About the Collaboratory
ABOUT
The Collaboratory
Where innovation meets tradition in the evolving landscape of Jewish education.
Within the 21st century, the landscape of Jewish education has undergone a significant transformation. Learning about Judaism now extends beyond traditional institutions and includes diverse, entrepreneurial, grassroots, and experiential learning opportunities. This shift emphasizes personalized and holistic education, nurturing skills and fostering positive Jewish life experiences, while becoming more inclusive and accessible. These changes have given rise to a surge of creative initiatives, driven by a small but energetic cadre of visionary scholars, leaders, and philanthropists. Yet, addressing age-old challenges in the field demands more than creativity alone; it necessitates a strong research foundation, public engagement, practical experience, effective communication, coordination, and collaboration.
Situated at a prominent university in the heart of the nation's capital, The Collaboratory leverages GW's multidisciplinary scholars to tackle educational, sociological, and leadership challenges. Bringing together three established university assets—the Collaborative for Applied Studies in Jewish Education (CASJE), its research arm; the graduate programs in Experiential Jewish Education and Israel Education, its academic arm; and the Mayberg Center for Jewish Education and Leadership, its public engagement arm—The Collaboratory represents a novel and dynamic bridge between the university, practitioners, communal organizations, and the wider public. Through this partnership, we seek fresh perspectives and solutions for American Jewish education and leadership.
Amidst this rapidly changing landscape, educators and stakeholders are eager for opportunities to grow, innovate, and design new schema for effective pedagogical models. The Collaboratory serves as the central address for Jewish education, providing vision, coherence, and rigor to a previously fragmented field. We delve into the underlying dynamics shaping communal and individual decision-making, investments, and concerns in Jewish education.
Our mission is to advance and enhance the field by incubating new ideas, investigating key issues, generating scholarship, training professionals and leaders, building relationships and organizational partnerships, and engaging and educating the public.
Our Vision
The Collaboratory’s purpose is to provide a locus of activity for understanding, organizing, planning, and preparing professionals for the contemporary Jewish education enterprise. Its theory of change derives from a classic view that new ideas need to be incubated, developed, field tested, experimented with, refined, implemented, refined again, and communicated—and then challenged—ultimately leading to further incubation, development, testing, and so on, all combining toward positive outcomes for the field.
The Collaboratory will:
Redefine and broaden existing conceptions of Jewish education by exploring the meaning of “belonging” in both the Jewish and global communities.
Professionalize the field by developing and supporting a cadre of Jewish professional leaders and educational practitioners with skills, dispositions, knowledge, and imagination necessary to be architects of the Jewish future.
Build the knowledge base by organizing explorations of current trends and their implications for the field.
Apply research to practice by taking a critical look at the inner workings of the Jewish education ecosystem and how it interacts with the Jewish community.
Apply practice to research by engaging working educators in the design and interpretation of relevant scholarly inquiry.
Expand community engagement by convening practitioners, scholars, communal leaders, stakeholders, and the public in deliberations on Jewish education and Jewish life.
Facilitate change in the complex Jewish education ecosystem by addressing communal priorities, proposing new agendas, and supporting innovation among networks of institutions, professionals, and lay leaders.