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This study offers an in-depth examination of the experiences of early childhood educators, focusing on their work with Ethiopian immigrant children and their families. We aim to describe and analyze the teachers' insider views vis-à-vis the challenges faced by these children and their parents in the Israeli preschool system. Using narrative methodology, the analysis of findings is based upon 20 stories written by 10 early childhood educators. It reveals that for these teachers, the chief struggle is their relationship with the parents of their Ethiopian pupils, one characterized by difficulties, frustrations, and burdens. The engagement with parents of Ethiopian children exhibited a range of possibilities: from the expression of patronizing, hierarchical viewpoints, to a search for ad hoc ways of coping with a persistent cultural gap, to the attainment of genuine, successful partnerships. Lack of sufficient knowledge and understanding of the unique cultural attributes of the Ethiopian community appears to be the basis for the teachers' view of the parents as lacking faith in them and in the educational system as a whole. In addition, suggestions are made about implications for educational practice and for policies that might assist teachers in ameliorating these challenges via the development of, and professional training in, skills which help coping with the problems and dilemmas unique to the multicultural classroom.

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Abstract. This paper describes the results of a quantitative research study, pre and post design, conducted in a multicultural teachers' college in Israel, with the purpose of investigating differences between student-teachers who completed a "Human Sexuality" course and a control group, which did not. Three variables were examined: knowledge, attitudes concerning different aspects of human sexuality and self-efficacy to deal with sex education. The main findings of the research indicate a significant increase in knowledge and self-efficacy of the students, both Jews and Arabs, in the research group, but not in the control group. Attitudes were more progressive in the research group after the course, but did not change in the control group.