Why CASJE?

I always wanted to keep one foot in the world of academics and another in the world of practice. I see myself as a scholar-practitioner and seek out opportunities to engage my own research interests as well as be a consumer of educational research. I jumped at the invitation to co-chair one of CASJE’s first expert panels on Israel education and have continued my engagement with CASJE since that time.

CASJE can play an essential role in enriching the entire field of Jewish education by bringing together practitioners, funders, and researchers around applied research and a more focused research agenda. My involvement in CASJE has enriched my own educational practice, influenced my school, and led me to new meaningful and fruitful relationships.

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Rabbi Mitchel Malkus has served as Head of School at the Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School of Greater Washington, D.C. since August 2013. Previously he was Head of School of the Rabbi Jacob Pressman Academy of Temple Beth Am in Los Angeles, CA for twelve years. Rabbi Malkus also served as Instructor of Jewish Education at the Wm. Davidson Graduate School, and was on the faculty of the Solomon Schechter High School of New York. Rabbi Malkus was awarded the first Ed. D. from the Wm. Davidson Graduate School of Jewish Education at the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS), where he also completed Rabbinic Ordination and an M.A. in Judaic Studies. Rabbi Malkus writes extensively on curriculum, instruction, and educational leadership. Rabbi Malkus is an advisory board member of the Schechter Day School Network and MERCAZ USA. He was co-chair of the Israel Education Panel and sits on the advisory board of CASJE.

Naturally, this kind of question makes me bristle. My colleagues in medieval Jewish thought, colonial American history, and so forth, are not regularly asked to explain what makes their work relevant. It just needs to be accurate, informative, and eye-opening enough to capture contemporary imaginations and thereby broaden contemporary horizons. But, truth is, when you work in the field of education, the general expectation is that your research needs to have some sort of direct and immediate applicability to educational activities in order to be worthwhile.

Why CASJE? The emphasis on the value of “applied” knowledge implies that the Jewish professional world presently has too many opinions and not enough facts to support them, or too much prescription without description, prognosis without diagnosis, or theory without practice. What knowledge is of most worth, then, is that which is based on solid evidence and can tangibly move the needle now and into the future.

A project I co-direct with Jonathan Krasner, entitled “Jewish Historical Understandings,” builds on the interest in applied research by focusing squarely on what learners actually gain from the study of Jewish history, not just on what they should get out of it, which is where most of the attention has focused to date. The book I just completed with my colleagues Barry Chazan and Robert Chazan, titled Cultures and Contexts of Jewish Education—even with its heavy emphasis on history and philosophy—nonetheless concludes with ideas on where the American Jewish education enterprise can feasibly go from here. My work with the Experiential Education & Jewish Cultural Arts program at George Washington University seeks to understand how people learn Jewishly in non-school settings, and to apply this learning to the preparation of educators for Jewish museums, community centers, and other cultural organizations.

CASJE’s focus on applied studies in Jewish education has helped make me increasingly conscious of for whom and what I toil, how, and to what effect. It’s been an interesting reflective process for me as a scholar of Jewish education, and it’s also taken me in a variety of new, fun, and exciting directions with my work.

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Benjamin M. Jacobs, Visiting Associate Professor of Experiential Education & Jewish Cultural Arts at The George Washington University, has spent most of his professional career preparing social studies teachers and Jewish educators for school and non-school settings, and consulting with various Jewish education agencies on curriculum and teaching. His research focuses on the history and theory of social education, Jewish education, and teacher education on the American scene, and the implications for today’s educational practices. Along with colleagues Barry Chazan and Robert Chazan, he recently published Cultures and Contexts of Jewish Education (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2017), which addresses the historical and contemporary centrality of education in Jewish life, as well as its future prospects. Jacobs earned his Ph.D. from Teachers College, Columbia University, as a Wexner Graduate Fellow. He has served on the social studies faculty at the University of Minnesota and New York University, where he was co-founder and assistant director of the graduate program in Education and Jewish Studies. Earlier in his career, he taught history at the Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School in Rockville, MD. A past chair of the Teaching History SIG of the American Educational Research Association, Jacobs presently serves as chair of the Network for Research in Jewish Education.

Yet it is often the case that intuition can be improved with the addition of reliable, practical, action-oriented research. The myriad anecdotal observations that we make as practitioners can be, and often are, magnified and clarified by academic research. Practitioners and researchers can help one another, informing one another’s work through applied studies.

This is why I joined CASJE. As practitioners, applied research can sometimes provide us with a reassuring “aha” moment, that validates and confirms our work. Applied research can also enable us to be more reflective about our strategic planning, informing policy and institutional direction. Of particular interest was a recent CASJE article on the topic of Hebrew education: “Hebrew Infusion at American Jewish Summer Camps” (by Sarah Bunin Benor). This research pushed our team to think even more critically about our usage of Hebrew at camp, and how we might distinguish between “infusion” and “immersion.” CASJE’s research had a real impact on our educational decisions.

Perhaps most importantly: CASJE constructs a critical space where key stakeholders — including funders, researchers and practitioners — can reflect, debate, and improve the field of Jewish education overall.

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Amy Skopp Cooper is the National Associate Director of the Ramah Camping Movement and the Director of Ramah Nyack, a position she has held for 20 years. Amy holds a BA in Jewish History and Philosophy from Hebrew University and an MA in Jewish Education and Jewish Communal Service from Brandeis University. Amy is a 2011 recipient of the Covenant Award.

Now, the standards and benchmarks in Tanakh and Rabbinics are modeled on the work done in general education in a number of fields, most notably in math. In the field of math education, the NCTM (National Council of Teachers of Mathematics) Standards are the accepted framework for well-designed, coherent, purposeful curricula and pedagogy. They set out what students ought to know and be able to do, at every stage. And they frame the discipline; they are an expression of what mathematics is all about.

But here’s the most important thing about the NCTM Standards: they do not exist in a vacuum. On the contrary, they are embedded within and supported by a robust intellectual ecosystem. That ecosystem consists not just of math teachers, but also thousands of math coaches and consultants and hundreds of professors of math education, and not insignificantly, a healthy relationship with the academic field of mathematics. It includes dozens of math programs and initiatives, and dozens of journals – from the most esoteric and academic, to the most practical and popular. The ecosystem is sustained by robust investments in curriculum development, in research, and in professional development for teachers.

But when it comes to Tanakh or Rabbinics, we have … the standards. No ecosystem to speak of. We have not yet invested in or developed the intellectual infrastructure. This is, to be clear, not a criticism of those standards or of AVI CHAI’s investment, which are valuable initial steps. It is simply a reminder of how far the field of Jewish education has to go.

For me, this example is one answer to the question, “Why CASJE?” The ecosystem that I’m talking about is, at least in part, what CASJE means by the phrase “applied studies” in its name. By leveraging and investing in the talents of scholars and leading practitioners both within Jewish education and beyond, CASJE can be the vehicle to build a stronger and healthier system, one that is more focused on purposes, more attuned to the experiences of learners, more responsive and responsible, more ambitious and aspirational.

And like any ecosystem, it takes a lot of complementary “organisms,” working together – scholars, practitioners in a variety of settings, policy planners, funders. None of us can do this alone.

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Jon Levisohn is the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Chair in Jewish Educational Thought at Brandeis University, where he directs the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education. A philosopher of education, Levisohn's research and writing has focused on three broad areas: (a) the teaching and learning of classical Jewish texts, i.e., Bible and rabbinic literature; (b) the teaching and learning of history; and (c) critically investigating and reconceptualizing the purposes of Jewish education. His recent work includes Turn It and Turn It Again: Studies in the Teaching of Jewish Texts (with Susan P. Fendrick, 2013), The Interpretive Virtues: A Philosophical Enquiry into the Teaching and Learning of Historical Narratives (forthcoming), Advancing the Learning Agenda in Jewish Education (with Jeffrey S. Kress, forthcoming), and Beyond Jewish Identity (with Ari Y. Kelman, forthcoming). An alumnus of the Wexner Graduate Fellowship, he holds degrees from Harvard and Stanford in Philosophy, Religious Studies, and Philosophy of Education. He is active in NRJE, PES, and AJS. He lives in Newton Centre with his wife Emily Beck and their three teenage children, and has been active as a lay leader at JCDS, Boston’s Jewish Community Day School; Congregation Shaarei Tefilah; Minyan Yedid Nefesh; and Encounter.

CASJE was created to help change this. CASJE convenes researchers, Jewish educators and funders and helps them identify pressing questions and problems of mutual concern that can benefit from systematic study. Some of the questions that get raised are neither questions about education or questions that research can answer, so part of the challenge is finding the sweet “researchable” spot that connects these three partner groups.

Foundations that support Jewish education invest in programs and projects that they believe will transform the lives of individual Jews and their communities. While they routinely fund program evaluations, they rarely see the value of supporting related research. CASJE was created to help change this. CAJSE helps funders understand how applied studies in Jewish education can improve the quality of Jewish education by expanding our understanding of why and how transformative programs and projects do (or don’t) work. Such knowledge informs funders and program planners, while building usable knowledge for the field.

Good applied research not only depends on adequate funding, it also requires a supply of well-trained researchers working together to study problems of practical import. In the academic field of Jewish education, few professors have the time or money to pursue a robust program of research and few doctoral students have the opportunity to train with practicing researchers. CASJE addresses these problems by mobilizing support for research, connecting researchers with common interests across institutions, recruiting interested researchers from general education and requiring CASJE-sponsored research to include a mentoring opportunity for doctoral students in Jewish education.

I have offered three answers to the question of why we need a Consortium for Applied Studies in Jewish Education. We created CASJE to help strengthen the rigor and relevance of research in Jewish education, to increase support for such research and to expand the pool of high quality researchers, all in the service of improving the work of Jewish educators and the field of Jewish education.

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Sharon Feiman-Nemser is the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Professor of Jewish Education and a Senior Scholar at the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education at Brandeis University. She holds a joint appointment in the Near Eastern and Judaic Studies Dept. and the Education Program. She started DeLeT (Day School Leadership Through Teaching), currently the Jewish day school concentration in the Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) program, the DeLeT Alumni Network (DAN) and the Legacy Heritage Teacher Leader Fellowship. Previously, she served on the faculties of the University of Chicago and Michigan State University where she directed innovative teacher education programs and conducted research on teacher education and teacher learning. She has written extensively on teacher education, Jewish education and learning to teach.

As I became a leader and started to train other young educators, I began to ask harder questions of my own practice and studied for a master’s degree, sometimes accidentally stumbling across bodies of research that asked the same questions that kept me up at night. How can I help teachers grow? How can I know what my students understand? What makes our school community strong? I began to wonder what sort of guidance I might offer in my own right. How could I join the dialogue? Ultimately, I pursued a doctorate in order to engage in my own educational research and add my voice to the conversation.

I believe in CASJE – and am proud to be serving on the board – because I believe in the vibrant possibilities that arise when practitioners and researchers hear each other asking important questions about Jewish education. When the larger field comes together to engage in conversations that are research-based, practice-driven, and guided by powerfully urgent, intellectually rich questions, the entire field of Jewish education is strengthened.

I believe that CASJE’s commitment to bringing applied research to life and sharing the fruits of that research will help the next generation of educators add their voices to the conversation and to the field of Jewish education – not by accident, but because they are drawn to the vibrant world of discovery and exploration that it offers.

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Lauren Applebaum is a facilitator, consultant, and lecturer on professional learning for educators in Jewish and general education. Formerly the Associate Dean at the Graduate Center for Education at American Jewish University, she currently teaches courses in pedagogy and reflective practice at AJU as well as at Hebrew College. Prior to her work in Los Angeles, Lauren served as Executive Director of Kesher Newton, a nationally-recognized innovative supplementary education program in the Boston area. She is certified as a Critical Friends Coach by the National School Reform Faculty and trained as a professional development leader by the Mandel Teacher Educator Institute. An alumna of the Harvard Graduate School of Education and Williams College, Lauren received her doctorate in education at the Jewish Theological Seminary, where her dissertation explored professional learning and collaborative reflective practice for Israel educators.

And that is when Lee Shulman called and asked if I would lend a hand on CASJE. Of course I jumped at the opportunity. CASJE has the great potential to link researchers interested in Jewish education, in formal and informal settings, with practitioners who work in and are focused on improving these settings. Although I work in the public school system, jumping in on CASJE from its early beginnings has been fantastic. I have the opportunity to share what I know from my work at the Consortium and Spencer, to provide a perspective and lens on education leadership and practice, and to learn about the broad range of work being done in Jewish education. I find it exciting to be involved in an organization focused on improving Jewish education that brings together researchers and practitioners to help frame questions collaboratively. They work together to identify the problems and challenges of practice that research can address, and subsequently generate knowledge that can contribute to various research literatures, practice, and policy settings. I fully believe CASJE will advance Jewish education and further research-practice models for education improvement writ large.

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Paul Goren is the superintendent of schools for the Evanston/Skokie, Illinois (District 65) public elementary schools, a district of 17 schools and centers serving over 7,200 students in an urban/suburban environment. Prior to taking his current position with District 65, Paul was senior vice president for program at the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Empitonal Learning (CASEL). He led a team that evaluated the University of Michigan School of Education. Along with numerous presentations at philanthropic, practitioner, policy, and research forums, Paul also served on the National Academy of Science Task Force on How People Learn. His writing includes commentaries for the National Society for the Study of Education Yearbook on Developing the Teacher Workforce, for Education Week on the relationship of philanthropic foundations to school districts, and for the Peabody Journal on formative assessments. He wrote a commentary for the American Journal of Education on the challenges of using data for improvement. In 2009 he received the Ian Axford Fellowship in public policy to study Maori education policy through a New Zealand Fulbright fellowship. Goren served as Senior VP at the Spencer Foundation, Director of Child and Youth Development at the MacArthur Foundation, and recently was appointed to the board of The New Teacher Center, a national organization focused on teacher development.

In general education, the Education Sciences Reform Act of 2002 established the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) to support high quality research to improve education. Its stated goal is “the transformation of education into an evidence-based field in which decision makers routinely seek out the best available research and data before adopting programs or practices that will affect significant numbers of students” (Institute of Education Sciences), and to “conduct and support scientifically valid research activities” (Education Sciences Reform Act of 2002). Since those early days, IES has expanded with new articulations and emphases on relevance, as well as rigor, and new initiatives such as research partnerships and translating research to practice through published practice guides (Cohen-Vogel et al., 2015).

More recently, an alternative or additional perspective or paradigm of educational research for informing policy and practice is gaining widespread attention amongst researchers and funders, known as Improvement Science or Improvement Research (Bryk et al., 2015; Lewis, 2015; Marshall et al., 2013). Most visible in this arena is the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and its current president, Anthony Bryk. “Improvement science deploys rapid tests of change to guide the development, revision, and continued fine-tuning of new tools, processes, work roles and relationships … The overall goal is to develop the necessary know-how for a reform idea ultimately to spread faster and more effectively” (Bryk et al., 2015, p. 8).

Notably, these two paradigms of research, “traditional educational research” and “improvement science,” both aim to accomplished similar goals—to improve the practice of education at scale. The recent authorization of Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), the new education law signed by President Obama in December, also steers toward “tiers of evidence” to guide states and districts to adopt research based policies and practices.

While not without its pitfalls and challenges, the last decade has seen an exciting surge in funding, focus and energy for applied educational research. The WT Grant Foundation’s ongoing program of research on “improving the use of research evidence” is another example of these developments. Commitments to research use include collaborations and partnerships with educational institutions, policymakers and practitioners. To address the complexities of educational contexts and issues, multiple, mixed methodologies and types of research are valued, all with an eye toward rigor and substance.

I am involved in CASJE to help develop the funding, focus and energy for this type of rigorous applied research specifically in Jewish Education—research that is substantive and impactful, and can make a difference. I believe that CASJE can learn from the experiences in the field of general education to help shape the infrastructure, capacity and vision for research in Jewish education as well.

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Ellen Goldring (Ph.D, University of Chicago) is the Patricia and Rodes Hart Professor and Chair in Vanderbilt University's Department of Leadership, Policy and Organizations in Peabody College. Her research interests focus on the intersection of education policy and school improvement with particular emphasis on education leadership. She is co-author of the Vanderbilt Assessment of Leadership in Education, a 360-degree rating scale of instructional leadership. A fellow of the American Educational Research Association and Past Vice-President of AERA's Division L-Policy and Politics, her research examines leadership practice, and the implementation and effects of interventions such as professional development, coaching, and performance feedback. She was the principal investigator of a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation funded study examining how principals use teacher effectiveness data for human capital decisions (www.principaldatause.org), and has conducted two randomized experiments with school principals, one evaluating the National Institute for School Leadership, the other a study of an intervention involving principal feedback and coaching. Professor Goldring serves on numerous editorial boards, technical panels, and policy forums. She publishes widely on issues of policy and leadership, and is the co-author of seven books.

The current lack of a repository of evidence-based research and evaluation on Jewish education hampers the field. It makes for unnecessary and costly duplication of effort. It creates barriers for establishing commonly accepted curriculum, instruction, and student assessment standards. Most importantly, perhaps, it detracts from efforts to professionalize Jewish education.

CASJE creates the opportunity for Foundations to make a long-term investment building the field of Jewish education with grants bringing researchers and scholar-educators together to examine persistent problems of practice. Long-term, success of CASJE would result in a field which has sources of capital — research, new knowledge, upgraded practice, and renewable cycles of funding — that bespeak a much more highly efficacious funder, researcher, practitioner relationship.

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Charles "Chip" Edelsberg, Ph.D., is the former Executive Director of the Jim Joseph Foundation. Previously, Chip served as Director of Endowments and Vice President for the Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland where he provided leadership for $750 million of grant-making. He was Executive Director of the historic Temple Tifereth Congregation as well. Chip has served on a number of Boards and Advisory Committees in the Jewish community, including the Jewish Funders Network and Jewish Communal Service Association of North America. He also currently serves on the Boards for the Leadership Pipelines Alliance, iCenter, and the Consortium for Applied Studies in Jewish Education (CASJE). Dr. Edelsberg writes widely on such topics as relational philanthropy, effective grantmaking, approaches to building the field of Jewish education, and educational leadership.