Conference Program

In East Jerusalem, schooling is not a neutral public service but a contested political arena where citizenship, legitimacy, and collective belonging are continuously negotiated. This paper argues that the Israeli Ministry of Education operates through a systematic curricular project that minimizes or erases Palestinian narratives from official textbooks and learning materials, producing a regime of “acceptable knowledge” that redefines what can be publicly named, remembered, and debated in the classroom (Pinson, 2020).

Building on scholarship that links attacks on education to broader projects of cultural erasure, the paper situates curricular silencing within the wider logic of undermining education as a pillar of identity and rights. Recent work introducing “Educide” highlights how the dismantling of educational systems whether through physical destruction or systemic obstruction threatens cultural continuity and collective resilience (Iriqat et al., 2025). While my focus is East Jerusalem, the concept helps foreground how education becomes a strategic site where identity is targeted and democratic futures are constrained.

A central contribution of the paper is its stance on teachers. I do not treat educators as the source of silencing, nor do I moralize their pedagogical choices. Instead, I foreground the structural conditions that compel avoidance: policy and curricular ambiguity, surveillance fears, and reputational risk. Within this reality, teachers’ “silence” often functions as an intelligible survival strategy an attempt to protect students, families, and themselves under conditions where controversial public issues can be misread as security threats (Gindi & Erlich Ron, 2019).

Analytically, I propose a “silencing cycle” relevant to East Jerusalem: (1) curricular and policy ambiguity around Palestinian identity, (2) teachers’ perceptions of professional and reputational risk, (3) pedagogical avoidance and self-censorship, and (4) students’ alienation and constrained political agency in their community. I argue that this cycle produces clear democratic costs: shrinking freedom of expression in educational space, diminished recognition of minority narratives as civic knowledge, and erosion of classroom practices central to democratic learning (dialogue, disagreement, justification, and mutual recognition) (Pinson, 2020).

In line with the panel’s emphasis on inclusion, empowerment, and resistance, the paper concludes by outlining principles for identity-affirming democratic pedagogy approaches that can sustain civic participation and collective memory without reproducing an “emergency logic” that renders Palestinian identity inherently suspect (Pacetti et al., 2024).

This contribution presents the development and transnational implementation of the Index for Inclusion and Empowerment (IEE), a participatory tool designed by the Department of Educational Sciences within international cooperation projects in El Salvador, Palestine and Cameroon hold in the past years (2012-2025).
The IEE was conceived not as a prescriptive evaluation instrument, but as a capacity-building tool co-constructed with local stakeholders (including cooperation project staff, teachers, school leaders and policy-makers). Through collaborative workshops, reflective training sessions and community-based research processes, the tool supported schools and communities in identifying barriers to learning and participation and in designing inclusive activities that are really context-sensitive and meaningful for the transformation of the local contexts.
Grounded in inclusive education as a rights-based and systemic approach, and inspired by the Index for Inclusion (Boost and Ainscow, 2002), the IEE promotes empowerment at multiple levels:

• strengthening teachers’ professional agency through reflective practice and peer learning;

• fostering school leadership oriented toward equity and participation;

• enhancing dialogue between schools, communities and institutional actors;

• supporting policy alignment with inclusive principles.

The international cooperation approach adopted moves beyond knowledge transfer logics and instead emphasizes reciprocal learning, contextual adaptation and shared governance mechanisms. Professional development pathways were embedded within local educational ecosystems, ensuring sustainability through co-design, mentoring processes and the creation of local facilitation teams. By presenting methodological frameworks, implementation processes and emerging outcomes across diverse socio-political contexts, the paper discusses how inclusive education can function as a transformative lever for strengthening schools and communities. It also reflects on the role of international academic partnerships in generating situated knowledge, fostering professional development and building long-term institutional capacity.

In contexts of settler colonial domination, where formal institutions are restricted, controlled, or undermined, education often emerges through informal and community-based practices. This paper explores how sumud (steadfastness) operates as a form of informal and non-formal educational practice within rural Palestinian communities in Area C of the occupied West Bank. Under conditions of full Israeli military control, these communities face ongoing threats of forcible displacement, land confiscation, and the systematic erasure of their historical presence and ways of life.

Drawing on ten years of participatory research conducted through the On Our Land project, which focuses on protecting intangible cultural heritage in rural Palestinian communities, the paper examines how intangable cultural heritage practices function as intergenerational forms of knowledge transmission. Practices such as traditional farming, storytelling, land stewardship, communal labour, and local ecological knowledge serve as everyday pedagogies through which communities teach younger generations their relationship to land, identity, and collective resilience (Soliman, et al 2022).

Rather than viewing education solely through formal schooling systems, this research highlights how intangible cultural heritage constitutes a living educational infrastructure that sustains belonging and resistance. These practices cultivate historical consciousness, environmental knowledge, and communal responsibility while reinforcing attachment to land as a central element of Palestinian identity (Soliman et al 2024) .

By situating these practices within the framework of settler colonialism, the paper argues that the preservation and transmission of intangible cultural heritage represent both educational processes and acts of everyday resistance. In this sense, sumud functions not only as a political stance but also as a pedagogical framework through which communities reproduce cultural memory, sustain social cohesion, and resist displacement.

This paper contributes to debates on informal education, decolonial pedagogy, and cultural resilience by demonstrating how community-based heritage practices operate as alternative educational systems in contexts of protracted colonial domination.

The ongoing Israeli military campaign in Gaza has devastated Palestinian educational infrastructure in what scholars and activists have named "scholasticide" — the systematic destruction of an entire people's right and capacity to learn (Dader et al., 2024; Alarabeed, 2025; Desai et al., 2025). In this context, a coalition of students, staff, and faculty activists across various institutions in the US, launched SPOCs for Gaza, a community-oriented online learning initiative designed to create meaningful educational opportunities for students in Gaza and displaced in Egypt (Abodayeh & Miller, 2024). This paper describes the iterative development of two rounds of the program, and reflects on how the intentional building of community across students, volunteers, and educators emerges as a core design principle for meaningful learning — a community in which students in Gaza, alongside volunteers and educators abroad, are active collaborators and decision-makers.

SPOCs (Small Private Online Courses) are specifically adapted for their audience and context (Fox, 2013). In SPOCs for Gaza, all materials are translated into Arabic or simplified, optimized for mobile access, and designed to function asynchronously to accommodate chronic internet instability. Arabic-speaking teaching assistants (TAs) provide instructional support while non-Arabic-speaking TAs simplify the material, adapt the activities and projects to align with students’ context, and facilitate discussions, often on Whatsapp. The program grew from approximately 85 students in its first cohort to approximately 400 enrolled by the second round.

A central finding from the first round was that academic access alone is insufficient in contexts of ongoing violence. In response, a student support team was formed, drawing volunteers from across the world, carefully vetted and onboarded through conversations drawing on lessons from the first cohort. Volunteers worked together, sustaining one another as they navigated the emotional and practical complexities of their role. Sometimes they connected their students with one another, weaving a broader peer network across the cohort and across borders. This infrastructure ran alongside a mutual aid network addressing students' basic survival needs. Together, these structures embody a core premise: that education under siege must be built around human connection at every layer and across borders.

The team is currently developing another iteration of the program. The course offering is expanding to include English language courses, which are taught by educators from Gaza themselves. Teaching assistants from Gaza are also integrated into the course team, and the student support infrastructure is being strengthened so that the network of care is sustained across everyone involved.

Designing community-oriented online spaces in the shadow of scholasticide is, this paper argues, an inherently political act — one that insists on the right to learn, to connect, and to create together, even under siege.

Since the launch of the HeART OF GAZA project, art has become a unique tool for expressing children’s emotions, feelings, and daily lives under the ongoing violence and destruction in Gaza (Timraz, Pettinari, 2025). The artworks created by children are not merely drawings: they are a direct reflection of their resilience and determination, and they embody their resistance to the daily challenges they have faced for years (Karim, 2022). Each workshop and each piece of art represents an effort to confront the harsh reality and to convey their voices to the world in a peaceful yet powerful and impactful way. Despite the continuous bombing, destruction, and the ongoing atrocities affecting children, their commitment to attend artistic spaces and continue drawing reflects the strength of their will and a form of resistance in its simplest and most profound form (Hameed, 2024). Here, art becomes a means of reinforcing Palestinian identity, expressing daily struggle, and preserving collective memory. Just as journalists resist through their work, doctors through their professions, and fishermen through their labor, children and artists in Gaza practice a form of resistance through creativity and artistic expression. Through murals, drawings, music, and poetry, artists in Gaza convey stories of resilience and hope to the world. Art is not merely a cultural activity , it is a powerful tool for preserving memory and confronting oppression. It is used to express both pain and strength through visual symbols and traditional motifs. Consequently, art becomes a form of resistance without weapons, yet it carries a strong impact in conveying identity, resilience, and hope to future generations and to the outside world.