LIVING IN A VISUAL WORLD: Israeli Arab Teachers’ Visual Representation Transformations and Related Competencies

Israel is a Western-democratic country with a Jewish majority in a predominantly Middle East Arab region. Arab and Jewish educational curriculum is similar and most teachers attend jointly the Israeli colleges, universities and in-service programs. We examined Arab teachers’ knowledge and competencies regarding visual representation transformations. Our findings show that similar to their Jewish counterparts, these Arab teachers exhibited a low level of visualization knowledge and ability that probably impede their instructional practices and students’ learning in present visually dominated world. We suggest there is an urgent need to include the explicit and intentional learning of visualization in teacher education programs.