CHAPTER 14: The Forum of Excellent Students: A Model for Cooperative Learning in a Multicultural Environment

Israel is a country characterized by cultural pluralism. It includes sub-groups that differ from one another on the basis of religion, nationality, and ethnicity. The country’s social pluralism is reflected in the education system, including teachertraining colleges. Some colleges are designed for specific sectors of society (e.g. Arab or Jewish only), and at the same time there are colleges where students from different sectors learn together.

This chapter presents a study conducted in an inter-college forum, a joint framework for excellent students from all colleges in the country to learn together. The research examined the contribution of cooperative learning to the multicultural environment that served as a context for the student learning experience and also examined the contribution of cooperative learning to their educational perceptions. First, we discuss theoretically the terms “cooperative learning” and “cultural pluralism” in the Israeli context. We then review some challenges of teacher education in Israel’s multicultural context. The study also examines the uniqueness of the Excellent Students program and the learning objectives of the inter-college forum. The chapter shares our research findings and conclusions, which are based on forum participants’ responses to quantitative and qualitative questions.