Category: Empowering Students (Spring 2012)

Ken Firestone, MSW, DSJS is an educational consultant, teacher and adjunct professor at various colleges and educational settings in the mid-Atlantic region. His primary area of academic interest and research is in the field of Jewish intellectual and religious history. This article is based on research related to his doctoral dissertation.

Ken Firestone examines multiple aspects of hevruta study and the ways it can empower students.

Introduction

This article explores ways the hevruta methodology can function as a means for increasing student empowerment and autonomy through mutual interdependence. It also explores how this traditional learning method requires adaptation when applied to contemporary non-Orthodox Jewish educational settings. This adaptation impacts each aspect of the learning enterprise which includes the role of the teacher, the student, and the text. When applied to non-Orthodox settings, there is a paradigm shift within this learning triad that redistributes the power relationships between them. To clarify the terminology being used in this article, “traditional” learning settings refers to Orthodox learning contexts in the past and present. The term “contemporary” refers to non-Orthodox learning contexts.

Classical scholastic vs. hevruta study

The contemporary democratic educational perspective encourages a dialogue among equals (Brookfield, 1995). Freedom is viewed as a prerequisite for learning (Dewey, 1938). The hevruta relationship provides an ideal environment for students to freely experiment and explore new ways of learning and discovery. Freedom fosters student empowerment as students create their own learning experiences together.

The classical scholastic approach to learning views the teacher as the “all knowing” expert who deposits knowledge into passive students who are viewed as receptacles for the knowledge (Freire, 2000). It views the learning content being passively absorbed by the students. This approach resists dialogue between teacher and student. In contrast, the hevruta approach encourages the learning partners to look to one another as a kind of teacher, though lacking the authority and full range of responsibilities of an actual teacher. Content is not passively absorbed. The conversational approach to learning views the text as a “trigger,” instigating creative thinking. Collaborative learning requires students to integrate, reinterpret, and transform their learning by engaging one another and the text to create new knowledge, as opposed to merely reproducing it (Millis and Cottell, 1998).

Student empowerment

In contemporary learning settings, students play a substantive role interpreting texts. Hevruta study encourages the empowerment of students to actively participate in creating their own learning experiences and to take responsibility for governing and evaluating the content of their learning. The Jewish educational tradition encourages students to be motivated to assert themselves by asking questions and engaging in discourse as they participate in their own learning process. According to this tradition, students are expected to even challenge their teachers and their assumptions. Pirkei Avot states, “The bashful person cannot learn” (Avot 2:5). To grow, the student needs to have hutzpah, freedom, and a sense of empowerment to challenge their teacher, the text, and their learning partner. Given that knowledge does not reside solely with their teacher, students need an enriched learning environment that provides multiple sources for students to expand their learning. Hevruta partners provide such a resource for students to access, control, and direct their own leaning. Through interactive conversations, learning partners expand textual interpretations by generating greater depth, richness, and texture to the learning experience than solitary learning or teacher lectures. A goal of Jewish education is developing student interdependence, as opposed to solitary independent learners. The Talmud states that scholars who study on their own will be cursed, grow foolish, and ultimately forget their learning, causing them to sin (Ta-anit 21a) – hevruta study provides the added value of giving text study a unique Jewish “accent.”

Proverbs 22:6 states, “Educate the child according to his way, even when he will be old he will not depart from it.” According to this view, the “way of the student” is intrinsic to the student. The teacher helps guide students towards their own way. Franz Rosenzweig (1886-1929) introduced an educational philosophy that takes into account the individual needs of students living in the modern secular Western culture. He realized that modern Jewish education needs to be adapted to the student’s “way.” Rosenzweig describes his approach as “[A] learning in reverse order. A learning that no longer starts from the Torah and leads to life, but the other way around: from life …back to the Torah” (1955, p. 98). By beginning with the student, education guides the student towards Torah. Hevruta study creates an environment that helps students express themselves through the medium of their own cultural and social context provided by a peer. Through interpersonal and interactive dialogues, students can relate their learning to their personal lives and individual dispositions.

Hevruta study channels the expression of human curiosity and discovery within the context of an intimate relationship provided by another human being who is also a seeker. When studying in hevruta, the intensive aspect of the learning experience is contained, primarily, within the dyadic relationship. Learning partners animate the text by reenacting the past in the present through their mutual enterprise of deriving meaning from the text that has relevance to the times in which they live. The collaboration of diverse minds generates alertness, concentration, and evokes more from the students and the material under discussion. By building upon the heterogeneity of the learners, collaborative learning is designed to help students reach their full potentials and self-empowerment through interdependence and mutuality.

Shifting the teacher-student power relationship

In traditional settings, the teacher's authority is axiomatic. In contemporary settings, the teacher's authority is earned. The contemporary teacher earns authority based on his/her skills as a master facilitator of the interactive classroom. The teacher is familiar with both classical and modern methods of textual interpretation. The teacher’s role shifts from dispenser of information to manager, coordinator, and facilitator of the learning process, as power is diffused between the teacher and the students. Brookfield states, “Students’ awareness of the power relationship that exists between themselves and their teachers is such that it pervades nearly all interactions between them” (1995, p. 11). Once collaborative learning is initiated, the educator loses some control over the learning (Johnson et al., 1991). Brookfield notes that true equality between teachers and learners is impossible as teachers contribute materials and ideas so learning can take place (1995). Teachers act as role models of the learning process. They demonstrate how to share alternative perspectives, engage in critical reflection, and allow an equal opportunity for all learners to participate (Cranton, 1998).

In the contemporary educational milieu, both the teacher and the student struggle with religious questions and doubts. The teacher is open to share aspects of their own personal life experiences for the purposes of instruction, including both positive and negative aspects. In this way, the teacher has close proximity to the lives and challenges facing their students. These factors contribute to a paradigm shift which narrows the gap between the teacher and the student, blurring some of the distinctions between them.

Teacher’s role

The teacher-facilitator sets a safe emotional tone within the classroom conducive for students to open up, channels the group energy in a positive way, and assists the students by helping them “mid-wife” the birth to their own ideas (Belenky et al., 1986). The teacher is viewed as a ready and willing resource available to provide support when requested, acting as a kind of “pseudo-hevruta partner” as the teacher listens to the students within hearing distance of the learners and responds to their questions (Brown and Malkus, 2007). The teacher is responsible for providing “instructional roadmaps” or study guides to orient the paired-learners to the subject under study. As a role model of the learning process, the teacher demonstrates how to apply concepts to real-life contexts, shares alternative perspectives, engages in critical reflection, takes into account their own cultural biases, is open to revise their own preconceived notions, takes interpretive risks, and allows the opportunity for all learners to participate in the learning process. The teacher is also valued as a skilled senior member of society with a breadth of life experiences to share (Katz and Parker, 2008). The teacher needs to be an authentic Jewish personality who can explain why they observe or do not observe specific Jewish rituals and stands for what they teach and believes in what they say. The teacher’s goal is to provide the support students need so they can become interdependent learners.

The power of the social context

Lev Vygotsky (1978) presents a psycho-social approach to learning. He argues that the social context in which the learning takes place contributes more to the depth of the impression of the learning on the learner than other factors. This perspective emphasizes the social nature of learning whereby what students learn is impacted more by their interaction within others than by the content of the learning (Lehman and Kress, 2004). According to this view, the expansion of the interpretive depth of conversation aids both memory and retention. This intellectual depth evokes inner religious experiences. The social context facilitates a learning that can penetrate the student’s consciousness. The Jewish educational tradition views the transmission of its own tradition critical to Jewish group survival. It also has a religious motive. Its goal is the improvement of religious behaviors which include the totality of life, as nothing in Jewish life is “secular.” Students need to continuously recall their learning in order to apply religious values through personal commitments. Student interactions, therefore, empower students to play a critical role as links in the transmission of the tradition as it strengthens the students’ identification with the tradition, by passing on the tradition by enabling students to recall it, and improve the learners’ own personal religious behaviors as they “…walk along the way” (Deut. 6:7).

Conversational learning

The hevruta study methodology creates a dynamic learning experience through conversations framed by the text. A conversation is an unrehearsed “intellectual adventure,” lending itself to an openness which gives the learning a life of its own. The spontaneity of conversation evokes unanticipated responses. Participants make a mutual commitment to try understanding the text from their partners’ perspective while confronting their partner in order to raise new levels of conscious awareness (Holzer, 2007). Within the interactive dialectical conversation, power goes back-and-forth between the partners as each student presents their arguments and objections. Mutual commitment to the “other” is a form of moral education inserted into the hevruta learning process. In this way, it strengthens the social responsibility of the learners. The conversational approach maximizes the learning potential of each student, promotes active student involvement in the learning process, strengthens moral commitment of the learners, and generates positive interdependence and individual accountability.

Learning partners get to know one another in a deep way by learning together. This helps hevruta partners push and stretch one another to reflect on ideas requiring them to go beyond their own personal projections and cultural biases that are often imposed onto the text under analysis. Paired learning requires a readiness by the learning partners to provoke and challenge one another to reflect on the origin of their ideas through intensive and candid dialogues. Through the interpretive meaning-making process, students discover something new while approaching the perspective of their learning partner (Holzer, 2007). A commitment to understanding the other person and the text can turn text study into a transcendent and transformative experience. Through hevruta study, the student is empowered not just as a reader of the text but as a transformer of the text and themselves.

Through hevruta study, students are expected to improve their listening skills and refine their ability to articulate what they want to say. This requires reading their partner’s body language, nonverbal cues, and affective expressions. Partners must listen attentively so they can fully understand their learning partner’s arguments. Jewish education is viewed as a means to fortify Jewish individual and group identity (Gamoran, 1924). Hevruta study is a means for students to clarify their own values and identity. Students must point out the strengths and weaknesses of their partner’s views; identify areas where they agree and disagree; be prepared to seek out alternative ways of reading the text; revise opinions when necessary; and develop cognitive distance in order to view ideas in reflective and objective ways. Conversational learning presumes mutuality and reciprocity between the learners. Study partners must be emotionally strong enough to endure their partners’ challenges.

This process facilitates the internalization of meanings derived from texts as well as heightens the awareness of Jewish ways of thinking which can strengthen personal and religious commitments as well as contribute to community building. Learning through the conversational mode helps hevruta study partners “own” their textual interpretations. This contributes to students giving the text greater authority as a guide for personal meaning-making (Goldstein, 2001, 14). This sense of “ownership” empowers learners to make deliberate decisions about both religious and secular matters.

The power of the text

The modern paradigm presumes students require well-packaged information that is easily accessible, suggesting contemporary learners are incapable or unwilling to investigate complex texts requiring careful and creative interpretations (Holtz, 1992). This approach is often expressed in the form of overarching survey courses based on a general topic or theme. By contrast, hevruta study emphasizes depth over breadth (Levenson, 2002). This occurs by students focusing their attention on uncovering the meaning of specific textual passages.

Modern methods of interpretation value subjective understandings of textual ambiguities as a legitimate means of expanding textual interpretations. Subjective readings cause the text to lose “control” of its original intended meanings (Hirsch, 1976). Detached from its author, the text attains a form of autonomy, opening the text to a wide range of interpretations. To counteract the tendency of students reading “into” the text whatever they would like the text to say, hevruta partners keep one another in check by challenging their partner when they sense they are projecting too much of their own personal and contemporary cultural perspectives into text readings (Tickton Schuster and Grant, 2008). When multiple learners bring their diverse perspectives to the learning process, the text loses some of its force and autonomy. Another way to offset overly subjective textual interpretations is the realization that the text retains fragments of its cultural origins. Careful readers must locate what the text is “pointing to” that remains outside what is stated in it. Students must orient themselves towards that “point.” Hevruta partners can bring a wide range of academic disciplines to the interpretive process. Textual meanings, therefore, lie both within the reader and the text (Holzer, 2007). The power of the text lies in the quality of student interactions which can expand the meaning-making process derived though the depth of interactive textual analysis. In this way, students wield power over textual interpretations, though they do not wield exclusive power over them.

Traditionalist scholars may not always challenge the very premise of their own endeavor. This premise is that the biblical source, upon which all other primary texts rest, is the embodiment of Divine revelation. Contemporary hevrutot do question the assumptions of their endeavor. They question the origins of the text. They try to locate multiple “voices” and socio-cultural agendas expressed through it to understand the text’s cultural foundations. They try to identify inter-textual dialogues within the text to understand what the multi-vocal text is repressing and expressing. The contemporary student is empowered and emboldened to question the agendas of its authors and redactors.

Summary

The hevruta methodology, as presented in this article, creates a power shift as it relates to the student, the teacher, and the text. In contemporary settings, hevruta study empowers the student. It also empowers the text to yield deeper and broader meaning and relevance as it relates to the life of the student. Students are empowered by: 1) creating their own learning experiences, 2) directing and controlling their own learning process, 3) governing and evaluating the content of their own learning, 4) deepening and expanding the learning which can transform the learner, 5) creating new knowledge rather than just reproducing it, 6) playing a substantive role as interpreters of text through direct encounters with primary sources which generates a sense of “ownership” by the student in their textual interpretations, 7) viewing the teacher as a facilitator of the learning process whose ideas can be challenged, 8) enabling students to make deliberate personal decisions due to the clarity of identity and values that can occur as a result of the challenges posed by their learning partner, 9) fortifying Jewish group identification, religious commitments, and strengthening of social responsibilities as a result of the deep impact of the learning on learners, and 10) viewing themselves as a vital link in the chain of the transmission of Jewish religious traditions by participating within the framework of the larger intergenerational conversation of the Jewish people.

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