Education for a Shared Society in Wartime: A Faculty of Education Dean’s Autoethnography

Authors

Ilana Paul-Binyamin, Beit Berl College, IsraelFollow

Abstract

My autoethnographic study emerged in the wake of the Hamas–Israel war that began on October 7, 2023, placing me in a dual position as both an academic leader and a member of a society in crisis. As Dean of a multicultural Faculty of Education, I reflect on how the war disrupted longstanding efforts to promote shared society education between Jews and Arabs. Drawing on personal narratives, reflective fieldnotes, and case studies from campus life, I explore how trauma, fear, and political polarization undermined the multicultural frameworks I had developed over years of practice. I document moments of rupture—between students, faculty, and within myself—and ask whether educational models designed for times of peace can withstand the pressures of violent conflict. In response, I propose a spiral approach to shared society education, one that flexibly moves between uninational and bi-national encounters based on emotional readiness and social context. I believe there is an urgent need for education for complexity: a pedagogy that embraces ambiguity, competing narratives, and emotional realities. By weaving personal experience with theoretical insight, this study contributes to the discourse on intercultural education in conflict zones.

Keywords

autoethnography, education for a shared society between Arabs and Jews, education during war, education for complexity, teacher education, spiral model

Author Bio(s)

Dr. Ilana Paul-Binyamin is a senior lecturer in the Department of Education at Beit Berl College, Israel. Her research activities lie in the areas of teacher education and critical pedagogy in cultural contexts. Education for Shared society, Multicultural Education, Dialogue Curriculum are core issues of her academic research, writing and teaching. She was the co-director of the Center for education for shared society. Nowadays she is the Dean of the Faculty of Education at Beit Berl College. Please direct correspondence to Ilanapb@beitberl.ac.il

Publication Date

12-31-2025

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.

DOI

10.46743/2160-3715/2025.7517

Recommended APA Citation

Paul-Binyamin, I. (2025). Education for a shared society in wartime: A faculty of education dean’s autoethnography. The Qualitative Report, 30(12), 4764-4786. https://doi.org/10.46743/2160-3715/2025.7517

ORCID ID

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5566-2763