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Keywords: Students, Achievements, Personal and Social Strengths

In Israel, students from various minority groups study together in teacher education institutions. This study examines how students from different minority groups perceive the social-cultural relationships with other groups, whether they feel relatedness, and what characterizes their perceptions regarding being a minority or majority within and outside the college. The research paradigm is qualitative and the genre is phenomenological. The participants are 50 students from various minority groups from 7 teacher education colleges. The results show that most participants report good relationships with students and lecturers from other ethnic groups, which leads to a deep sense of relatedness in the college. Among Ethiopian and Arab students, social connections in the college form mostly with students from the same ethnic group. Among Arab students, the sense of relatedness draws from interactions with friends from the same culture and from studying in Arabic. Our findings indicate distinct views among Arabs and Jews regarding being a minority or majority. The Jewish students defined the terms minority and majority mostly in quantitative terms, while Arab students referred to their social meaning, considering themselves as an underprivileged minority outside the college but as a majority in the college. In general, the results show that colleges facilitate caring conditions, detached from the reality outside the college. The findings have implications on the role of teacher education colleges in promoting equal opportunities and a sense of relatedness among their students, both within the college and in the general society.

Purpose This study aims to investigate the linkage of identity of new and veteran immigrant students of the Ethiopian community in Israel, by examining their attitudes to children’s literature books written simultaneously in Hebrew and Amharic. The data were collected using focus groups of Ethiopian students attending a teacher training college. The main findings revealed that they referred to two major types of identity: one type is an unreconciled identity, characterized by defiance, which seeks to minimize the visibility of one’s ethnic group within the main culture and tries to adopt the hegemonic identity, whereas the other type of identity contains the original ethnic identity and – in contrast to the first type – tries to reconcile it with the hegemonic culture. Design/methodology/approach This is a qualitative study, which emphasis was on participants’ attitudes, beliefs and perceptions (Kalka, 2003). The goals of the research were to examine identity perceptions of students of the Beta Israel community, as they are exposed to bilingual literary works in Hebrew and Amharic. Findings The main findings revealed that they referred to two major types of identity: one type is an unreconciled identity, characterized by defiance, which seeks to minimize the visibility of one’s ethnic group within the main culture and tries to adopt the hegemonic identity, whereas the other type of identity contains the original ethnic identity and – in contrast to the first type – tries to reconcile it with the hegemonic culture. Research limitations/implications This paper has shed light on an important subject and it would be worthwhile to continue the study using other methodologies. Practical implications This paper contributes to the structuring of a cultural code that serves to organize social meaning and establish individuals’ identity. Social implications This awareness enriches the basis of their own values and allows them to enrich their attitude to their future pupils, for example, to recognize the value of local culture versus that of the immigrants’ place of origin, and to develop an understanding and acceptance of the diversity in the classroom. As they take part in building a multicultural Israeli education framework, dealing with identity patterns is also the key to their own integration in society. Originality/value The originality of the study lies in the usage of two new concepts – unreconciled and reconciled – as referring to the immigrants’ identities.

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