Y Feniger
Biographic Data
| ID | 6172 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Y Feniger |
| GIVEN NAMES | Y |
| FAMILY NAME | Feniger |
| SIGNATURE | FENIGER Y |
| AFFILIATIONS | Ben-Gurion University of the Negev |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8959-6917 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 32 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 117 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 32 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Instrumental or expressive? Cultural logics in parental opportunity hoarding considerations and practices
Opportunity hoarding, privileged parents’ practices for securing educational resources for their children, is a key mechanism of educational reproduction. This study examined how parental cultural logics shaped their considerations of opportunity hoarding when enrolling children in a STEM acceleration programme. Observations at back-to-school events and interviews with 24 middle- and upper-middle-class parents in one school revealed two cultural …
Teacher Perspectives on Ability Grouping in Israeli ESL Classrooms
Ability grouping in English as a second language (ESL) education remains contested, situated between instructional efficiency and educational equity. While existing research has largely focused on student outcomes and system-level effects, less attention has been paid to how teachers interpret and enact grouping arrangements in everyday ESL classrooms. This interpretivist comparative case study draws on semi-structured interviews with junior high…
Group Goals in Teacher Team Meetings
This study explored the phenomenon of group goals in teacher team meetings using questionnaires (n = 795) and in-depth interviews with teachers (n = 20). Drawing on achievement goals theory, we mapped the various types of group goals teacher teams may collectively pursue, uncovered their unique characteristics, estimated their prevalence, and investigated teachers’ stances towards them. We found that teacher group goals included establishing a se…
Immigrant Selectivity and Educational Outcomes of Immigrant Children
Despite much research on immigrant selectivity, little attention has been given to its temporal dimension. Thus, while immigrant selectivity has been theoretically identified and empirically demonstrated, it has been viewed as a relatively stable social occurrence. The study reported in this paper examined temporal changes in immigrant selectivity using an extensive dataset on migration from the former Soviet Union (FSU) to Israel between 1989 an…
Is It Really a Paradox? A Mixed-Methods, Within-Country Analysis of the Gender Gap in STEM Education
It is well established that women’s representation in scientific and technical fields decreases with societal affluence, but the mechanisms underlying this so-called paradox remain contested. This study leverages distinctive features of the Israeli educational system to identify social psychological and organizational mechanisms driving contextual variability in the gendering of physics and computing subjects. Using in-depth interviews and origin…
Professional learning communities under test-based accountability
Test-based accountability (TBA) draws on a managerialist ideology that emphasises standards, constant measurement, and external motivation for improvement. It stands in sharp contrast to the idea of professional learning communities (PLCs) that aim to mobilise teachers' internal motivation and willingness to cooperate with peers to facilitate a joint, self-reflective inquiry process of pedagogical improvement. The Israeli education system has ado…
Educational tracking and social inequalities in long-term labor market outcomes
In this country-comparative study, we ask to what extent differentiation in secondary education accounts for the association between social origins and social destinations in adult age. We go beyond the widely applied formal definitions of educational tracking and particularly pay attention to country-specific approaches to educational differentiation. Our main expectation is that once we factor in these particularities, the degree to which educa…
Medicalising agents? Teachers' uncertainty and emerging expertise in the age of inclusion policy and medicalisation in Israel
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a paradigmatic case for childhood medicalisation. Critical studies of medicalisation have pointed to the increasing clinical role of schools, with teachers tending to rely on medical treatment of students with ADHD and are perceived as a primary source of diagnostic information. Based on 27 semi-structured interviews with teachers working in two Israeli elementary and middle schools, this researc…
We just want equality
Child’s age at migration, high school course-taking and higher education
The gendering of tech selves
This study uses original survey data to compare aspirations for computing jobs (“tech aspirations”) between students in Arabic- and Hebrew-language school sectors in Israel. Analogous to “paradoxical” patterns previously documented in cross-national studies, results show a smaller gender gap in tech aspirations in schools serving the more socioeconomically precarious Arab/Palestinian population. The strongest predictor of tech aspirations is stud…
Parents’ resistance to standardized testing in a highly centralized system
This paper discusses the emergence of an opt-out movement in Israel led by parent associations at local and national levels. The protest targeted the use of a national standardized test, the Meitzav. Analyzing media coverage of this movement and informed by the theoretical arguments of the Advocacy Coalition Framework, the study suggests that by forming a coalition with the Teachers’ Union, parents proclaimed their right to a role in education po…
Routledge Handbook on Contemporary Israel
"This handbook provides a comprehensive overview of contemporary Israel, accounting for changes, developments and contemporary debates. The different chapters offer both a historical background and an updated analysis of politics, economy, society and culture. Across five sections, a multi-disciplinary group of experts, including sociologists, political scientists, historians and social scientists, engage in a wide variety of topics through diffe…
Context Matters
He doesn’t deserve to be in the higher track
This study examines teachers’ justifications for their student sorting decisions in two Israeli secondary schools. Combining descriptive statistics and micro-ethnographic discourse analysis of 281 audio-recorded discussions, the study offers a new perspective on tracking’s multiple social and organizational functions: providing students’ needs, rewarding and punishing students, satisfying teachers’ emotional needs, and efficiently using school re…
College gender composition and bachelor's degree completion
Women are now the majority in undergraduate studies in many higher education systems, yet men and women tend to enrol at different rates in different fields of study and institutions. As a result, gender segregation is a prominent feature of contemporary higher education. Most previous studies have focused on gender composition in fields of study. In contrast, we considered college-level study in the Israeli context and asked whether composition …
From social origin to selective high school courses
Explaining a reverse gender gap in advanced physics and computer science course‐taking
In the past three decades in high‐income countries, female students have outperformed male students in most indicators of educational attainment. However, the underrepresentation of girls and women in science courses and careers, especially in physics, computer sciences, and engineering, remains persistent. What is often neglected by the vast existing literature is the role that schools, as social institutions, play in maintaining or eliminating …
Who Pays the Price for Parental Education–Occupation Mismatch? Evidence From an Israeli City
In recent years, education–occupation mismatch has become an important area of social research. However, little is known about its impact on the intergenerational transmission of educational attainment. This study investigates the possible negative consequences of a specific aspect of parental education–occupation mismatch, also known as overeducation, for high school students. Drawing from a sample of high school students in an Israeli city with…
Evidence-based decision making or a tunnel vision effect? TIMSS, problem definition and policy change in Israeli mathematics education
This study examines the influence of the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) 1999 results on mathematics education policy in Israel. Analyzing various documents, the study shows how these results transformed policymakers’ discourse regarding mathematics education. In order to achieve improvement in Israel’s ranking, the middle school mathematics curriculum was aligned with the TIMSS test. Following this change, the score…
Socioeconomic inequality in Israel
Socioeconomic Inequality in Israel is a timely and important book. Written by sociologists, economists, demographers and geographers, the chapters in this edited volume offer up-to-date analyses of...
The power of numbers
The use of standardised tests as a central tool in education policy has in recent decades become a common feature of many national education systems. In 2002 the Israeli Ministry of Education introduced new mandatory state tests for primary and middle schools. The article describes the adoption of these low-stakes tests and assesses their impact on schools using quantitative and qualitative data. It shows that the tests have unintended negative c…
Ethno-Religious Differences in Israeli Higher Education
The worldwide expansion and diversification of higher education systems has sparked growing interest in the stratification of students according to higher education institution and field of study. This article focuses on Israel, where higher education has experienced significant expansion and diversification during the past two decades. Using generalized ordered logistic regression models, the study analyses vertical and horizontal ethno-religiou…
How not to reason with Pisa data
International comparative testing, such as the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), has considerable impact on policy-makers, the media and the general public. A central assumption underlying PISA is that global variation in students' academic performance is attributable to national educational structures and policies. The aim of this article is to demonstrate the problematic nature of this assumption. Rather than critiquin…
Unpacking secularization
Studies of secularization suggest it is a complex and multidimensional process and that secularization unfolds in different sets of identities, practices and values. But, in spite of its non-linear and non-coherent character, secularization it is not necessarily arbitrary and individualistic. Rather, as this work demonstrates, ethnic groups may be influenced by similar secularizing forces, but the impact of these forces will be different and diff…
I don't want to see it
Social inequality in Israel's education system has often been analysed with top-down structural models. This study inquires, instead, how students understand their position in the stratified structure of opportunities at school. Our quantitative and qualitative data, gathered in Jewish high schools in Israel, indicate that, despite clear ethno-class distribution in academic tracking, students reject the logic of identity politics and consider 'fr…
Globalisation and the politics of international tests
Comparative international tests of students' achievements have become increasingly popular over the past decade. An outcome of this widespread practice is the tendency of various countries to evaluate their national status according to their pupils' international ranking in such achievement tests, partly due to the common belief that high ranking is an indication of the nation's future ability to compete in the global market. Using PISA 2000 and …
Live and Let Buy? Consumerism, Secularization, and Liberalism
Religious values and norms often clash with the hedonistic consumer when the global market economy frees itself from prior constraints, religious limitations included, in favor of rules of supply and demand. Accordingly, the advent of the global economy and consumer are powerful secularizers of the public sphere that seem to erode the hold of religion on economic life and, possibly, on social and political life. Shopping, as Benjamin Barber notes…
Socioeconomic inequality in Israel
Socioeconomic Inequality in Israel is a timely and important book. Written by sociologists, economists, demographers and geographers, the chapters in this edited volume offer up-to-date analyses of...
Ethno-Religious Differences in Israeli Higher Education
The worldwide expansion and diversification of higher education systems has sparked growing interest in the stratification of students according to higher education institution and field of study. This article focuses on Israel, where higher education has experienced significant expansion and diversification during the past two decades. Using generalized ordered logistic regression models, the study analyses vertical and horizontal ethno-religiou…
How not to reason with Pisa data
International comparative testing, such as the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), has considerable impact on policy-makers, the media and the general public. A central assumption underlying PISA is that global variation in students' academic performance is attributable to national educational structures and policies. The aim of this article is to demonstrate the problematic nature of this assumption. Rather than critiquin…
Unpacking secularization
Studies of secularization suggest it is a complex and multidimensional process and that secularization unfolds in different sets of identities, practices and values. But, in spite of its non-linear and non-coherent character, secularization it is not necessarily arbitrary and individualistic. Rather, as this work demonstrates, ethnic groups may be influenced by similar secularizing forces, but the impact of these forces will be different and diff…
The Gender Gap in Advanced Math and Science Course Taking
Educational tracking and social inequalities in long-term labor market outcomes
In this country-comparative study, we ask to what extent differentiation in secondary education accounts for the association between social origins and social destinations in adult age. We go beyond the widely applied formal definitions of educational tracking and particularly pay attention to country-specific approaches to educational differentiation. Our main expectation is that once we factor in these particularities, the degree to which educa…
The power of numbers
The use of standardised tests as a central tool in education policy has in recent decades become a common feature of many national education systems. In 2002 the Israeli Ministry of Education introduced new mandatory state tests for primary and middle schools. The article describes the adoption of these low-stakes tests and assesses their impact on schools using quantitative and qualitative data. It shows that the tests have unintended negative c…
The gendering of tech selves
This study uses original survey data to compare aspirations for computing jobs (“tech aspirations”) between students in Arabic- and Hebrew-language school sectors in Israel. Analogous to “paradoxical” patterns previously documented in cross-national studies, results show a smaller gender gap in tech aspirations in schools serving the more socioeconomically precarious Arab/Palestinian population. The strongest predictor of tech aspirations is stud…
Context Matters
From social origin to selective high school courses
Evidence-based decision making or a tunnel vision effect? TIMSS, problem definition and policy change in Israeli mathematics education
This study examines the influence of the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) 1999 results on mathematics education policy in Israel. Analyzing various documents, the study shows how these results transformed policymakers’ discourse regarding mathematics education. In order to achieve improvement in Israel’s ranking, the middle school mathematics curriculum was aligned with the TIMSS test. Following this change, the score…
Jewish ethnicity and educational opportunities in Israel
Based on a 20% representative sample of all high school students in Israel in the mid-1990s, this study explores a reform implemented in low socio-economic status (SES) state religious high schools. Most of their students were from the disadvantaged Jewish ethnic group in Israel, Mizrachim. Perceived as unable to meet the requirements of academic programs, more than half these students studied on lower ranked vocational tracks. As part of the ref…
It Takes Two for a Culture War
This article examines the tense relations between religious and secular in I srael and the prospects for what has been described by different observers as a “culture war.” Specifically, the consequences and implication of the challenges to church‐state arrangements by social, economic, and demographic changes, and growing religious‐secular tensions are studied. The empirical investigation of these issues relies on a survey ( n = 508) of a represe…
Is It Really a Paradox? A Mixed-Methods, Within-Country Analysis of the Gender Gap in STEM Education
It is well established that women’s representation in scientific and technical fields decreases with societal affluence, but the mechanisms underlying this so-called paradox remain contested. This study leverages distinctive features of the Israeli educational system to identify social psychological and organizational mechanisms driving contextual variability in the gendering of physics and computing subjects. Using in-depth interviews and origin…
Medicalising agents? Teachers' uncertainty and emerging expertise in the age of inclusion policy and medicalisation in Israel
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a paradigmatic case for childhood medicalisation. Critical studies of medicalisation have pointed to the increasing clinical role of schools, with teachers tending to rely on medical treatment of students with ADHD and are perceived as a primary source of diagnostic information. Based on 27 semi-structured interviews with teachers working in two Israeli elementary and middle schools, this researc…
We just want equality
College gender composition and bachelor's degree completion
Women are now the majority in undergraduate studies in many higher education systems, yet men and women tend to enrol at different rates in different fields of study and institutions. As a result, gender segregation is a prominent feature of contemporary higher education. Most previous studies have focused on gender composition in fields of study. In contrast, we considered college-level study in the Israeli context and asked whether composition …
Live and Let Buy? Consumerism, Secularization, and Liberalism
Religious values and norms often clash with the hedonistic consumer when the global market economy frees itself from prior constraints, religious limitations included, in favor of rules of supply and demand. Accordingly, the advent of the global economy and consumer are powerful secularizers of the public sphere that seem to erode the hold of religion on economic life and, possibly, on social and political life. Shopping, as Benjamin Barber notes…
I don't want to see it
Social inequality in Israel's education system has often been analysed with top-down structural models. This study inquires, instead, how students understand their position in the stratified structure of opportunities at school. Our quantitative and qualitative data, gathered in Jewish high schools in Israel, indicate that, despite clear ethno-class distribution in academic tracking, students reject the logic of identity politics and consider 'fr…
Risk Groups in Exposure to Terror
This research addresses a largely ignored question in the study of terror: who are its likely victims? An answer was sought through analysis of comprehensive data on civilian victims of terror in Israel from 1993 through 2003. The chances of being killed in seemingly random terror attacks were found unequally distributed in Israeli society, but the weaker sectors were not the most vulnerable. This pattern may be attributed to the perpetration of …
The Gender Gap in Advanced Math and Science Course Taking
Globalisation and the politics of international tests
Comparative international tests of students' achievements have become increasingly popular over the past decade. An outcome of this widespread practice is the tendency of various countries to evaluate their national status according to their pupils' international ranking in such achievement tests, partly due to the common belief that high ranking is an indication of the nation's future ability to compete in the global market. Using PISA 2000 and …
It Takes Two for a Culture War
This article examines the tense relations between religious and secular in I srael and the prospects for what has been described by different observers as a “culture war.” Specifically, the consequences and implication of the challenges to church‐state arrangements by social, economic, and demographic changes, and growing religious‐secular tensions are studied. The empirical investigation of these issues relies on a survey ( n = 508) of a represe…
Jewish ethnicity and educational opportunities in Israel
Based on a 20% representative sample of all high school students in Israel in the mid-1990s, this study explores a reform implemented in low socio-economic status (SES) state religious high schools. Most of their students were from the disadvantaged Jewish ethnic group in Israel, Mizrachim. Perceived as unable to meet the requirements of academic programs, more than half these students studied on lower ranked vocational tracks. As part of the ref…
How not to reason with Pisa data
International comparative testing, such as the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), has considerable impact on policy-makers, the media and the general public. A central assumption underlying PISA is that global variation in students' academic performance is attributable to national educational structures and policies. The aim of this article is to demonstrate the problematic nature of this assumption. Rather than critiquin…
Unpacking secularization
Studies of secularization suggest it is a complex and multidimensional process and that secularization unfolds in different sets of identities, practices and values. But, in spite of its non-linear and non-coherent character, secularization it is not necessarily arbitrary and individualistic. Rather, as this work demonstrates, ethnic groups may be influenced by similar secularizing forces, but the impact of these forces will be different and diff…
The power of numbers
The use of standardised tests as a central tool in education policy has in recent decades become a common feature of many national education systems. In 2002 the Israeli Ministry of Education introduced new mandatory state tests for primary and middle schools. The article describes the adoption of these low-stakes tests and assesses their impact on schools using quantitative and qualitative data. It shows that the tests have unintended negative c…
Ethno-Religious Differences in Israeli Higher Education
The worldwide expansion and diversification of higher education systems has sparked growing interest in the stratification of students according to higher education institution and field of study. This article focuses on Israel, where higher education has experienced significant expansion and diversification during the past two decades. Using generalized ordered logistic regression models, the study analyses vertical and horizontal ethno-religiou…
Evidence-based decision making or a tunnel vision effect? TIMSS, problem definition and policy change in Israeli mathematics education
This study examines the influence of the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) 1999 results on mathematics education policy in Israel. Analyzing various documents, the study shows how these results transformed policymakers’ discourse regarding mathematics education. In order to achieve improvement in Israel’s ranking, the middle school mathematics curriculum was aligned with the TIMSS test. Following this change, the score…
Socioeconomic inequality in Israel
Socioeconomic Inequality in Israel is a timely and important book. Written by sociologists, economists, demographers and geographers, the chapters in this edited volume offer up-to-date analyses of...
Who Pays the Price for Parental Education–Occupation Mismatch? Evidence From an Israeli City
In recent years, education–occupation mismatch has become an important area of social research. However, little is known about its impact on the intergenerational transmission of educational attainment. This study investigates the possible negative consequences of a specific aspect of parental education–occupation mismatch, also known as overeducation, for high school students. Drawing from a sample of high school students in an Israeli city with…
Explaining a reverse gender gap in advanced physics and computer science course‐taking
In the past three decades in high‐income countries, female students have outperformed male students in most indicators of educational attainment. However, the underrepresentation of girls and women in science courses and careers, especially in physics, computer sciences, and engineering, remains persistent. What is often neglected by the vast existing literature is the role that schools, as social institutions, play in maintaining or eliminating …
From social origin to selective high school courses
Parents’ resistance to standardized testing in a highly centralized system
This paper discusses the emergence of an opt-out movement in Israel led by parent associations at local and national levels. The protest targeted the use of a national standardized test, the Meitzav. Analyzing media coverage of this movement and informed by the theoretical arguments of the Advocacy Coalition Framework, the study suggests that by forming a coalition with the Teachers’ Union, parents proclaimed their right to a role in education po…
Routledge Handbook on Contemporary Israel
"This handbook provides a comprehensive overview of contemporary Israel, accounting for changes, developments and contemporary debates. The different chapters offer both a historical background and an updated analysis of politics, economy, society and culture. Across five sections, a multi-disciplinary group of experts, including sociologists, political scientists, historians and social scientists, engage in a wide variety of topics through diffe…
Context Matters
He doesn’t deserve to be in the higher track
This study examines teachers’ justifications for their student sorting decisions in two Israeli secondary schools. Combining descriptive statistics and micro-ethnographic discourse analysis of 281 audio-recorded discussions, the study offers a new perspective on tracking’s multiple social and organizational functions: providing students’ needs, rewarding and punishing students, satisfying teachers’ emotional needs, and efficiently using school re…
College gender composition and bachelor's degree completion
Women are now the majority in undergraduate studies in many higher education systems, yet men and women tend to enrol at different rates in different fields of study and institutions. As a result, gender segregation is a prominent feature of contemporary higher education. Most previous studies have focused on gender composition in fields of study. In contrast, we considered college-level study in the Israeli context and asked whether composition …
Child’s age at migration, high school course-taking and higher education
The gendering of tech selves
This study uses original survey data to compare aspirations for computing jobs (“tech aspirations”) between students in Arabic- and Hebrew-language school sectors in Israel. Analogous to “paradoxical” patterns previously documented in cross-national studies, results show a smaller gender gap in tech aspirations in schools serving the more socioeconomically precarious Arab/Palestinian population. The strongest predictor of tech aspirations is stud…
Professional learning communities under test-based accountability
Test-based accountability (TBA) draws on a managerialist ideology that emphasises standards, constant measurement, and external motivation for improvement. It stands in sharp contrast to the idea of professional learning communities (PLCs) that aim to mobilise teachers' internal motivation and willingness to cooperate with peers to facilitate a joint, self-reflective inquiry process of pedagogical improvement. The Israeli education system has ado…
Educational tracking and social inequalities in long-term labor market outcomes
In this country-comparative study, we ask to what extent differentiation in secondary education accounts for the association between social origins and social destinations in adult age. We go beyond the widely applied formal definitions of educational tracking and particularly pay attention to country-specific approaches to educational differentiation. Our main expectation is that once we factor in these particularities, the degree to which educa…
Sociology (28 works) · Political science (23 works) · Psychology (19 works) · Law (12 works) · Economics (11 works) · Demographic economics (10 works) · Demography (9 works) · Mathematics education (9 works) · Pedagogy (9 works) · Geography (8 works)