Hashkafa is a comprehensive nationwide program aimed at improving the quality of teaching and learning through a change in the professional development culture.
Currently, approximately 15,000 teachers, from across the education system, participate in Professional Learning Communities in their schools. Together, these learning communities form a teachers’ professional learning network that is led by teachers, for teachers.
Sharing and communicating knowledge, experience, insights, and resources in a multiplicity of ways opens up novel possibilities for creating productive learning communities and pedagogical discourse. These learning communities enable teachers to engage and collaborate with peers, as well as facilitate connecting theoretical knowledge with practical knowledge. They thereby promote the development of shared insights about how to improve the quality of teaching and learning.
The Professional Learning Communities meet on-site in the schools and focus either on specific disciplines or on a common pedagogical issue. Together, led and facilitated by a teacher-peer, the community members share their professional experience and thinking, engage in inquiry, and develop teaching practices related to the school and classroom spaces.
At the heart of the program is the aspiration that, over time, a middle-leadership level will develop at each school that will foster a culture of reflective and collaborative inquiry in pedagogical analysis and planning.
