Kibbutzim College of Education, Technology and the Arts (Hebrew: סמינר הקיבוצים, Seminar HaKibbutzim) is a college based in Tel Aviv, Israel. The college specialises in teacher training, offering B.Ed and M.Ed degrees, and is the largest academic college in Israel, with over 6,000 students. Around a quarter of teachers in Israel graduated from the college.
From the early years of the state, motherhood has constituted the defining element of Jewish women's social position. Thus, over the years, motherhood has been used as a potentially transformative political force, particularly regarding issues of national security. By defining themselves as mothers, women have entered the public sphere without challenging patriarchal structures, yet, by doing so, have simultaneously reinforced these structures and constrained female agency. Examining motherhood in Israeli public discourse in light of mothers who were role models, such as Rivka Guber and Miriam Peretz, and the effort to mobilize women as mothers in national protest movements, the article shows how gender boundaries have remained stable over time, and motherhood continues to anchor female public roles. It thus offers motherhood as a useful prism for examining preservation and change in public discourse in Israel.
Intergroup communication (IC) serves as a critical arena in which narratives, worldviews, and group behaviors are expressed, confronted, and translated into concrete communicative practices. Within this unique space of interaction, divergent narratives may remain rigid and unchanging, manifesting as parallel monologues that coexist without genuine engagement. Yet, under certain conditions, such communication can also open the door to dynamic processes of mutual challenge, development, and transformation. This narrative literature review aims to strengthen the growing connection between the scholarship on narratives in societies embroiled in intractable conflict and the well-established research tradition on intergroup contact. Specifically, it seeks to enhance our understanding of the interplay between narratives, behaviors, and communication practices in both face-to-face (FTF) and online contexts of IC. While the discussion includes broader global perspectives, the primary case study centers on the ongoing conflict and communicative interactions between Israeli Jews and Palestinians.
The discussion examines the emerging ecological critique of art education, which frames artistic production, especially in the plastic arts, as environmentally unsustainable due to its reliance on non-essential material consumption. I argue that this critique, while contemporary in form, echoes long-standing philosophical concerns, beginning with Plato's dismissal of art as wasteful and socially detrimental. The paper challenges the conclusion that art education is ecologically unjustifiable by drawing on the aesthetics of Kant and Dewey. Both philosophers present aesthetic experience as a mode of disinterested and perceptually rich engagement with the world. On this basis, I propose that art education cultivates non-instrumental attention and anti-consumerist dispositions, aligning it with ecological aims rather than opposing them. The paper concludes by outlining implications for environmentally attuned art education practices.
Background Cognitive training (CT) interventions can improve brain health, yet research is heavily skewed toward Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) populations. Racial and ethnic minorities remain underrepresented in dementia prevention studies, despite facing unique structural and cultural barriers. This study evaluated a culturally adapted, group-based CT programme delivered in Arabic to older adults in Northern Israel. Methods A parallel-group controlled trial was conducted with 80 Arabic-speaking participants (aged ≥ 60) recruited from community day-care centres. Participants were assigned to one of four parallel groups (n = 20 each): Cognitive Training (CT) only, Physical Exercise (PE) only (active control), Combined CT and PE, or No-Intervention control. The intervention consisted of eight weekly group sessions. Pre- and post-intervention assessments included global cognition (MoCA), memory (CVLT-II, ROCFT), executive function (BRIEF-A), and physical performance. Results Participants in both the CT-only and Combined (CT + PE) groups demonstrated significant improvements in global cognition and memory performance compared to controls. The Physical Exercise group, despite serving as an active control for social engagement, showed no significant cognitive gains. Furthermore, combining physical exercise with cognitive training did not produce additive cognitive benefits over CT alone. Conclusions Community-based, culturally adapted CT delivered in participants' native language effectively improved global cognition and memory in a minority older adult population. These findings demonstrate the feasibility and importance of culturally grounded interventions in narrowing brain-health disparities beyond WEIRD populations.
The integration of generative AI in education transforms how learners relate to knowledge, construct beliefs, and exercise agency within knowledge processes. This paper examines these epistemic transformations through the lens of epistemic agency: the capacity and responsibility of learners to actively participate in knowledge creation, evaluation, and advancement. Current educational responses, particularly AI literacy frameworks, emphasize skills and competencies to meet this transformation. We demonstrate that these responses remain limited to user paradigm, decontextualizing both the technologies and the learners who engage with them and falling short of addressing the complex epistemic relations that emerge when AI systems function as an epistemic infrastructure. We propose cultivating an agentic stance as a pedagogical orientation that goes beyond traditional AI literacy and critical thinking approaches. Drawing on (Biesta and Tedder, Stud Educ Adults 39:132–149, 2007) ecological understanding of agency as emerging through engagement rather than possessed as capacity, and building on critical pedagogy, eco-pedagogy, and media studies, we conceptualize the agentic stance as an achieved positioning within AI-integrated epistemic ecologies. Rather than focusing on what learners can do with AI, the agentic stance emphasizes how learners position themselves within these environments, viewing AI systems as objects of investigation, making embedded power relations visible, and recognizing their participation in complex human–machine interdependencies. This reframing carries implications beyond educational settings, as the capacity to maintain epistemic agency in AI-mediated environments directly bears on democratic participation, public epistemology, and the navigation of trust and authority in increasingly algorithmically governed societies.
