The Arab-Israeli Conflict: Process, Content and Interaction

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Abstract
This paper has attempted to combine what to teach with specific suggestions for how to teach. Part I presents a cognitive process model for designing sequential instructional activities that stress concept learning and generalizing. Part II demonstrates how to implement the three-stage model using the Arab-Israeli conflict as the subject matter content. Part III suggests two instructional approaches—opining and inquiry—for engaging secondary students in meaningful interaction with substantive issues. Probably no global confrontation is more passionate, significant, or controversial than the Arab-Israeli conflict. Incidents between revengeful Mideast enemies increase the ever-present danger of a United States-Soviet Union showdown. This explosive geopolitical situation provides the substantive content for implementing an instructional activity that encourages students to conceptualize, identify causal factors, infer generalizations, and to justify their positions. Controversial issues generate maximum student involvement while providing realistic and meaningful topics for classroom analysis (Massialas and Sprague, 1974, p. 10). Analyzing controversial topics allows students to identify concepts and infer generalizations about geopolitical realities that are headline news. A central objective of this paper is to use content (the Middle East conflict) to achieve a conceptual objective. This paper does not specify teaching method or argue that content alone is the objective; it explains why concept learning, generalizing, and inquiry are the building blocks of analytical thinking. Stated differently, the central objective is to teach students to analyze the Middle East situation by learning to think conceptually. Concept learning will hopefully become an ongoing process students can transfer to different situations.

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