Understanding what goes on in the heart and the mind: Learning about diversity and co-existence through storytelling

In work on cultural difference, personal stories are powerful means of becoming aware of the taken-for-granted arrangements of one's own culture, of piercing walls of hostility and of coming to understand other cultures. This article examines an experience with narrative and storytelling in a workshop on coexistence in a teacher education setting in Israel. Drawing on student writing and the instructor's journal, the account highlights the Arab and Jewish student teachers' experiences in the encounter, focusing on how they storied and restoried their understandings of 'what goes on in the heart and the mind' of the Other.