The purposes of the study are to examine the joint actions of the school and the parents of immigrant families during the global pandemic crisis and the implications of these connections to pre-service teachers' training. The research questions: (1) What are the factors that lead to closer relationships between school and immigrant families from Africa during a period of crisis? and (2) What are the pre-service teachers’ insights about this collaboration?

The accelerated globalization processes have increased people’s mobility from one location to another around the world, resulting in wide implications for the immigrants and their families facing absorption, exclusion, and violence. Thus, policymakers, humanitarian organizations, educational institutions, and communities are required to formulate responses to issues in public policy in the context of national and political stability, health, social cohesion, economy, education, and the challenge of social integration (McAuliffe & Khadria, 2020).

School-Family collaboration helps children to success in their studies and function better from a social and emotional viewpoint (Hubbard, 2019). This collaboration has been intensified with the global health crisis, as the parents have become the educational resource for distance learning mediation.  In addition to the major concern about their livelihood, all the families were compelled to find technological means for distance learning and for the planning of social and emotional daily activities (Kekelis & STEM Next Opportunity fund, 2020).

This collaboration needed to be established also among immigrant families. Educational staffs should be sensitive to the culture of the country of origin and know that parents are not experts in education nor in technology. They must familiarize themselves with the parents’ cultural perceptions and adapt the teaching methods to them.  At the same time, there is evidence that parents are ‘imprisoned’ in the difficulties of absorption and livelihood and, therefore, they are not involved in what is being done at school. They sometimes lose their parental authority because the responsibility for the homework is incumbent on the children and because they are not versed in the target language. Hence, a collaboration between the school educational staff and the families might promote equality in education and mutual trust, and feelings of reciprocity, understanding, and tolerance, enabling immigrant children to experience success (Brayko, 2013; Richmond et al., 2020).

Immigration and teacher education - Teacher education colleges serve as an effective anchor in the development of teachers’ professional personality. They also consolidate teachers’ figure as educators in a multicultural environment. These teachers know how to integrate in society learners from different cultures, not out of a majority group paternalism, but rather out of social solidarity, eradication of the feeling of alienation and hostility, and implementation of teaching methods that mobilize the equity pedagogies (Ratnam, 2020).

Pre-service teacher training should enhance intercultural sensitivity that encourages an encounter with teachers who function out of social commitment both in and outside the classroom. This training teaches how to combine knowledge of the family, tradition, and history as part of the teaching and, thus, help parents to be involved in the learning and events at school. This involvement might make parents and learners comprehend that their ethnic identity has been accepted and the syllabus does not aim to exclude their cultural background (Miklikowska, 2017; Sutton, Lewis & Beauchat, 2020). Teacher education should focus on the education for a peace perception (Danesh, 2011; Rivera et al., 2016) and adapt the teaching methods according to the ‘Restorative Justice Pedagogy’. Thus, it will assist in shaping a safe, supportive, and caring learning environment for the promotion of the sense of belonging and socio-emotional welfare of the children and equality in education (Gusacov, 2021; Ogilvie & Fuller, 2016).

This study was conducted in two state-primary schools for learners who come from African immigrant families. These schools are located in economically - challenged areas in two cities at the center of Israel. The research method is interpretive-qualitative, examining the relationship between school and the parents from African immigrant families. Moreover, this study investigated the contribution of these multicultural and multilingual schools to the pre-service education process. The data collected from varied populations associated with the investigated phenomenon served as first-hand information. This enabled a better understanding of the phenomenon while focusing on the difficulties and actions related to the school-parent relationship during a period of crisis and on the pre-service teachers’ insights about their education (Zur & Eisikovits, 2015). The research findings were obtained from semi-structured in-depth interviews with 15 educational practitioners: 2 principals, one assistant-principal, and 12 class educators. In addition, I interviewed 8 African immigrant parents (6 fathers and 2 mothers) who had been living in Israel for more than six years. The 3 pre-service teachers that were interviewed, attended the College of Education in central Israel. The interviews were conducted through a cell phone call or on the zoom. In order to deal with the fact that the parents were not versed in the language, as well as with the lack of understanding obstacle, the interview was conducted in a basic language and with frequently - used words (Griffin & Care, 2015). The interviews were recorded and transcribed. The interviews were content analyzed (Krippendorff, 2004). This analysis enabled a description of the data in the participants’ words, reflecting their actions, feelings, insights, knowledge, as well as the conclusions that were valid to their wide context. I classified the data snippets from the interviews and divided them into categories related to parent-teacher relationships and implications for pre-service teachers. Next, I re-examined each group's texts to identify prominent issues to enhance the reliability of the findings. The data were transferred to a competent reader who performed a thematic analysis, after which we discussed them together. The interview analysis was not data-oriented but rather the categories were obtained from the data. Ethical rules were strictly adhered to in the study: keeping anonymity and confidentiality of the respondents and the data, avoiding offensive questions, and offering the respondents the option not to answer. Levinsky College of Education Ethics Committee granted me the approval to conduct this study.

The findings of this study outline three main categories: (1) humanism and personal relationship; (2) trust and involvement inside the family; (3) remote digital communication. These categories attested to features of the relationship and the foci of difficulty in coping with teaching-learning process during a period of a global crisis. The findings showed that the personal relationship between the educational practitioners and the parents under conditions of distance learning, lockdown, and social distancing, was based on a reinforced trust between them. The teachers played a key role in establishing trust relationships. They were the main element that mediated and acted for satisfying basic and secondary needs of tightening the personal relationship and the sense of belonging, as well as avoided being judgmental. The parents shared their distress and difficulties at home, and the educational practitioners functioned out of empathy, moral duty, and humanism for the good of the families. The pre-service teachers experienced direct and authentic encounters in the relationship between educational practitioners and parents from minority groups in society. This research sheds a social beacon as a significant layer in the process of teacher training. These findings underscored the importance of exposure to and acquaintance with other voices in the Israeli society during a period of crisis. This experience raised the pre-service teachers’ self-awareness of their ability and to affect also social processes. Educational practitioners and parents from immigrant families that suffer from exclusion and feel they do not belong to the local society are exposed to authentic interactions. This exposure mandates a re-definition of the educational practitioners’ role by demonstrating a volunteering spirit, morality, acts of giving, social solidarity, and socio-emotional commitment for the good of the families, as well as promoting equality in education and social justice (Gusacov, 2021; Miklikowska, 2017; Sutton, Lewis, & Beauchat, 2020).

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