Dr. Rotem Trachtenberg Maslaton

My life before BGU:​

My academic trajectory includes a bachelor's degree in special education and science education at the Kibbutzim College of Education, a master's degree in curriculum development at Tel Aviv University, and a doctorate and post-doctorate at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.

My doctoral thesis, under the guidance of Dr. Dana Vedder-Weiss and Prof. Adam Lefstein, dealt with the potential and opportunity provided by pedagogical controversy for teachers' learning and professional development. My research included participating in teachers' meetings and documenting their disputes. Using a combined quantitative and qualitative analysis, I was able to characterize teachers' disputes in Israel on a broad scale, to describe and demonstrate the discourse that develops following disputes, the opportunities and challenges they present, as well as to develop a conceptual framework for fruitful arguments between teachers - arguments that promote learning.

Why BGU?

It is a great privilege to become a member of BGU's Goldstein-Goren Department of Jewish Thought, one of the world's leading centers of Jewish studies and also a warm, supportive and inviting environment. I was warmly welcomed at BGU, both by the academic faculty and the administrative staff, and the students I have encountered thus far are excellent.​

My rese​arch:

My research focuses on the way teaching novices learn during their professional training. I use a socio-cultural perspective to examine their discourse and the potential of productive pedagogical talk to develop professional perspectives in teaching. I am also interested in the uniqueness of teaching as a profession, developing core practices that are unique to teachers.