THE TENSION BETWEEN OUGHT AND IS - TEACHERS CONCEPTIONS OF THE ENCOUNTER BETWEEN STUDENTS AND CULTURALLY VALUED TEXTS

This study attempts to arrive at an understanding of the pedagogical c ontent knowledge of teachers of culturally valued texts. It focuses on the teaching of the Bible in Israel and in Jewish schools outside Isr ael. The Bible is the central cultural text valued by the Jewish peopl e. In-depth interviews were conducted with 52 teachers of the Bible. T he first two research questions examined the encounter between student s and text as perceived by the teachers and reflected their views rega rding students' attitudes towards the text and the difficulties faced by them. The third research question attempted to assess the role of t he text in the educational process from the teachers' point of view. O ur findings suggest that teachers' conception of students and their co nception of the educational subject-matter are frequently inconsistent . We claim that teachers' pedagogical content knowledge usually involv es tensions between these two perspectives.