, students’ reports about diverse learning and assessment methods indicate that teachers applied more often instructional methods requiring a relatively small investment in time or in other resources (such as individual learning, learning in pairs or in small groups) compared to instructional methods requiring more time and resources (such as writing research papers, preparing portfolios, or project-based learning). In addition, a gap was found between teachers’ general awareness of the reform and their awareness of its deeper dimensions. An analysis of open-ended questions indicated that teachers viewed the reform mainly as a means to implement diverse assessment methods or as a way to eliminate traditional instructional means such as teacher-centered instruction. Both teachers and principals wrote more about the more apparent dimensions of diverse instructional and assessment methods than about deeper dimensions such as students’ understanding, values, or self-regulated learning (National Authority for Measurement and Evaluation in Education, 2018).

In summary, the 2018 report indicated that the reform was indeed widely implemented throughout the school system, but with no dramatic improvements in the indices that were measured. In addition, the report indicated that deep elements of the reform were less prevalent in teachers’ practice than superficial ones. In the following sections of the chapter, I will try to explain these findings by analyzing a series of interviews with teachers.

In summer 2018, the State Comptroller also published a comprehensive report about the implementation of the Meaningful Learning Reform, finding severe flaws (State Comptroller, 2018). The report addressed four main problems: (a) absence of planning deemed necessary for the success of the reform; (b) flaws in the ways the Ministry managed the reform and carried out its implementation; (c) difficulties in implementing meaningful learning in schools; and (d) deficiencies in teacher education and PD aimed at preparing teachers for the reform.

Descriptions from the Field: What Do Teachers Say About the Implementation of the “70/30 Reform” in Its First Years?

Thus far, I have described the general features of the Meaningful Learning Reform and, in particular, the part that relates to the changes in assessment methods in the upper grades. The reform, which is one of the most comprehensive pedagogical reforms ever carried out in Israeli schools, is related to the key subject of this book, i.e., the transition to progressive teaching and learning methods in general and the development of HOT in particular. It is therefore worth examining the reform in light of the issues discussed throughout the book. In the subsequent sections of this chapter, I shall try to trace how these issues were played out during the implementation process by means of a series of semi-structured, informal interviews with teachers. The interviews took place at the end of the program’s second year. All the participating teachers worked in the upper grades and experienced the implementation of the “70/30” assessment reform.

These interviews can be divided into two groups. The first consists of interviews with 34 teachers of various school disciplines held in the summer of 2016 after the teachers had taught two cohorts and prepared them for the matriculation exams under the new guidelines. The second consists of 12 interviews with chemistry teachers held in the winter of 2017. The overarching goal of the interviews was to learn what the teachers thought about the implementation of the reform. The interviewees represented a convenience sampling, i.e., teachers who were accessible to M.A. students at the Hebrew University. This represents a sample of teachers who would tend to be more educated than a random sample of teachers. Because the sampling is selective, it is reasonable to assume that the findings are an underestimation of the difficulties and challenges existing in the system at large. That is to say, we can assume that the challenges and problems described in this chapter exist in all schools at least to the same extent as reported here. In any case, it is necessary to exercise caution and not use the data to generalize about the school system as a whole.

In the following sections, I shall first discuss the data based on the 34 interviews conducted with teachers of different school disciplines. In the first section, I shall sketch a profile of teachers who, throughout the interview, expressed a coherent position either supporting or rejecting the reform. In the ensuing sections, I shall expand on several selected themes and show how the teachers related to them. In the last part of the chapter, I shall analyze the interviews conducted with the chemistry teachers. Because I promised the teachers full anonymity, I avoided any identifying details.

Opposing Attitudes Toward the Reform

The interviews indicate that the reform reached the schools in a hurry, and because there was no sufficient preparation, guidance, or training, it led to uneven implementation. Some schools and teachers were already “on board” in the sense that they had experience and skills in advanced teaching and assessment methods. The teachers who taught in these schools could use the advantage of the relative freedom they received concerning 30% of the material to “take off” and “soar” (citing the teachers themselves) and to apply new and creative methods of teaching, learning, and assessment. Other schools—those lacking the required knowledge and skills—experienced “a mess” and “instability” (again citing the teachers). The excerpts below represent teachers who hold these two opposing attitudes regarding the reform.

A history teacher describes the positive change she experienced thanks to the reform in the following way:

To begin with, there is much more freedom, much more room to give children the opportunity to express themselves. Learning is more meaningful and less teacher-centered. We don’t have that pressure at every given moment, the pressure coming from above, where they tell the kids what to do and how to do it every single moment. It’s not that there are no quizzes and assignments to hand in, but the pressure is gone. There is a different kind of pressure generated by the need to write an inquiry paper, but it’s not rote learning like it used to be… It created a process. Lessons are calmer, [there is] more profound study of topics we could choose ourselves… It has cons and pros: it’s a lot more fun, but there is also the inquiry component. It’s hard, and it makes demands, especially of the students, but it contributes to developing students’ skills.

Another teacher, who feels the reform has had a positive effect on her work, describes it in the following way:

Yes, [the reform] affected me in that I started to work harder to teach in an interesting way. It forced me to work harder, thinking how I [can] reinvent myself over and over again. I think it had a positive effect on me, because the harder you work, the better you become. The process with the class is better, because… each [child] is capable of expressing himself in his own way and I think that the process that took place was really good…

The same teacher is also very enthusiastic when answering the question whether, and if so how, the reform enhanced her sense of professional capability:

It really enhanced my sense of capability, because if I thought I could [do] X, I proved to myself that I can [do] much more. It affected me in a good way. It made me feel good. For example, I prepare a broadcast with the class. Personally, I always dreamt of doing something related to theater. Suddenly I realized that through the alternative assessment I can bring myself to a point I never dreamt of. Because in traditional instruction you have no way of doing it, but I could do it through the reform.

Another teacher, who had a positive experience with the reform, has been teaching Judaic subjects and social sciences for 4 years in a state religious school in a small city with a relatively low socioeconomic profile. To describe the enthusiasm the reform kindled in her, she was the one who used the verb “to soar”:

[The implementation of the reform] really encouraged me to soar, because suddenly you have the opportunity to use diverse instruction and assessment methods. I tried it out on many occasions, and it really works… I am the sort of person who tends to put much work into what I do, so it suits me and I soar with it… From the outset, the teachers at [name of the school] [were] very much into the idea. We’ve always been very creative, and suddenly you have the opportunity to do something we’d already been doing, and it even reaches the students…They know this is their matriculation assessment. Trying to make a meaningful change we really shifted to more inquiry papers and fewer tests!

This teacher testified that the encouragement and opportunity offered by the reform created a significant change. She and her colleagues are now giving fewer tests and are assigning more inquiry papers. The change allowed the teachers to be creative, affecting both their teaching and assessment methods. Nonetheless, the quotation makes it clear that, in this specific school, teachers had applied similar methods before the reform, that is, the school already had a previous pedagogical infrastructure for the innovative working methods. This teacher reported that the knowledge she needed to teach differently was constructed at two PD courses she had attended before the reform, addressing instruction and alternative assessment. According to her, both programs were successful and effective. In fact, when describing these programs, she used the words “outstanding PD programs.”

A positive attitude toward the reform was evident also in the answer of one of the participants to the question asking whether the reform affected the way she functioned as homeroom teacher.Footnote 3 In her answer, the teacher expressed her feeling that her participation in the reform, and especially her close work with students on alternative assessment assignments, had improved the way she had functioned as a homeroom teacher. She thought the main reason for this improvement was that the reform enabled her to get to know her students better:

  • Q: Did the change affect your function as a homeroom teacher, and if so – how?

  • A: In a certain sense, yes… The alternative assessment makes me, as a teacher, go through a very close process with the students. I get to know them from different angles, from a much more creative place, and get to know what they are interested in and how they incorporate those things into their work. I think that the process added an important dimension to my recognition of the girls’ capabilities, talents, and strengths.

Toward the end of the conversation, the teacher explained that the reform had a positive effect also on her own sense of professional capability and on her understanding of her professional role:

It is very empowering. It gives teachers the opportunity to express themselves. It enhances my creativity in teaching.

In contrast to the positive picture painted by the teachers in the previous paragraphs, other teachers portray a much bleaker reality. The first teacher in this category teaches history and is also a homeroom teacher; she has been teaching for 11 years. In response to the question “What happened in your school following the alternative assessment reform?” she said that what happened was “a mess.” Regarding the first cohort that went through the reform, she describes the implementation of the reform as a “commandment” imposed from the top down. She reports that she was “shocked” by the power-point presentations shown at the beginning-of-year conference to introduce the 70/30 Reform. She notes that although she was told to start teaching according to the program, she was confused, saying that “personally, I didn’t understand a thing.” To her disappointment, the details of the program she was supposed to teach were decided without consulting with her. She was not invited to have a voice in the planning processes. She underscores the fact that, had she been asked to be involved, she would have suggested fundamental changes. According to her, the resources and tools placed at her disposal were unsuited for implementing the reform. In particular, she highlighted the lack of time: much of what was planned could not be executed, and the lack of time made creative work impossible. She did not take part in any PD that could have prepared her for the new program. She stressed that she felt the lack of appropriate PD preparing her for the changes she was supposed to implement:

I am missing PD… I would very much like to see the leaders and developers of the reform come to the classrooms and model what they mean, so we could observe their lessons. That it [i.e., the reform’s principles] would not be so disconnected from practice… Such PD could have been extremely relevant.

As noted earlier, this teacher did not participate in any PD. It is therefore not surprising that although the reform was manifested in structural pedagogy (in this case, the 30/70 change in the final exam that also affected the chapters of the curriculum to be taught each year), it had no effect on her teaching methods. She reported that the style of teaching for the 70% part of the curriculum is still aimed at drill and practice for test preparation. The style of teaching for the remaining 30%—which was supposed to be taught in innovative ways—was affected by lack of time to teach in a meaningful manner:

Other than the technical part of allocating what content we would teach each year– the reform did not affect me. I still teach to the matriculation exam, and aim at the questions likely to appear on it. Due to lack of time, we taught the 30% part (which, according to the instructions we received from above consisted of the unit about World War 2 and the Holocaust) very fast, without any depth; and there’s no way to know if all the topics were covered… My teaching methods didn’t change.

Unfortunately, this teacher states that the reform also had a negative impact on her role as homeroom teacher. In response to the question “Did the change affect your function as homeroom teacher, and if so – how?” she answered:

It only added to my workload on the technical level. I cancelled discussions of prominent issues to make time to cover the material I needed to teach. It significantly reduced the quality time I had with my students as a homeroom teacher.

Another teacher frustrated by the reform has 15 years of experience and an M.A., and she teaches Hebrew Bible and another Humanities class in addition to being a homeroom teacher. According to her, the school announced the change as “major.” She admits that following the reform, there were, in fact, changes in the structure of teaching, especially a change in the allocation of the content taught in different grades. But, she maintains, there were still no real changes in the quality of classroom instruction, i.e., in substantive pedagogy:

  • Q: What happened in your school following the alternative assessments reform?

  • A: What happened…? They simply switched the curricula. What we used to teach in the 12th grade, we are now teaching in the 10th, and that’s, like, the 30%. In addition, we also have now alternative teaching methods and alternative assessment, and this is done through a written paper, or a power point presentation and inquiry. This was, like, a big change, sure, when they told us [about it]. But, at the end of the day, everything is the same… The teaching itself, in the classroom –it certainly didn’t change.

Later on, this teacher adds that the reform was imposed on her from the top down and that she was not involved at all in creating it. Similarly, she did not acquire any new teaching and assessment methods as part of her professional development:

  • Q: Were you involved in writing the curriculum?

  • A: No… They just told us. I was not involved… In reality nothing really changed. It’s still new. Nobody really knows what to do with it, and we don’t even have time to write anything new – like lesson plans. So the tools we had before are the same ones we have now.

  • Q: Did you participate in a PD process that prepared you for the program?

  • A: PD? No, what are you talking about?! They did not explain. They dumped it. Like, at the beginning of the year they said, “From now on, do A, B, C…” and we just do it.

The teacher complains that the resource she lacks most for optimal implementation of the reform is time, because her contract does not include any hours to prepare and develop new teaching materials:

  • Q: Are there any tools or knowledge resources to implement the reform that you think you are missing?

  • A: I think that what is missing here is time. Time to develop plans. I don’t have any hours to do it. Whatever we prepare, we do it at home, in our own free time, and it shows. Teachers don’t actually do it; they prefer the practices they are already familiar with, which is a shame. … They generated this reform, but they didn’t go all the way, and they expect that suddenly everyone will get it, right away. But the time to really understand it, or to plan, comes at the expense of our own time; … Who has energy left when you finally get to go home to sit down and develop something new? It’s sad that that’s the way it is. They forgot all about giving us time.

Considering this sentiment, it is hardly surprising that she repeats the convictions that the reform did not affect her, either in terms of her classroom teaching, which remained the same as before, or in terms of her function as a homeroom teacher. Neither did it affect her sense of self-efficacy:

  • Q: Did the change affect you, and if so – how?

  • A: Hmm… No. It did not affect me, no. I told you, like, the way we teach in class is the same.

  • Q: Did the change affect your sense of professional capability and your understanding of your professional function, and if so – how?

  • A: Umm… I don’t think it made a difference. I really, I think that it’s not yet “there,” this reform…. It feels just like any other reform that is very soon going to be turned into the next thing.

To conclude this section, I would like to quote some distressing excerpts from the end of the conversation with a different teacher, who explains that, from her school’s perspective, the reform was a “curse” that undermined the quality of her teaching:

  • A: From the school’s point of view, this is a curse. The teachers are not overjoyed by too many reforms. It was imposed on us too quickly and there was no time to find a way to manage all of these changes.

  • Q: Did the change affect your sense of professional capability and your understanding of your professional function, and if so – how?

  • A: It undermined it a bit. The quality of my teaching is much worse. I was not prepared for all the changes and the attempt to stitch it all together with so many information gaps and on such a short notice – it was simply bad.

Do Teachers Think That the Reform Affected Classroom Teaching and Learning?

In the following sections, I shall address some of the common themes that emerged from the interviews and what teachers thought of them. I shall begin with the theme of the reform’s effects on classroom learning and instruction methods. Some teachers say that the reform did have an effect, explaining that it generated significant improvements in their instructional methods and in their students’ ways of learning. For example, one teacher explains that, in her discipline (geography), many changes had been made [before the reform] to improve teaching and learning methods. These changes included PD courses that provided her with advanced pedagogical tools. She says that the regulations published as part of the reform made her think in new ways, which allowed her to use knowledge resources she had acquired before the reform to change and improve her pedagogical work:

  • Q: Did the reform affect you, and if so – how?

  • A: It really forced me to rethink things. Just this year, in the 10th grade, they’re not doing their regular inquiry project, so I have to develop a program that is not aimed at a matriculation exam [and therefore] I will create assignments in a completely different way. How do I create such learning? Obviously, all the materials I have are aimed at the exam… I tried to get help from teams of teachers outside my own school. It really forced me to try and think.

According to this teacher, taking a fresh look at designing new materials and the outcomes of this process led to a significant and positive change in her teaching. At a later point in the conversation, she describes that positive change from the perspective of her students who gained a more relevant learning experience, one more closely related to the world outside of school:

…But, based on what I heard from students, they went through a meaningful process. I think it affected them in a positive way. If you do it right and you are serious about it, and if there is appropriate support for teachers and students, they can experience something really meaningful. For our inquiry project, we picked a topic that is relevant to them and affects them directly. The inquiry question was: what factors affect the decision made by young people in Jerusalem -whether to stay in the city or leave it? So, here, [students get to think about] what interests me, what issues do I have with the city? What do people think, what do young people, think, what do older people think? [emphases in the voice of the teacher]

On the other hand, a large group of teachers reports a lack of change in learning and instruction methods following the reform. A close reading of the interview transcripts shows that this group is divided into two sub-groups. One sub-group, which included the teacher described earlier (on pp. 144–145), reports that, despite the changes that had taken place in structural pedagogy, the substantive pedagogy had not changed at all. Due to the absence of PD, these teachers feel they did not acquire any new teaching strategies, and therefore, necessarily, they continue to rely on the old familiar methods. The second sub-group also reports a lack of changes in substantive pedagogy. The reason for this, however, was that they had already had the chance to explore the teaching and learning methods promoted by the program before the beginning of the reform. The teachers in this sub-group report that, in their classrooms, they have been applying innovative instructional methods all along. They had encountered these methods either through large-scale implementation activities that took place in the discipline they teach or through implementation activities that took place within their school. For example, civics teachers report that, in their subject, the relevant changes had taken place before the 70/30 assessment reform came into being:

  • Q: What, if anything, occurred in your school as a consequence of the alternative assessment reform? For example, were there any changes in teaching and learning?

  • A: In the context of civics, there were no changes at our school, because we had already started with the alternative assessment earlier… so for us this did not cause any problem.… We were, in fact, the first to do alternative assessment. And we continue to do almost the same even now… We do a performance assessment task.

Similar to civics, science teachers also report that there were no fundamental changes following the reform, because they had already been teaching through inquiry for a number of years. For example, one science teacher reports that long before the beginning of the reform, she studied innovative teaching methods in the National Science Teaching Center:

The school made no changes in teaching or learning following the alternative assessment reform… There was no [implementation] program and what I am doing is mine as a veteran teacher… I use inquiry learning and teach in an inquiry lab, and I use methods of alternative assessment – a portfolio… I have been participating in PD processes that prepared me for this for the past 21 years.

These excerpts confirm that both the civics and the science teacher have been using advanced pedagogies in their classrooms, but this is not a consequence of the reform; rather, they use knowledge they had acquired over the years from other sources, such as specific PD programs for civics or science teachers.

In other cases, teachers report that the reform made no difference because the transition to innovative teaching, learning, and assessment methods started as a process of a school-based change predating the reform:

The truth is that there were no changes [in our school] because of the reform. We’ve always done alternative assessments and projects based learning. Now, maybe, it has this name – “alternative assessment” – but we’ve always done it. The change is in name and in the percentage of the assessment. It used to be 15 percent, and now it’s 30…

In such cases too, the implementation of the reform relies on knowledge that existed before its launch:

I think I have the knowledge and tools to construct appropriate lesson plans and to plan and assess assignments. This is how I’ve worked at the school ever since I started teaching here.

When responding to a question about what PD she would like to receive for implementing the reform, the same teacher responds by supporting the idea that she already had the relevant knowledge before the reform came into existence:

No… Not that I’m bragging or anything, but… I don’t feel that I need to learn how to do this. [Another PD course] for me is unnecessary, because, as I said, we have always worked and taught this way at this school; There is really nothing new for us.

In response to the explicit question “Did the reform affect you?” this last teacher gave a one-word answer: “No.” And when asked “Were you introduced to new teaching methods as part of the reform?” she grew irritated by the pretense that the reform innovated anything. She felt that the question’s implicit assumption was that before the reform, teachers at her school did not engage in meaningful teaching and resented this notion:

Not really [i.e. the reform did not really affect her]. We’ve been teaching meaningfully all the time; that’s what’s sometimes so annoying. In this reform, there is this sense that, until the Minister came along and launched this reform, we didn’t engage in meaningful teaching. I have no doubt that for many teachers it did not bring anything new. Our classes always consisted of discussions, presentations, analyses of events, and visual contents. As far as I am concerned, the lessons did not change at all.

Another teacher who describes in detail how the pedagogies in her school are focused on project-based teaching and assessment provides one more interesting example of a school change that took place before the initiation of the reform:

  • Q: In your school, were there changes in teaching and learning as a result of the alternative assessment reform? If so, please describe these changes.

  • A: The prevalent pedagogy in our school is that of alternative assessment which is part of project-based teaching. This pedagogy has been used at our school for several years in the junior high school classes.Footnote 4 Every year, new teachers join the circle of project-based teaching. The teaching methods vary and are matched to the projects’ final products. Also, in projects that require specific expertise, the teacher leads the project under the supervision of an expert. Teachers who are part of the project-based instruction initiative, submit at the outset, a blueprint organizing their work. It refers to the contents, skills, teaching methods, didactic processing of contents, learning objectives, and community objectives related to the project. The school also runs its own PD for teachers doing project-based teaching. In the PD we discuss and analyze the pedagogical questions involved, as well as share classroom practices. Teachers from within the school are leading this PD. In addition, teachers receive individual guidance regarding the supervision of students’ projects.

  • In the last two years, the school has begun to incorporate this method into the upper grades too. As part of a pilot program in history,Footnote 5 students are now studying for the matriculation exam using diverse teaching and assessment methods. The alternative assessment is adapted to the topics we teach and to the methods we use. It includes performance assessment tasks, a middle of the year examination, and guidance in how to write an inquiry paper. At staff meetings, we discuss contents, teaching methods, and the performance assessment tasks… The school supports teachers by placing all necessary resources at their disposal.

Not only does this description provide a glimpse of teaching and learning methods used in that school; it also sheds light on the thorough and orderly processes that took place in order to implement new pedagogies in both the junior high and high school levels. These processes included comprehensive PD, consisting of a school-based teachers’ course, peer learning, and individual professional support. The teacher describes in detail how the school developed issues pertaining to substantive pedagogy as part of a systematic implementation processes. Each cycle of instruction begins with a planning phase, in which teachers submit an organizing plan referring to objectives at different levels, to the contents, to skills, to teaching methods, and to knowledge goals. Because this sort of planning requires quite a bit of pedagogical knowledge, it is evident that the implementation process did not begin with the planning phase noted by the teacher. Rather, it was preceded by a prior stage of PD not mentioned here. Later on, there is another stage of PD that consists of peer learning, including the sharing of classroom experiences, and a group analysis of relevant instructional issues. These processes are ongoing. They take place in the school with ever-growing circles of teachers. Although the implementation processes had begun before the reform, the teacher does give the reform its due, because she sees it as enabling the use of innovative pedagogies in a better and more profound manner:

I’ve been waiting for this reform for years! It gives [us] an opportunity for creative thinking and doing, both on the part of teachers and on the part of students. In alternative teaching and alternative assessment, there is a blending of process and goals, and that makes all the difference in the world!

The last quotation then demonstrates that the policy involved in the reform may create a change for the better even in schools that had previously been “on board” and transitioned to advanced pedagogies prior to the reform. The quotations indicate that the teacher sees a difference between working on advanced pedagogies when the Ministry’s official policy supports traditional teaching, as compared to working on them when the official policy supports advanced pedagogies. The policy supported by the reform aligns innovative teaching processes with the new alternative assessment methods. The teacher therefore sees the reform as encouraging creative work and critical thinking on the part of both teachers and students. The difference the reform makes for this teacher is noticeably welcome, making her state that “I’ve been waiting for this reform for years!” Hence, it confirms that the reform made a difference even for the schools that had already “been on board,” in the sense that they had adapted innovative teaching methods prior to the reform. Processes taking place within an isolated school are affected by the system’s general educational climate and by regulations concerning assessment. It may well be that, like in the case of this particular teacher, the reform’s changes to the overall policy, climate, and regulations (especially those having to do with assessment) supported many additional teachers in using the innovative pedagogies they had applied all along at a higher level and/or quality.

On the other hand, a rather large group of teachers reports a lack of change following the reform, stating that it did not produce any progress toward more innovative pedagogies. Examples of this stance are obvious in the following quotations (each quotation in the next section represents a different teacher):

  • [The reform] is not serious enough or strong enough to amaze me or make me change direction. We just get through it to get along. The reform does not cross the classroom’s door. The dogs bark, but the caravan keeps going… I am not against alternative assessment, but I don’t like the way it’s being done. It’s being dumped on us from above!!!

  • ------

  • Q: What took place in your school following the alternative assessment reform?

  • A: I don’t think any fundamental changes were made. We decided that we would do the alternative assessment at the beginning of the year and then continue teaching for the matriculation exam [just like we did before].

  • ------

  • Q: Were any new teaching methods added to your pedagogical “tool-kit” following the reform?

  • A: I don’t think so… Classroom teaching stayed more or less the same…

  • ------

  • A: [The reform] did not affect me in any deep way. Maybe it gave me a little more room to maneuver.

  • ------

  • They dumped it on us again. But after a while we saw that, all in all, at least with us in history, it didn’t make such a big difference on how we actually teach, or are told to teach. They made a change in how we need to distribute the materials between 10th and 12th grade so that now we do not teach all of it in the 12th grade. In practical terms, how we teach is pretty much the same.

Detailed Pedagogical Planning

In schools where the reform worked well, especially when teachers had already had the pedagogical knowledge required to teach for meaningful learning, teachers provided some fine examples of detailed pedagogical planning. Such examples demonstrate what such planning actually involves. In response to the question: “Were you involved in writing the program? If so, describe the process,” a Hebrew Bible teacher, who also happened to be the subject coordinator at her school, stated the following:

Not only was I involved in writing the program, but I actually wrote it together with the other Hebrew Bible teachers on my team. Planning the program started out as raising various ideas regarding what we want our students to do in order to fulfill their obligation for the 30% alternative assessment, according to the instructions of the National Subject Superintendent. At the next stage, we searched the web, looking at ideas other schools had uploaded, so it was possible to “sneak a peek” and get ideas about the assessment we ought to construct, the scope of each project, the rubrics, and so on. At the same time, we asked ourselves what objectives did we want to attain by using the alternative assessment? In what grades will it work best? Should the entire cohort get the same alternative assessment, or should underachieving classes, for example, get a different task than high-achieving classes? And so on. The next stage was selecting the topic to focus on and developing it, in other words – building a blueprint for our work. Another stage was finding enrichment materials for the topic we selected. The next-to-last stage was writing the assessment assignment with guiding questions, and the final one was constructing the rubrics.

This excerpt describes the meticulous planning needed to introduce changes in substantive pedagogy. The description pertains to the alternative assessment reform in one school subject, in one particular school in one particular grade level. Thus, the citation demonstrates the type of issues and the level of detail that teachers must engage with while working on the improvement of substantive pedagogy. There are no shortcuts. It is obvious that, without paying careful attention to all the practical components the teacher mentioned, the implementation of the alternative assessment reform could not possibly work.

A teacher who teaches civics and history makes another interesting comment on the importance of detailed pedagogical planning. She highlights her main points by contrasting the reforms that took place in both subjects. In civics a similar reform took place several years earlier (see Chap. 6). According to this teacher, the civics reform consisted of an orderly, system-wide pedagogical planning process, followed by systematic implementation of a civics performance assessment task. The teacher reports that in history, there was no similar planning. The teachers at the school were left to fend for themselves, and no attention was paid to the details of the change on the level of substantive pedagogy. The teacher complains that, in history, teachers were given too much freedom regarding the details of the process, because the leaders of the change at the Ministry of Education had no idea how to direct it. She is especially critical of the lack of planning of the details of the rubrics, which inform the entire process of learning and assessment:

The fact that there was no rubrics… They said: “We’ll let you do what you want.” What – are you stupid or something?! If you let people do what they want, they won’t do anything, they’ll think small. I’m not saying you should reduce the scope of [teachers’] thinking, but there has to be a limit… I come back to the comparison with civics, because in civics all this was well organized. In civics, they informed us already at the beginning of the year of the days we had to set aside for the external evaluation, and these days were registered on the test calendar. And we received specific instructions for the external evaluation, based on the desire that there will be a framework and structure that must be maintained. This is all true of civics, but not of the history [Meaningful Learning] reform. So that’s the problem [with history]. Also, it’s not clear what the goal is; it’s like endlessly feeling your way in the dark where you have to find your own path. In history there is no ground you can lean on; you can drown. You need a framework and a structure in order to get to the wide-open spaces. Therefore, in history I’m not sure what’s going to happen… It’s a nightmare. My mentor told me: “What?! They, like, gave you freedom, and you’re not taking it?!” But it doesn’t work that way. Let me go back to the civics performance assessment, because it was the model for the entire Meaningful Learning reform. When we started doing the performance assessment, there was a rubrics, there was a plan. We worked according to the rubrics, otherwise we would have gotten lost… In history, they had no clue. The Ministry of Education has no clue. The only thing they know how to do is to [tell you to] fill out forms.

This teacher, who is experienced enough to be able to compare two reforms, clearly expresses her preference not to be granted unlimited freedom, which she calls “a nightmare,” but rather to receive an orderly work plan and clear criteria of quality. According to her, in the absence of an organized framework and a clearly articulated direction, people “can drown.” The impression she gives is that she and her colleagues are feeling their way in the dark and are indeed “drowning.” She blames the Ministry in this situation because it imposed the reform without sufficient planning. She does not think they did so for any ideological reason or because they believed this is the proper way to run reforms, but simply because “they had no clue.” She therefore explains the chaos in the implementation process by the fact that the leaders of the reform had no idea where they were going in terms of substantive pedagogy and, consequently, how to support the people who were supposed to implement it.

Does the Meaningful Learning Reform Improve Student Knowledge?

Another interesting issue emerging from the interviews concerns the quality of students’ knowledge following the reform. One of the reform’s stated goals was to deepen students’ knowledge. In effect, it turned out that teachers are concerned that the reform will impair students’ content knowledge. They do not see this concern as a necessary outcome of the reform’s principles, but rather as an outcome of the way it was implemented. They particularly blame the haste of the implementation, which resulted in two problems. One problem, as we saw earlier, was that the new instructions to reduce the scope of the contents taught for the external exam disrupted the sequence of the topics teachers had to teach. This led to a new challenge: creating coherent connections between the various topics left in the truncated curriculum while bridging the gaps and ruptures formed by the deletion of entire sections:

We have to fill many gaps of knowledge. We don’t teach straight sequences. There are information gaps that have to be bridged. In addition, they cut down the number of hours.

Teachers speak of two additional major problems: the lack of systematic plans for how to teach the 30% of the curriculum that was allocated for alternative assessment means and flawed teacher preparation. These two problems caused teachers to report that they are teaching the 30% of the material allocated for the alternative assessment more poorly than in the past:

First of all, I don’t think they prepared the teachers properly for the reform. They said “creative work,” but they didn’t actually fully develop this, and there weren’t clear-enough guidelines on what they want the kids to know. The level of the matriculation exam deteriorated and it became a joke. The 30% in Hebrew bible consists of material that is initially really, really important and really essential in my opinion, but it became a joke. You just fly by the seat of your pants, and it’s because they didn’t develop it fully. What does the Ministry of Education expect? What does “alternative assessment” even mean? Or “creative work”? This wasn’t fully developed. So every teacher did whatever he or she wanted. And it just brought the level down. The teacher preparation wasn’t good enough.

Later on, the same teacher elaborates on the complaint about insufficient PD, both on the part of the Ministry and on the part of her school, and explains that PD is necessary so that students’ knowledge will not deteriorate:

[PD is necessary] so as not to lower the level. I think that, let’s say, in Hebrew bible, at our school, it simply lowered the level. It degraded the stories [i.e. Biblical narratives]. I mean, the whole of Genesis was moved to the 30%. I think that the stories in Genesis are very, very important, and this simply reduced the level. Devalued Genesis. Made it less important. Because there was no PD. I think that if there had been better PD we would have understood in greater depth what the Ministry expects us to do, and it wouldn’t have turned into something so shallow. We would have maintained a high standard… I think that the 30% lowered the level of school learning…

According to this teacher, the major problem in moving sections of the curriculum that were previously taught to prepare students for the external matriculation exam to the unit assessed by alternative methods is that it leads to a deterioration in the quality of teaching. This process took place with regard to sections in the curriculum she considers very important, such as the biblical narratives of Genesis. The problem is not only that these narratives were excised from the mandatory exam contents. Rather, she complains that the outcome, which was supposed to yield “more meaningful learning” of those materials, remained vague and unclear because of the lack of teacher’s PD. As a result, these sections all but disappeared from the curriculum:

[I used to teach] everything at a 100-percent level. You teach everything at a very high level. And now I can tell you that I’m teaching very differently. I focus only on very important things. If it’s less important, I ignore it. I don’t teach everything. And this lowers the level. The focus is only on what’s important [for the test], and my agenda is for the students to score high marks… The program isn’t developed. They just threw us in the water and told us to swim.

In a similar vein, a history teacher complains that narrowing the scope of the material students needed for the external exam undermined students’ learning. There was a reduction of the time devoted to the topics that were no longer assessed by an external exam. Therefore, these topics were taught in less depth. Additional history teachers made similar claims.

Teachers Are Eager for Meaningful Professional Development

It often seems that teachers hold PD programs in disdain, thinking of them as a waste of time. Our interviews would seem to indicate the complete opposite. Due to the profound change process teachers were forced to go through in terms of their teaching methods, those teachers who received PD expressed gratitude and high esteem for the programs they participated in. Some teachers also expressed similar feelings toward PD programs they had participated in prior to the Meaningful Learning Reform. Teachers reported that they feel the PD processes they participated in were helpful because they provided practical tools to manage the requirements of the reform. By contrast, teachers who did not participate in appropriate PD expressed a strong sense of deficiency. Below are several examples of teachers’ description of these conflicting emotions.

One teacher describes her gains from a successful PD program in the following way:

The PD met my needs. It was good. It helped us understand exactly how to teach the material. We were encouraged to ask questions about anything in the new reform that wasn’t clear to us. We were also encouraged to ask about the “how”, that is, about methods teachers can use to teach the content in the spirit of the reform. At the end, it covered everything, because we could ask about anything that wasn’t clear. At the end of the course we went back home with all the answers. It was very good, a very important PD course.

Another teacher who participated in PD programs for geography teachers describes those programs as “outstanding.” Although these programs had started before the reform, she thought they had provided appropriate tools for handling the changes it required. Her remarks illustrate the extent to which she believed that a good PD can contribute to a teacher’s professional capabilities:

…Outstanding. I would make these courses mandatory for all teachers. I told anybody in my school who was willing to listen: “Go take these courses…” Since I began teaching geography, I have made a habit of going to PD programs, because they really help me to advance my professional skills. I think they are excellent…. I think that those programs related to inquiry learning and alternative assessment in high school need to become mandatory.

Later on in the conversation, she explains the importance of verifying that the PD courses are of a high standard. She also expresses her conviction that they are crucial to the success of the reform, emphasizing that PD and support for teachers “in the trenches” are necessary for the reform’s success:

  • Q: Based on your experience, what suggestions can you make for improving the success of the reform in schools?

  • A: …I think that both the National Subject Superintendents and the schools need to pay better attention to instruction and support for teachers during the reform and also during its planning… Not to leave teachers on their own. It would be helpful for turning the reform into something serious and meaningful, rather than… something that is superficial, or improvised. If it will be done properly in schools, whether through an official PD, or through organized meetings with the subject coordinator, or with an instructor, or with the school principal… I think it can turn into something much more meaningful and it would also make life easier for us. Sometimes, we must learn from other people, I mean it’s not like we can come up on our own with an endless supply of creative ideas…

Teachers who did not receive adequate PD point to this fact as the major obstacle keeping them from optimal implementation. For example, one teacher reported that during the preparations for the reform, she did not get any guidance. In practice, she therefore relied only on other teachers and on her limited initial knowledge. When asked what she needed in order to be able to implement the reform in an optimal way, she highlighted the role of PD:

PD, maybe examples of things that are already happening… I do think we need more mentors, uh…from the Ministry, to lead the way. And maybe the school should be required to do certain things in order to make it a vital part of it’s culture, not something that happens on the fly.

As is evident from the quotations below, many teachers who did not receive PD share similar opinions. For example:

  • Q: Based on your experience, what would you suggest for improving the reform’s success in schools?

  • A: Providing useful, clear tools for constructing alternative assessments and for using them. Unfortunately, they did not provide us [with such tools].

  • ------

  • Q: Do you think that PD would have been relevant for you? .

  • A: Very relevant. I missed not having it.

The following quotation is expressed by a teacher who, like several other teachers, also complained of confusion and chaos generated by the reform’s implementation (for more on this, see the end of this chapter). This teacher explains that PD in various forms could have contributed to the success of the reform while preventing the sense of helplessness and chaos teachers had experienced:

  • Q: Do you think that if teachers had been forced to participate in PD there would have been less chaos?

  • A: For sure. For sure. The chaos was the result of lack of knowledge, lack of understanding of the process, lack of knowledge of how to present [the material] to students, how to make the material accessible to them. Sometimes I read teachers’ cries for help that are posted on the website and my heart really aches… especially for the new teachers… It’s very, very problematic. Therefore, it is very important to meet the need for teachers’ PD and learning. It’s a must. From my perspective, what’s needed for success is…mandatory teacher PD.

Chaos at the Outset, Order Later On

Some teachers speak of a trajectory: at the outset, they did not understand the reform and experienced a sense of chaos. Over time, however, following a year or two of experiencing its implementation, things fell into place and became clearer. This happened thanks to PD and to clearer guidelines published by the Ministry and due to teachers’ accumulating practices with various elements of the reform while using common sense. One of the teachers complains in several parts of the conversation that, at the moment she has a feeling of chaos, but she has a vague hope that over time things will improve:

It may be that there will be a change and it will improve. For now, everything seems chaotic, just a total mess.

Another teacher, also complaining of the chaos, says:

I have an idea for improvement: that every single National Subject Superintendent will sit down and think long and hard before deciding what she wants out of this 30% program. What she would like to achieve, and what would be the criteria for success. She should clarify it really, really well. Because in this chaos, each school does what it wants, how it wants, when it wants… It’s really missing the point.

Other teachers also share the sense that initially they experienced a lot of “uncertainty,” “chaos,” and “mess” that were generated from their lack of prior knowledge, coupled with the Ministry’s vague explanations. However, these teachers report that over time the darkness is dissipating. Thanks to experience and with the help of supportive and helpful settings, they now have a better grasp of what is required of them:

  • A: Look, at the beginning… True, there was a great deal of fog… In our school subject, many things were not well defined. For example, we have only a general outline of what we were supposed to be doing. You learn with time…

  • Q: So what happened? How did the situation improve?

  • A: Look… Every school gets PD courses, guidance, there are answers, people are in touch with their National Subject Superintendent, there are listserves, Facebook groups. People communicate. It is not as if they came and threw each one of us [into the water] separately. It just takes time. Over time, people connected with one another, heard, looked around, asked. I think that’s what settled us down.

  • ------

  • Theoretically, there’s a program; we improve it constantly because we have no choice. There is no prior knowledge. There is a difference between planning and practice. Let me be more precise: there is no prior knowledge, but as we move forward we learn and improve. We learn when to move on and when to stop; based on our experiences, we are more prepared [now].

  • ------

  • Again, no. There were no tools. We learned as we went along.

  • ------

  • Let’s just say that it’s been two years. At the beginning there were many questions. I can say that now we are at 85 percent knowledge. We still have questions, but most of the things – we already know.

To conclude this section, I will cite the opinion of a teacher (quoted earlier) who also thinks the present reform is not “fully baked” and that it was imposed on schools before it was fully formed. She believes, however, that this state of affairs is typical of any reform. According to her, if only there will be stability to allow implementation over a sufficiently long period, it will be possible to fix all that needs fixing. She therefore praises the new Education Minister for not “tossing” his predecessor’s program “in the garbage bin,” but electing instead to support it while allowing its further development. Attaining the full development of the reform will—according to this teacher—only occur over time:

A serious problem with this reform is that it is only half -baked. I believe this is true of every reform. It takes years of implementation, and I actually appreciate the fact that the current Minister of Education didn’t toss it in the garbage bin. This system needs stability, but must not be afraid of innovation. I appreciate the fact that he didn’t cancel the program but rather chose to give it time to fix whatever needs fixing.

Meaningful Learning Reform in Chemistry and Biology

The Reform in Biology

In a few school subjects, the Meaningful Learning Reform encountered long-standing processes of implementing progressive pedagogies. Teachers in these school subjects had for years been working to implement processes of meaningful learning similar, both in objectives and in methodologies to the new reform. The “70/30 Reform” regulations were issued to one and all, without any distinctions among school subjects. It is therefore interesting to ask what happened when these sweeping regulations encountered teaching and learning methods in school subjects that were already “on board” with the Ministry’s new general policy. In this section, I will address this question by taking a closer look at two of the sciences—biology and chemistry.

Biology was the first subject in Israel to implement inquiry-based learning and assessment across the whole school system. As early as the 1970s, Pinchas Tamir and his colleagues led a system-wide pedagogical change in the teaching of biology by “importing” from the United States the Biological Science Curriculum Studies (BSCS), whose core principle is inquiry-based biology learning (Tamir, 2006). To adapt the new teaching methods to appropriate means of assessment, Tamir and his colleagues implemented two important innovations in the biology matriculation exam, decades ahead of their time. The new exam that they had generated included inquiry and critical thinking questions as part of the written exam (60% of the final grade), a practical exam in a research lab (20% of the final grade), and an inquiry project completed either by each individual student or by groups of students (20% of the final grade). Over the years, the inquiry project underwent several modifications; early on, it was called “Ecology Paper” and “Biotop,” and later it was known as “Bio-Knowledge” or “Bio-inquiry.” The model of the Israeli matriculation exam in biology was one of the first in the world to include a system-wide alternative form of qualitative assessment. It was viewed as a successful model, later becoming an example for developments of similar models both in Israel and in other countries. On a more local note, the ideas about instruction, assessment, and methods of implementation first generated in biology inspired the development and implementation processes applied to all school subjects in the context of the 2006–2009 program—“Pedagogical Horizon: Education for thinking” (Zohar, 2013a, b).

Although biology teaching went through various transformations, the change, first implemented about 50 years ago, proved to be remarkably sustainable. Important aspects of the process were retained in schools for decades (Tamir, 2006; Zohar & Schwartzer, 2005). When all school subjects transitioned to alternative assessments within the implementation of the 30/70 component of the Meaningful Learning Reform, one might have expected a process of consultation and lesson learning from biology. After all, biology already had several decades of experience with qualitative alternative assessment, leading to the accumulation of considerable expertise. Unfortunately, this did not happen. Moreover, the rigidity of the Ministry in applying a “one size fit all” policy actually undermined the biology inquiry learning and assessment processes. Since this case is a good illustration for how system-wide implementation processes focusing on administration and blind bureaucracy can easily injure processes of essential pedagogy, I will describe this case in some detail.

As noted, the new regulations issued by the Israeli Ministry of Education as part of the “70/30 Reform” applied a single model to all school subjects, without exceptions. The regulations did not allow any deviations, even when common sense suggested a different course of action due to unique pedagogical circumstances created by the history of specific school subjects. Because biology education had, in effect, already implemented a significant portion of the reform’s stated objectives, The Ministry could have used the resources created in biology as a model for implementing meaningful learning and alternative teaching and assessment methods. The Ministry, however, did not let that happen. Instead, the rigid 70/30 regulations imposed on all school subjects inflicted a profound sense of regression on biology leaders and teachers.

An individual who held a senior leadership position in biology education when the reform’s implementation was just getting under way shared with me, in an informal conversation, details of the process that are generally hidden from the public’s eye. As noted, in the most advanced, five-unit biology program,Footnote 6 two units had for decades used qualitative alternative assessment methods. Neither of these units, however, met the precise 30/70 regulations, particularly the regulations concerning the balance between school-based (“internal”) assessments and external assessments (i.e., assessments that are not entirely school-based).

Over the years, the state supervised and operated the practical lab exam. Operating this exam has been a huge task because a lab exam requires a complicated infrastructure that includes a team of experts working together to write a new lab exam every year. Designing the exam is difficult because it requires to come up with a lab experiment that is complex enough for asking deep questions in the exam, yet simple enough so that every student can conduct it without mishaps and get results within the exam’s time frame. In addition, the support infrastructure must include a central lab that can provide all schools in the country with the materials and equipment needed for the lab exam. For decades, a central institution operating under the supervision of the Ministry and financed by it provided the pedagogical and technical support needed for the lab exam.

At the beginning, the Ministry’s regulations regarding the 70/30 reform demanded that the lab exam become the school’s internal alternative assessment needed to fulfill the “30%” requirements. However, the demand to turn the lab exam into an internal school-based assessment completely ignored the complexity inherent in the practice of managing its infrastructure. It is unrealistic that each school will prepare its own lab exam every year while expecting that the exam will still be of an acceptable standard. In addition, preparing students for the lab exam requires a significant financial investment of the school, because it must cover the budget for a fully equipped laboratory and the cost of a lab assistant who can help teachers prepare the materials and equipment for students’ experiments. School principals are unlikely to make this financial investment if the lab exam will become an internal affair of the school, unmonitored by the Ministry.

Given all of the above, it was obvious to the leaders of biology at the Ministry of Education that, if the lab exam became an internal “school-based” affair, its quality would rapidly deteriorate. Within a few short years, it would probably disappear altogether. The biology education leaders therefore opposed the Ministry’s management and demanded that the lab exam remain an external exam. At the end of the day, following a ferocious battle, biology received a special permission to keep holding two external exams—the written paper and pencil exam and the lab exam. Consequently, the lab exam was in practice included in the “70%” portion of the material defined as mandatory. Unfortunately, this was not the end of the story.

The biology inquiry project (the Bio-Inquiry) turned into the 30% of the material students would be tested on by means of school-based assessment. To adjust the curriculum to this constraint, the biology leading team was forced to propose a curriculum that would match the Ministry’s demands in terms of the 70/30 split. To meet the requirements, they proposed a truncated curriculum that, although meeting all the formal demands, was far inferior to the previous curriculum. The Ministry’s senior biology leader with whom I spoke describes the process as follows:

I’m in shock. We had this intricate puzzle that worked well. And now it became necessary to take it apart and put it together again… [The result is] a bad, bad, bad curriculum. It has no internal logic and coherence. It’s the best we could achieve under the circumstances, but a step backwards compared what we had.

In addition to the damages to the whole biology curriculum, considerable damage was inflicted to the magnificent operation of inquiry-based learning whose model was meticulously developed in the course of several decades. The model consisted of a delicate balance between school-based assessment and external regulation, including an oral exam, during which external examiners came to the school and spoke with every student about his/her inquiry project. This regulation supervised the quality of the school-based internal assessment, monitoring its validity and reliability. As noted earlier, the reform required that the inquiry project would become the 30% of the biology school-based assessment, thereby disrupting the balance between school autonomy and external regulation. It also led to the concern that, under the new regulations, school principals would pay less attention to students’ inquiry projects. Altogether, the new regulations inflicted considerable damage to the biology school-based inquiry project that had in the past been the pinnacle of the five-unit biology program:

…They did not construct any regulation mechanism… Initially, they wanted the lab exam to be internal… Obviously, principals won’t maintain the lab if [the exam] isn’t external… Over time the lab would clearly suffer… It’s like what happened in chemistry… [In chemistry] they threw away the lab [when it became internal]. … Because principals enjoy autonomy… Instead of having the inquiry project be the pinnacle of learning [they would get rid of it]. It will be interesting to see where Bio-Inquiry is headed in the next few years if there’s no external supervision… The oral exam was crucial. Now they are going to cancel it… There’s no point… The current change damaged biology more than any other school discipline.

In sum, these quotations indicate that the system did not draw on the mass of knowledge that had for decades accumulated in biology teaching. Moreover, blind regulations treated all school subjects in an identical way, ignoring their unique histories. The regulations disrupted the magnificent pedagogical accomplishments that had been achieved in biology education during several decades. Because of the reform, meaningful learning in biology regressed rather than progressed. This account also demonstrates what can happen to uniform “top-down” instructions when they encounter the contextualized intricacy of details in the field, stressing the necessity of a wide degree of autonomy for the practitioners who are working in the field.

The Reform in Chemistry

The case of the reform in the most advanced, five-unit chemistry program is also particularly instructive. Like in biology, means to support deep learning (e.g., emphasizing relevance to students’ everyday life and evaluation by alternative assessment) were already embedded in chemistry education before the Meaningful Learning Reform. Practical “hands-on” labs requiring comprehensive scientific inquiry skills were integrated into the teaching of the theoretical parts of the curriculum. Accordingly, students (usually working in small groups) engaged with all the stages of scientific inquiry: prep work, formulating research questions, raising hypotheses, defining variables, planning experiments, conducting them, recording and analyzing the results, and drawing conclusions. Following each lab, students had to write lab reports. Using a detailed rubrics provided by the Ministry, teachers graded the lab reports, providing both a quantitative score and detailed qualitative feedback that supported students’ ongoing learning. The rubrics determined the teaching objectives and signaled to teachers what is considered important. The rubrics also enabled students to evaluate themselves and their peers and to know what they are expected to learn, what they were doing right, and where they needed to improve. In the last year of high school (grade 12), all lab reports were compiled into a portfolio on which students were tested and assessed orally by an external examiner.

The lab module was not mandatory, but it became a widespread assessment method, and many schools opted to include it as part of the matriculation exam in chemistry. Based on data from the National Subject Superintendents’ publications, it is clear that the percentage of students examined on the lab module was steadily increasing (National Subject Superintendent for Chemistry Publication, 2012–2013). Furthermore, in 2006, the Ministry introduced a new chemistry curriculum, designed to update chemistry education by adapting it to changes that had taken place in chemistry in the previous 20 years (National Subject Superintendent for Chemistry Circular, 2006–2007, 2009–2010). The new curriculum emphasized the relevance of chemistry to everyday life and its contribution to various technological applications as well as to additional fields of knowledge. The aim was to make chemical knowledge more accessible for students, in order to meet the growing demand to increase public understanding and involvement in issues pertaining to ecological and medical decision-making.

In order to meet these goals, there was a need to cut considerable amount of material from the chemistry curriculum. Entire basic chapters, such as organic chemistry, were removed, while new chapters addressing current and relevant issues, such as the food chemistry, were added. The remaining topics were made more meaningful to students by drawing connections to everyday life, by adding literacy assignments and by developing digital activities (Avargil et al., 2013; Barnea et al., 2010). For example, oxidation-reduction reactions and acid-base reactions were taught in the context of reactions in the human body. Studying about biological molecules, such as fats, carbohydrates, and proteins, was conducted through explicit discussions of food and pharmaceutical development. Since the school year 2014–2015, when the “70/30 Reform” was made mandatory, the inquiry lab exam was also made mandatory and was counted under the 70% part of the curriculum assessed by “external examination” (National Subject Superintendent for Chemistry Circular, 2014–2015).

In order to understand how chemistry teachers perceive the “70/30 Reform,” and to look at their point of view regarding the changes that took place in their teaching practice following the reform’s initial implementation stages, 12 chemistry teachers were interviewed. These teachers (two men and ten women) teach in various Israeli high schools and had prepared their students for the matriculation exam for two consecutive years according the to 70/30 model. All 12 teachers are active chemistry teachers who had begun to prepare students for the matriculation exam before the Meaningful Learning Reform. Their teaching seniority ranged from 3 to 30 years (\( \overline{\mathrm{X}} \) = 21.75, S.D. = 7.79). They have advanced academic background (five teachers hold PhDs/post-docs in science, seven have an MA/MSc degree in science, science education, or curriculum assessment and planning). The 12 teachers work in different geographical areas in non-selective schools serving students from a wide range of backgrounds.

The interviews consisted of 16 questions probing teachers’ views of how the reform affected the depth and scope of students’ knowledge of chemistry. The most interesting finding was that teachers’ responses reflected full consensus: all 12 teachers unanimously agreed that the reform does not promote the development of students’ deep and extensive knowledge. Teachers supported this opinion with a variety of explanations.

Most teachers feel that the reform was less relevant for chemistry than it was for other subjects, because alternative assessment had already existed in the chemistry curriculum before the reform. In expressing this view, teachers refer to the lab inquiry module, which was similar to the reform in terms of the skills and capabilities it aimed to foster: teamwork, independent learning, searching for information, formulating questions, processing data, drawing conclusions, etc. In the original inquiry module in chemistry, students’ learning was evaluated during the 3 years of high school, and the lab reports of all the experiments were collated into a portfolio. The chemistry teachers therefore explain that the Meaningful Learning Reform tried to implement something that had already been implemented in chemistry in most schools before the reform:

  • By the way, I think that meaningful learning existed in chemistry all along, and the tools for alternative assessment – they had also been there for years. Therefore, from the perspective of our school subject, the Meaningful Learning Reform is a little less relevant.

  • ------

  • I know that, in other school subjects, the reform is more relevant. Like, it makes a bigger difference to them. In chemistry, we had the whole inquiry thing, it was already there […]…. I really like the inquiry module, I think it’s really well-done. Now they divided it in a way that’s really complicated. So that, like, in chemistry, it didn’t make such a difference, because… Really, the reform aimed at making other subjects be more like chemistry.

  • ------

  • Look, first of all, in chemistry, an inquiry module had always been there, for many years, long before the 70/30 and the school- based assessment reform.

  • ------

  • In chemistry, we don’t have that many changes because we have the lab. And the lab is already considered an alternative assessment. That’s how it was and that’s how it’s going to stay.

  • ------

  • Contrary to what people like to say, I think we did meaningful teaching also before [the reform].

  • ------

  • In chemistry, not too much [had changed], because in any case, for many years, long before the reform, we got into the inquiry lab thing. […] We went into that program by choice. We came to believe that we needed experiments more than theoretical learning. It was a type of alternative assessment, because the evaluation was based on experiments… We had PD for the inquiry module, and we have been deep into this thing for a long, long time. We moved into the alternative assessment long before it became mandatory. So, in chemistry, there is no dramatic change.

According to the chemistry teachers who participated in the interviews, it seems that the reform brought nothing new to chemistry education. Moreover, the next excerpts show that these teachers complain that the reform did not take into account the teaching and assessment methods meticulously implemented in chemistry education long before the onset of the reform and which they believe had been highly successful. Consequently, they believe that in the case of chemistry education, the implementation of the reform actually caused harm. Some of the teachers report that, instead of adding something of value, the new inquiry module impaired the valuable learning that had been taking place in chemistry for several years. A few teachers view some of the experiments suggested in the new inquiry module as meaningless compared to the experiments they conducted in the past and as irrelevant to the material in the theoretical part of the curriculum. They also complain about the new regulation requiring to prepare students to take the entire written matriculation exam in a single year (rather than to spread the written exam out over 2 years). The argument was that the new regulations have a negative impact on the inquiry module, in preventing deep discussions about the implications of the lab experiments beyond what is necessary for preparing students for the test:

  • Once, before the reform, when I had time, I would do inquiry on all sorts of things, even on topics unrelated to the curriculum. I stopped. I am limited in time. Now inquiry learning in my class is only on topics we are studying anyway [to prepare students for the test].

  • When an experiment is silly and is not connected to the material, like some of the experiments suggested in the new inquiry module… It’s an experiment with no meaning.

In addition, teachers state that the removal of 30% of the contents from the mandatory curriculum considerably impaired students’ knowledge. Some view the 30% of the curriculum shifted to school-based assessment as material that was doomed to “be lost” because, in their view, once there is no external exam, teachers no longer teach it properly:

  • They [the students] will suffer. When they’ll want to go to university, they won’t have enough knowledge…. There are topics they haven’t ever heard of, such as inorganic compounds. I remember studying that in high school. Now it’s not there. How can you not even have heard of them? This is going to affect their academic studies later on.

  • ------

  • Yes, the whole physical chemistry piece, which became part of the 30% school-based assessment. I am very sorry that it’s going to be lost. It’s a pity.

  • ------

  • Q: In your opinion, how does the reform affect the depth of students’ knowledge? Do you think they are benefiting from the reform in this sense?

  • A: I don’t think so. Because… It’s as if, supposedly, they’re learning in a different way… So, in terms of learning skills the reform clearly meets that goal. But if we’re talking about contents… at the end of the day they reduced the amount of contents student must master at the level of the matriculation exam… And when I look at chemistry, I know that these students – the graduates of the reform – will get to university with a lower level of knowledge in some of the topics.

  • ------

  • So I think that to begin with, our program was a good program. And the fact that now, the material students are supposed to master for the matriculation exam has been reduced – it’s a shame. The bottom line is students who know less chemistry than the ones studying before the reform… So really, like, we compromised, and the kids we’re graduating now will know less; we gained a few more skills, a bit more variety in teaching methods. But the benefit, in my opinion, does not compensate for the loss in student knowledge.

It is important to note that teachers believe the reform caused damage not only to the scope of students’ knowledge, but also to its depth:

  • I really try to do things in depth, but I teach in less depth than I used to, because I’m limited by time […] There is no profound learning. On the contrary – it’s less profound!

  • ------

  • The scope of the assignments, the time they require – it’s not for deep learning. Who has the time to teach in depth material that won’t be on the matriculation exam [i.e. the external exam] while trying to prepare students for the test?

  • ------

  • On the contrary [i.e. there is no deep learning], the reform only manages to undermine it, because it presents students with such a heavy load.

Because students’ inquiry learning takes place after they had completed the written matriculation exam, most teachers feel that students invest less time in their studies and are less committed to enriching their knowledge both emotionally and intellectually. After the pressure of the external exam is over, students feel there is no need to invest in their inquiry projects as much as they did before the reform:

From my experience this year with the 12th grade – they don’t have the matriculation exam, because they took it last year… – I feel that both I, as the teacher, and them as students- are less stressed and also less prepared. We are free of the pressure from the matriculation exam, so we invest less.

Conclusion and Discussion

The data described in this chapter are based on convenience sampling. I chose these particular participants because they were easily accessible to M.A. students at the Hebrew University: teachers from schools where the M.A. students themselves were teaching, or teachers they knew through personal connections. As such, it is reasonable to assume that the sample is not representative of all Israeli teachers who teach in the upper secondary school. Rather, their pedagogical knowledge probably represents a higher level of the relevant knowledge compared to the pedagogical knowledge of a representative sample of all teachers in the Israeli school system. Therefore, I saw no point in calculating the frequency of the various positions teachers expressed. Nonetheless, these interviews consist of a unique and fascinating collection of authentic testimonies regarding the implementation of the Meaningful Learning Reform 2 years after its kickoff.

One of the main conclusions drawn from the first group of conversations (n = 34) concerns the large variance among teachers and schools in terms of the reform’s implementation. The data show that, in fact, the implementation consisted of a patchwork of diverse conditions. It seems that, in some schools, the reform facilitated a considerable improvement in teaching and learning methods and in teachers’ self- efficacy. On the other hand, there were schools where—based on the participants’ statements—the reform caused chaos and a deterioration in the quality of teaching and learning. Teachers in these schools expressed frustration, a sense of loss of autonomy, and a sense of a blow to their professional capabilities. It seems that many of the schools where the reform led to improvements had already developed knowledge resources and relevant working patterns before its onset. In other words, according to the teachers, it is clear that the reform generated a positive change in schools that had started to change in similar directions before the reform. These schools started working several years ago on inquiry-based and/or project-based learning and/or on implementing diverse assessment methods such as student portfolios. These schools had also made a considerable investment in PD. One might say that in these cases, the systemic reform, imposed on the schools in a top-down direction, encountered the “islands” of pedagogical innovations and excellence already in the system, some of which developed in schools in a bottom-up direction. In these schools, the reform was an enabling catalyst for processes that had begun earlier: it removed bureaucratic barriers that had previously prevented progress, supporting and empowering ongoing pedagogical change processes. The teachers’ descriptions of the successful change processes that have been taking place in their schools for several years provide authentic testimony to the detailed planning and meticulous implementation that are necessary for changing substantive pedagogy.

The cases in which the systemic reform imposed from above met schools and teachers lacking the appropriate knowledge resources and working patterns seemed to fall into two groups. Given time, one group managed to catch up and develop appropriate working methods, whether thanks to internal, school-based sources of knowledge or thanks to external assistance (PD programs, the National Subject Supervisor, or school-based support). The teachers in the second group were lost. The reform forced them to abandon their traditional, familiar practices, but they had not yet developed new ones that would be more relevant to the new policy. According to reports by teachers in this second group, the reform caused a deterioration in the quality of teaching and learning. These findings can explain the absence of a strong impact of the reform revealed in the study conducted by the National Authority for Measurement and Evaluation in Education (2016): positive effects of the reform in some schools and negative effects in others may have cancelled each other out to create a zero effect.

We need to remember that this chapter addresses the effects of the reform in the upper high school grades, where the study of the National Authority for Measurement and Evaluation in Education (2016) found less-encouraging findings than in other age brackets.Footnote 7 According to these findings, one would expect interviews with elementary and middle school teachers to reveal more positive results. Yet, despite the methodological limitations of the present study, our findings are similar to the findings regarding parallel issues in the National Authority for Measurement and Evaluation in Education study (2016). Both sources reveal a gap between the real and the ideal in terms of the most important resource for the success of deep changes in substantive pedagogy—teachers’ PD, which is a crucial element in the success of reforms addressing substantive pedagogy. Both sources indicate that many teachers still lack sufficient tools to implement the reform. They also indicate that teachers are avid for PD, more tools, and more school-based support and that the practical manner of the reform’s implementation was unclear to teaching teams in many schools. Both sources also point to the need to improve the training of the reform’s leaders. Finally, both sources show that, in terms of the quality of students’ knowledge, reduced quantity of contents did not make way for better quality of knowledge.

These findings raise two concerns. One is that the reform will exacerbate the educational gaps already inherent between schools. The schools with pedagogical excellence and knowledgeable teachers will continue to improve, while schools lacking pedagogic excellence will continue to deteriorate. This is in blatant contradiction to the stated policy of the Ministry, highlighting the need to close gaps. The other concern is about students’ depth of knowledge. One of the stated goals of the reform was to facilitate deeper knowledge. The teachers cited in this chapter say however, that, on more than one occasion, the implementation processes actually resulted in knowledge that was less comprehensive and more superficial than in the past. This finding supports the arguments presented in Chap. 2.

Teachers’ statements show that the first stages of the reform were not well-organized, resulting in disorder that was sometimes very worrisome and described as “chaos.” However, some of the teachers remarked that, with time, the disorder was resolved. This finding calls for a critical examination of this implementation method, which was not incidental. Informal conversations with senior Ministry officials, including the former Minister himself, made it clear that, already at the beginning of the implementation process, they were afraid that because of political instability, they would only be in office for a short term. Therefore, they (rightfully) predicted that they might not have enough time to set up the pedagogical infrastructure necessary for the reform in a systematic way. Nonetheless, they made the conscious decision to prefer a non-systematic introduction of the reform, to the alternative of taking a few years to plan and prepare for an orderly implementation process. The downside of a slower pace is the risk that nothing will be accomplished before the political situation changes, bringing in another new Minister of Education and another new reform. Some of the quotations in this chapter show that, in some places, the decision to work quickly worked. With time, internal, school-based resources, as well as external ones (such as PD, clarifications from the National Subject Superintendents, or Facebook support groups), helped dispel the fog. In other places, the sense of disorder resulted in ongoing dissatisfaction. It seems to me that, at this point in time, there is still not enough data to determine whether one can rely on this implementation method as tried and tested. It is necessary to wait and see what would be the effects the reform over the next few years and collect systematic data from organized samplings. One factor that may tilt the scales is the extent of investment in PD in the near future, which could help implement new teaching and learning methods in schools that still lack appropriate human capital and knowledge resources. Such schools have no way of making progress without systematic and extended PD. One possible implication of these findings is that a way to counter the ever-growing gaps between schools due to the reform might be to identify the schools lacking the appropriate knowledge resources and to construct for them a special strategic program for developing the human capital and the knowledge they sorely lack.

Another issue relates to the pattern of the uniform, inflexible implementation demanded across the board, in all school subjects, without considering processes that had already taken place over several years, creating solid routines for promoting meaningful learning. In this context, one should in particular mention the examples of biology and chemistry. The lack of consideration for past processes that took place in these subjects prior to the reform led to two negative consequences. First, the Ministry missed the opportunity to enjoy the benefits of the knowledge resources accumulated in these school subjects over the years that could have helped with the implementation in other school subjects. Second, in school subjects like chemistry and biology, in which solid structures and methods had been constructed over the course of many years, the implementation of the reform actually undermined the fulfillment of its own goal. In fact, the implementation processes destroyed what had already been there without offering an adequate alternative. This insensitivity to the efforts teachers and other educators in biology and chemistry made over many years was frustrating, creating a feeling of going backward instead of forward. In this context, one could propose to those involved in implementing pedagogical changes to adopt the Hippocratic Oath: first, do no harm. To extend this analogy, the findings would seem to indicate that educators about to impose a change should look at the schools in which they intend to work and identify enclaves or places where the goals that the reform aims to promote had already been implemented. Considerations of efficiency and of the need to respect practitioners’ previous efforts should lead decision-makers to think about what they can learn from practitioners about advancing the goals of their reform and about how they can support practitioners in preserving and even enhancing prior practices that are aligned with the goal of the reform. Instead of taking a step forward and another step back, such a line of thought and action would help the system stride forward.