The coronavirus pandemic has impacted the education systems worldwide and most, including the Israeli, have transitioned to online learning. Moreover, closing schools has extreme social, cultural, educational and economic implications on the student, teacher and parent populations. This is especially true for students from families of lower-socio-economic status and young students who need parental assistance. Furthermore, online learning is not suitable for all teachers, because some lack the technological capabilities needed. To examine the attitudes of teachers and students towards online learning, questionnaires were administered to 476 students, grades 3–7 and 250 teachers from the Arab and Jewish sectors. The findings revealed that age plays an important role both among teachers and students, where mainly younger children and older teachers encounter difficulties in this transformation. Furthermore, gender and sectoral differences were found both among teachers and students. These findings show that conversion to online learning may widen the existing gaps.

The Corona pandemic has engendered drastic change throughout the world and schools in most countries have, relatively quickly, been required to transfer from frontal traditional learning to online learning. The research investigated the relationship between transformational leadership style and teaching mediated by school communications and moderated by sector (Jewish and Arab) in education systems in Israel during the Corona pandemic. 331 Jewish and Arab teachers participated in the research, expressing attitudes on the principals' leadership, the quality of school communications and the success of their online teaching during the Corona crisis. A positive correlation was found between principals' transformational leadership style and the success of online teaching, and the quality of communications in the school mediated this correlation. It was also found that the Jewish teachers reported more successes in online teaching and that the indirect correlation between transformational leadership and successful online teaching, through the quality of school communications, was moderated by population sector, so that it was stronger among Jewish teachers in comparison to Arab teachers. These findings have significant implications to improve organisational effectiveness, especially in the transition to online learning, and especially regarding the cultural uniqueness of different sectors.

PurposeThis research examined correlations between contextual factors: frequency of online teaching (OT) (number of hours per week), Transformational Leadership Style (TLS) and TPACK (TPACK) among Arab and Jewish teachers in Israel after more than a year of teaching online during the Covid-19 crisis.Design/methodology/approachQuantitative methodology elicited data from 437 questionnaires. An online questionnaire was first sent to Israeli Arab and Jewish teachers studying for M.A degrees in three randomly selected higher education institutes in Israel, and then the questionnaire was sent to other teachers, selected through the snowball method. After data collection common method variance was precluded.FindingsThe findings of this research indicated a positive correlation between frequency of OT, TLS and TPACK among Israeli teachers. Major differences were found between Arab and Jewish teachers: Arab teachers (AT) reported more improvement of TPACK, although they taught fewer hours than Jewish teachers (JT). In addition, TLS and sector (Arab/Jewish) moderated the positive correlation between the frequency of OT and TPACK among ATs.Originality/valueThe findings of this research validate the opportunity created by the Covid-19 crisis for cultivation of teachers’ TPACK through OT. This research contributes to extant relevant literature and practice concerning the influence of contextual factors on teachers' improvement of their TPACK while performing OT during the Covid-19 crisis and can inform the design of ecological and culturally appropriate education policies in the post-COVID-19 period. The research was built on the theories of TLS, which is a crucial component supporting the influence of technology integration. The findings strengthen existing knowledge on the unique capacity of TLS to buffer negative external influences imposed on teachers' TPACK and motivate them.