This article adds to the existing body of data that demonstrates how the use of in-depth case studies that include social episode analysis can deepen the teaching students' and researchers' understanding of the perceptions and skills needed for Classroom Management (CM). In this article, CM is defined as a meta-skill that integrates cognitive perceptions (proactive, ecological-systemic, and leadership-oriented), self-regulation skills, and interpersonal relationships with students and colleagues. CM is also perceived as a cyclical process that includes advance planning, implementation, assessment during the implementation, and a final evaluation that takes into account factors related to the children and their environment, intended to bring about progress in the activities carried out for the learning and emotional well-being of the children in the class. Two cases showing opposite positions with regard to social-moral CM were selected from 34 cases documented by second-year, 4-year-track, preservice teaching students enrolled in a CM course in Israel in the spring of 2008. One case shows how, guided by the desire to ensure a child's well-being, a student developed perceptions and skills related to all components of the CM theoretical framework. The other case shows how opportunities were missed to learn and develop a social-moral, complex, CM perception. Based on an analysis of the two cases, the discussion examines the usefulness of case studies in teacher training and offers insights related to improved teacher training.

This article describes a group of Druze preschool and kindergarten teachers from Northern Israel who participated in an in-service course in their community. The focus of the training experience was to improve the social climate of the classroom by implementing a life-world approach. Analysis of their reports shows that the children's meaningful learning, improved emotional coping with ordinary hardships, and mutual social support are a product of intervention that involves multiple, interrelated activity channels: staff collaboration, guided small group discussions, informal discussions, cooperation with parents and community agents, and free play. Each activity channel is associated with a compatible, dominant, learning modality and a predominant interpersonal process-free play, for example, is mainly associated with free inquiry and discourse among children, whereas group activity is also likely to be associated with learning guided by educators.

The goal of this study was to learn about parental perceptions of their preschool and elementary school children with respect to relations with the teachers and various aspects of distance learning used during the first COVID-19 lockdown in Israel. Research was carried out in the summer of 2020 among 602 parents, comprising a representative sample of parents of children in preschool, grades 1-2, and grades 3-6 of the Jewish population of Israel. Participants completed a questionnaire designed for this study that sought to measure attitudes towards aspects of distance learning (e.g., Zoom lessons) and how the teachers related to the children and parents. Findings indicate that the child's age had an impact on how the parent perceives the activities of the children and the teachers with respect to several forms of distance learning imposed by the pandemic. At all ages, parental interpretation of the impact of the pandemic on teacher-family relations was found to contribute to the explained variance regarding parental evaluation of the children's and teachers' activities as well as the variance in attitudes about distance learning (both online and asynchronous). Also, parents of every age cohort reported that they were more involved in their children's distance learning than in encouraging the children to reach out to their friendsthe parents of third through sixth graders were even less involved than parents of the younger children.

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