Abstract

This article describes how an eclectic model has been successful in lowering stereotypes among students from different religions, nationalities, gender and political affiliations. In this article we present findings from workshops that utilized the integrative-operational model. This model comprises several dimensions, so that the group facilitator can decide when to focus on the interpersonal relations among the group members; when to concentrate the group in tasks promoting change in the participants themselves, between them, and in the microcosm they represent; and when to focus more clearly on the conflict between the group identities of the participants in order to secure the changes that the conflict between the identities seeks to engender. The integrative-operational model seeks meaningful channels of activities for all the groups involved in the encounter. By using this model, the facilitators strived to be role models for future teachers that will have to deal with sensitive matters in the increasingly complex multicultural Israeli school setting.