The authors of this book - teachers of foundation courses to pre-service and in-service
teachers in Canada Israel and the United States - use culturally heterogeneous settings as
points of departure for inquiry and cross-cultural encounters of difference and illuminate how
among people of differing ethnic religious socio-economic political ideological and
gendered backgrounds the telling of experiential stories can shift personally and culturally
polarized positions. Key in the work documented here is the encouragement of narrative rather
than argumentative modes of expression: the instructors found inquiry more likely to stay alive
when they were able to access and incorporate both the mutual interest of and the personal
tensions between their students. The book illustrates how personal dynamics can subtly move
individual inquiry forward and help alleviate animosity and polarization.
