Teacher-Scholars: A Partnership for the Advancement of Science Teaching in Israeli Schools
The performance of Israeli school children in international assessment tests in science and mathematics has been showing steady decline since the early 1970s. The sharpest drop in scores has occurred since the year 2000. In parallel to this decline, the Hebrew University, while excelling at producing outstanding doctoral science graduates, fears that their potential is wasted once they leave the ivory towers.
The Teacher-Scholars Program is an out-of-the-box plan to enable PhD Science graduates to truly contribute to high school science teaching in the city of Jerusalem while simultaneously maintaining their connection to the research community at the University. A pilot was started a few years ago together with the Jerusalem Municipality and the Trump foundation, first with the Teacher-Scholar who pioneered the project in Physics, Dr. Orit Gefen, and then increasing each year. Today (2017), the pilot has 10 Teacher-Scholars in Jerusalem schools teaching Physics, Chemistry, Biology and Mathematics.