Home Page 

Dafna Gan, Senior Lecturer

Dafna Gan
Contact Info

The Open University of Israel Department of Education and Psychology 1 University Road, P. O. Box 808, Raanana 43107, Israel
Mobile:053-3032006 Email:dafnaga@openu.ac.il

Areas of Interest
  • Education for Sustainability
  • Environmental Education
  • Environmental Education Leadership
  • Outdoor Education Policy
  • Climate Change Education
  • Forest School and Forest Education
  • Ecohumanism
  • Art and Sustainability Education
  • Holistic Education
  • Teacher Training regarding Environmental Sustainability Education
  • Education and Littering Phenomena in Public Spaces

Dr. Dafna Gan is a Senior Lecturer at the Open University of Israel (OUI), serves as a faculty member at the Department of Education and Psychology. Dr. Gan completed her doctoral dissertation on environmental education and citizenship at Northeastern University, Boston, US. Her research is focused on environmental education within the contexts of leadership, policy, and pedagogy. She established a forest education specialization as part of the Master’s program in Environmental Education at Kibbutzim College of Education, where she served as the program head and led the Center for Sustainability Education. Her current research examines climate change education among teachers and youth participants in climate protests. A significant portion of her work is dedicated to Research-Practice Partnerships with various educational institutions in Israel, concentrating on outdoor learning and forest education research.

Gan, D., Alkaher, I., & Segal, T. (2023). Incorporating collaborative learning in teacher education to foster self-efficacy to implement environmental citizenship: an action research. International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, 24(3), 700-718.

Assaf, N., & Gan, D. (2021). Environmental education using distance learning during the COVID-19 lockdown in Israel. Perspectives in Education, 39(1), 257-276.

Gal, A., Gan, D., Ben Zvi-Assaraf, O. (2021). Can Elementary School Students Understand the Complexity of the Lesser Kestrel’s Ecological system? Interdisciplinary Journal of Environmental and Science Education, 17(1), e2226.

Gan, D. (2021). Environmental education leadership - the perceptions of elementary school principals as expressed in their drawings and explanations. Environmental Education Research, 27(10), 1440-1466.

Gan, D. (2021). Perspectives on environmental education, citizenship, and assessment: A case study of elementary school teachers and principals in Israel. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 29, 127.

Gan, D., Gal, A., Varga, A., & Réka K. (2019). Do eco-schools really help implementation of ESD? A comparison between eco-school systems of Hungary and Israel. Hungarian Educational Research Journal, 9(4), 628-653.

Avriel-Avni, N., Gan, D. (2019). Nurturing environmental citizenship by mapping the field of action. International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education. 20(6), 985-1001.

Avissar, I., Alkaher, I., Gan, D. (2018). The role of distributed leadership in mainstreaming environmental sustainability into campus life in an Israeli teaching college: A case study. International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education. 19(3), 518-546.