What is the right way to design educational encounters between Jews and Arabs to promote a shared society in Israel? The question concerns Israeli educators committed to intercultural values. One problem is language: how should the linguistic challenge be handled in intercultural meetings? The challenge of bridging groups is magnified in the Israeli case because of the linguistic asymmetry. Most Jews do not understand Arabic, whereas Arabs usually understand and can speak Hebrew. This situation usually leads to the use of Hebrew in intercultural encounters, and that produces an imbalanced and unequal situation which reproduces the unequal power relationships in the larger society.

As a mixed team of Jewish and Arab teacher educators in a mixed college, we wondered whether we could turn the language barrier into a bridge between the groups, by designing and employing a bilingual digital interaction between two groups of teacher-students. The course we initiated includes two parallel frameworks – in Arabic and Hebrew, each one designed for the native speakers of the language. However, several opportunities for mutual exposure are offered in both frameworks, so students get to ‘meet’ online with people, language, and contents from the other group. These special opportunities are possible thanks to the technological features of a massive open online course (MOOC). For example, there are lectures in the other language with subtitles, and joint activities in Padlet boards for both Jewish and Arabic students. This made it possible during the course in general, and during the coronavirus pandemic, to overcome the social and geographical distance between these two populations.

As the course designers, we assumed the combination of a safe setting where each participant felt comfortably ‘at home’ with a moderate and gradual exposure to the Other would offer a good opportunity to promote shared living. Although the course was brief (14 weeks), we hoped it might contribute to larger objectives: to dispel stereotypes and encourage mutual respect and tolerance. After having completed one run of the course (with 140 students) we were interested in the participants’ perspective on the course’s ability to do these things.

Our study examined the educational experiences of Arab and Jewish student-teachers who participated in the innovative, partly bilingual MOOC. We wanted to know whether the students recognised the course's effect on their perceptions of intercultural issues such as personal attitudes to the language and the members of the outgroup, and commitment to the educational goal of shared living.

The Theoretical Framework of our study includes mainly theories of intergroup encounters. Researchers recognise five models of encounters between conflicted groups: contact theory (Allport 1958; Bekerman 2007), narrative theory (Bar-On 2006, Erlech-Ron and Paul-Benjamin 2016), the shared-project model (Maoz 2000), the theoretical learning model (Erlich-Ron and Paul-Benjamin 2016) and  Intergroup theory –   (Maoz 2011; Saada and Gross 2019). In designing the course, we intended to combine principles and methods drawn from three of these models: the theoretical learning model, contact theory, and narrative theory.

Additionally, we looked at research about the contribution of digital learning for enhancement of inter-cultural values and found that MOOC courses have the potential to affirm cultural pluralism and intercultural education (Leistyna, 2002) by bringing learners from different cultures together and promoting collaborative learning (Afsan-Mamagani 2014; Kerr-Merciai 2015). The third aspect of the theoretical background of our study is bilingual education (Bekerman & Horenczyk, 2004).and multicultural encounters (Jayusi & Zelmenson-Levy 2018), in schools and in academic institutions in Israel (Bash, 1997), and world-wide (Bennett, 2009, Coulby, 2006).

We used the multiple case study approach as it allows learning about the lived experiences and attitudes of the research participants and permits examination of their similarities and differences (Merriam, 1998). According to Yin (2009), each case study is a ‘whole’ study, in which convergent evidence is sought and each case’s conclusions are considered the information needing replication by other cases. A multiple case study is appropriate to understand processes and to explore context characteristics (Sanders 1981). Participants We conducted in-depth and semi-structured interviews with five Arab (A1-A5) and seven Jewish (J6-J12) student teachers selected through purposeful sampling. Data Collection The interviews were conducted in the ingroup language of each participant at the college (45-60 minutes), audiotaped, and transcribed. The interview protocol included the following questions 1. How do you evaluate your learning experience in the MOOC course? 2. What did you recognise as the course's main ‘agenda’ – social values, moral lesson? 3. How do you feel about the presence of the other language (Hebrew/Arabic lectures and other academic activities) in the course? (We also asked about specific lectures and activities.) 4. Has your learning experience in the course affected your social/ political/ personal/ educational attitudes towards Jews/Arabs? Explain 5. Has your learning experience affected your desire to hold Arab-Jewish educational activities as a future teacher? Explain 6. Which activities have affected you the most? Why? Data Analysis We used inductive and thematic analysis via primary, selective, and axial coding (Shimoni 2016). We conducted open and preliminary coding by reading each transcript carefully to identify units of general meaning and writing down analytical categories or memos (subject thoughts). These memos were initial categories that we clustered in the second (selective) stage into broader categories reflecting the student teachers' dilemmas and identities. This stage established a logical chain of evidence by noting causality, making inferences, and clarifying the relationships between categories and subcategories. Finally, we checked (through axial coding) the relationships between the clustered categories, including how they were reflected or challenged across the participants` responses, identifying recurring patterns of meaning and theoretical themes that were later explained. Finally, we compared our results with quantitative descriptive data provided by the MOOC system on the students' engagement in learning behaviour in their own and the other group’s language.

Three themes arose from the analysis. The first theme centred on language. Students in both groups recognised the course offered opportunities for a positive exposure to the other language. The language difficulty also became a springboard for critical reflection for both groups. Arab students recognised the need to improve their Hebrew but debated whether bilingual education might lead to uncontrolled assimilation and loss of their cultural identity. Jewish students were encouraged by the linguistic difficulty to acknowledge their privilege, to show empathy for and make greater efforts to understand the needs of the Arab group. In these findings, we recognized a promising sign of the fulfillment of our socio-political educational objectives The second theme was the ability of the MOOC platform to enable ‘meetings’ between people from different groups, and the effect of exposure to role model professionals belonging to the Other group. The Arab students' exposure to professional Jews enabled them to move away from cultural generalisations, to see the potential of Arab-Jewish collaboration in various social fields, and to believe in a shared destiny. By the same token, the exposure to professional Arabs made Jewish students rethink their prejudices The third theme revolved around the ability of the partly bilingual MOOC to convince future Arab and Jewish teachers to consider incorporating intercultural educational activities in their future work. We discovered the inclusion of intercultural role modelling in teacher education increased the student teachers' awareness of the significance of intercultural education and motivated them to use it in their future classrooms. The findings show that the students felt comfortable in the partly bilingual environment and recognised opportunities to improve their attitudes toward the other group's language and people. Based on our findings, we recommend the use of partly bilingual models of online (MOOC) intercultural education to train interculturally-oriented teachers.

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