A Convention on Issues in Traning staff for Jewish Education

Many institutes, including the Jewish Agency and its affiliated organizations, are active in training and developing staff for Jewish Education. In most cases, program managers and instructor teams face the same philosophical, planning and educational issues:

• Theory and practice
  
• Dealing with subject matter, texts and interpretations
  
• Professional ethics and training
  
• Policy studies
  
• Philosophy and/or psychology
  
• Securing training resources
  
• The pedagogy of professional training
  
• etc.

The Department for Jewish Zionist Education in the JAFI is planning a conference to explore some of the issues outlined above and bring together training practitioners who are interested in sharing their experiences, findings and achievements in the field. This conference offers an opportunity to follow the efforts made by the various organizations, define the field, advance research and practice, and set the stage for a higher degree of professional cooperation.

The conference will take place at the Kiryat Moriah campus on:

The program will include lectures and workshops, in which participants will be invited to share the rationale of their work in the field, raise theoretical questions and introduce professional tools for:

• Training and developing management
• Training teachers' instructors
• Training public Jewish leadership
• Training senior educators
• Training "Matnas" directors
• Training instructors
• Training travel guides
• Training pre-school teachers, etc.

The conference is open to JAFI Department staff, training practitioners in universities and other institutes both in Israel and abroad.

In conjunction with a university publication house, we plan to publish a collection of the best articles presented at the conference. We hope that the conference and the subsequesnt publication will help bring together professionals in the field and further the thinking on training and developing in Jewish education.