Aline Muff

Followers

Following

Co-author

Public Views

I am a researcher specializing in citizenship education, youth civic identity, and participatory research in politically contested societies. My work examines how young people and educators, particularly those from marginalized communities, navigate citizenship, belonging, and political education in conflict-affected contexts.
My research bridges comparative education, critical pedagogy, and conflict studies, with regional expertise in Israel/Palestine, Northern Ireland, and Germany. I employ qualitative and participatory methods (including photovoice and arts-based approaches) to center marginalized voices in understanding civic education, religious identity, and social justice.
I recently completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (2021-2025), where I served as research coordinator for an Israeli Science Foundation project on citizenship education with marginalized urban youth. I am currently seeking research positions in academia, think tanks, or international organizations.

Research themes:
- Citizenship education in divided and conflict-affected societies
- Marginalized and minoritized youth civic identity and agency
- Participatory and arts-based research methods
- Religion/Spirituality and civic education
- Critical pedagogy and antiracist education
- Historical-political education and memory politics
- Teacher identity and practice in contested contexts
- Critical political education about the climate crisis

I welcome collaborations, particularly on comparative projects related to education in divided societies, participatory youth research, or critical approaches to citizenship education.

less

InterestsView All (12)

Uploads

Papers by Aline Muff

Teaching and Learning about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Israel

Download

Spiritual and indigenous funds of knowledge: how Palestinian Muslim teachers reclaim Islam and citizenship education in Israel

Diaspora, Indigenous, and Minority Education, 2024

Scholars have argued for better integration of religion and citizenship education through overarc... more Scholars have argued for better integration of religion and citizenship education through overarching goals of interreligious tolerance and inclusive citizenship. Yet, such debates often neglect the political dimensions of these subjects. In this study, we explore how Palestinian Muslim teachers in Israel interpret the intersections of Islam and citizenship education and how they draw on this intersection in their teaching. Through qualitative interviews with 15 citizenship and Islam teachers, we found that most teachers ground this relationship in their spiritual Islamic and indigenous Palestinian funds of knowledge. In their teaching, these funds can serve as counterhegemonic tools to deconstruct dominant forms of citizenship and Islam as defined by the Israeli state. We argue that the hybridization of these funds of knowledge has important educational implications for conceptualizing more critical and culturally relevant forms of Islam and citizenship education.

Download

Three-faced: The conflicting roles of citizenship education in conflictaffected societies -A comparison of Northern Ireland and Israel

Research in Comparative & International Education, 2022

The purpose of this article is to compare teachers’ and students’ interpretations of citizenship ... more The purpose of this article is to compare teachers’ and students’ interpretations of citizenship education (CE) across different communities in conflict-affected societies. By drawing on qualitative research that was
conducted in four different schools in Northern Ireland and Israel (Catholic, Protestant, Jewish-Israeli and Arab-Palestinian), we show what may be universal and particular about teaching and learning CE in these
different contexts and why variations occur. Despite being a compulsory subject with a common curriculum in both jurisdictions, CE was subject to multiple and competing interpretations by teachers and students. It was
variously deemed to be an empowering subject that teaches critical thinking and is relevant to students’ lives, a political tool that both stirs and silences controversies, and a subject that focuses on performance and whose importance was routinely underplayed. The findings illustrate the complex entanglement of CE with the particular political and community context that shapes its interpretations.

Download

Between collaboration and conflict: The exploration of micropolitical processes during reform enactment in an Arab junior high school in Israel

This article discusses a qualitative case study that investigated the micropolitical processes in... more This article discusses a qualitative case study that investigated the micropolitical processes inside an Arab junior high school in Israel during the enactment of the New Horizon reform. Our analysis focuses on how the school’s educational staff interprets and translates the reform into practice, how their professional identities have developed along this process and on the role of their background as members of the Arab-Palestinian community. We found the principal and teachers draw on both collaborative and conflict-promoting strategies to defend their interests. The study demonstrated the importance of micropolitical considerations and local contexts for macropolitical reforms.

Download

Agents of the nation state or transformative intellectuals? Exploring the conflicting roles of civics teachers in israel

by Aline Muff and Zvi Bekerman

This article focuses on the role of the civics teacher against the backdrop of the recent politic... more This article focuses on the role of the civics teacher against the backdrop of the recent political developments in Israel, where the political elite increasingly seeks to underpin citizenship education with a national-religious ideology. As in previous work on this topic by other academics, we draw on Gramsci’s work on cultural hegemony to locate the hegemonic discourse of citizenship education in Israel and focus on the teacher’s role along the spectrum of being an agent of the nation-state to acting as a transformative intellectual. We have interviewed Jewish-Israeli civics teachers to gain a better understanding of how they mediate their role between the different demands that the politics of civic education in Israel imposes on them. Our findings outline how teachers sometimes tend to reproduce the hegemonic discourse and how they also find ways to rebel against it, drawing on counter-hegemonic strategies in their classroom practice.

Download

Aline Muff

Uploads

Papers by Aline Muff

Log In