The Crisis of Expertise in Schooling: An Ethnography of Parents as Educators in Israeli Alternative Schools

Expertise in schooling is shaped by the global crisis of expertise, the contested nature of teaching as a profession, and contemporary middle‐class parenting norms. The paper examines these influences by presenting cases of parents who became educators in alternative schools in Israel. We introduce the concept of experience‐based professional expertise and examine the top‐down and bottom‐up dynamics through which this lay expertise is established and legitimized.