E-mail: Shelleytalexander@yahoo.com

Dr. Shelley Alexander has been the coordinator of the International Research Group on Jewish Education in the Early Years since 2010. This research group of the Center for Jewish and Democratic Education at the University of Haifa was established in conjunction with the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute for the explicit mission to help train researchers in the nascent field of scholarship in early childhood Jewish education. The group’s founding as an online community of learners represented for the first time an attempt to provide professional development to this international set of educational researchers and was a unique experiment in this regard. As co-creator, full member and coordinator of the group since its inception, Shelley has overseen the group’s activities and collaborative research resulting in a 2016 published article on perspectives of American and Israeli Jewish early childhood educators on inclusion in their classroom.  In addition, she is a co- editor of the current collaborative book project of the group contracted with Bloomsbury Academic Press and entitled: Early Childhood Jewish Education: American and Israeli Perspectives on Multiculturalism, Constructivism and Gender.

Shelley received her B.A. in Child Development from UCLA, her M.A. in Human Development and California State Multi-Subject Teaching Credential from Pacific Oaks College in Pasadena, California, and her Ed.D. in Jewish Education from Gratz College in Melrose Park, Pennsylvania.