Shevy Govrin says that there is not enough awareness of the knowledge and expertise that educators—teachers and principals—accumulate in the course of their work. This is unique, important, valuable knowledge that arises and develops in the course of their work but is not documented, so it is lost. Education professionals lack the time and appropriate settings to learn even from their own experience, not to mention the experience of their colleagues. By searching for a language for expressing practical knowledge, Ovnayim strives to bridge the standard dichotomy between theory and practice in education.

In the article in Hed Hahinukh, Shevy Govrin describes the rationale behind Ovnayim, its activity, and her personal understanding of the teaching profession.

This understanding led Govrin, a teacher by training with a master’s degree in education and extensive experience with in-service courses and teaching-training, to establish the Ovnayim Institute in conjunction with the Mandel Leadership Institute. The aim of Ovnayim, founded in 2003, is to introduce into the education system mechanisms for salvaging and preserving knowledge and making it accessible and useful to educators. At present Ovnayim is working with several schools around the country, conducting training programs and running an online library containing materials that have been documented and analyzed by work teams together with the staff of Ovnayim.

“Teaching is a profession. A teacher is a professional. And teachers are a community of professionals. Each teacher’s practical experience is an asset. Teachers are a high-caliber, experienced group that should lead itself and head the pedagogical discourse in Israel. Teachers must perceive themselves as professionals. They must understand that their work counts. They are the ones standing in the classroom and teaching; they are the ones who contend day after day with the decisive problems of society and are obligated to solve them. Therefore they have to not only be partners in the discussion but lead it, and certainly lead the profession. What happens in class is the best study material for teachers.”

Based on these understandings, Ovnayim is developing tools for salvaging teachers’ practical knowledge. Its initial aims were to document what happens in class and to give this knowledge a language. Ovnayim engages in research and development of on-the-job learning settings for education practitioners, in an effort to improve the quality of education and teaching and to promote a professional culture based on cooperation and learning from experience. Ovnayim runs learning work groups that engage in researching their professional practices and improving them. Ovnayim implements methodologies of professional development and organizational learning, adapting them to the Israeli educational context. The methodologies include:

• Case studies (“teaching stories”)
• Critical friends group
• Looking at students’ work
• Video analysis (analyzing videotaped practices)
• Lesson study

Over time, Ovnayim has developed ties with schools and started building a library whose shelves do not contain books of theory and statistics, but rather descriptions of actual situations from teachers’ daily lives.

To read about the Ovnayim Institute, visit www.ovnayim.org.