Sapir College

This study examined the developmental processes linking family resilience, coping strategies, and Posttraumatic Growth (PTG) among Arab adolescents and emerging adults living under chronic political violence and minority stress in Israel. Participants were 174 Arab youth (ages 12-28; 76.4% female) who completed an Arabic-language survey during ongoing hostilities. Measures included a shortened Family Resilience Assessment Scale (FRAS-12), the short COPE inventory yielding problem- and emotion-focused indices, and the Posttraumatic Growth Inventory-Short Form (PTGISF). Correlational analyses revealed that family resilience was positively associated with both coping indices and PTG; however, only problem-focused coping was significantly linked to PTG. Mediation analysis (PROCESS Model 4, 5,000 bootstraps) indicated that problem-focused coping fully mediated the association between family resilience and PTG, controlling for religion and religiosity. These findings suggest that active, problem-focused coping serves as a developmental mechanism through which family-level strengths are translated into growth among Arab adolescents and youth facing continuous traumatic stress. The results underscore the importance of culturally grounded, family-centered interventions that enhance problem-solving and meaningmaking capacities within collectivist and conflict-affected minority contexts.

The current study assessed how mental health outcomes and related risk factors varied by proximity to the October 7, 2023, attacks by Hamas among a community sample from Ofakim, a town in southern Israel. Established cutoff scores on self-report measures of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), major depressive disorder (MDD), and generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) were used to estimate disorder prevalence rates. Background and trauma exposure were examined as risk factors in areas that differed in geographical proximity to the attacks. Participants were randomly sampled from two areas in Ofakim during June-August 2024: Sample 1 (S1) included 388 individuals in the attacked neighborhood, and Sample 2 (S2) included 329 individuals located elsewhere in town. Probable PTSD rates were significantly higher in S1 (56.4%) than S2 (44.7%), p < .001. The prevalence of probable MDD was 38.6% in S1 versus 28.7% in S2, p < .001. The prevalence of probable GAD was 42.0% in S1 versus 29.0% in S2, p < .001. In generalized linear models, there were no significant differences in mental health outcomes across neighborhoods. However, interactions between neighborhood type and risk factors emerged such that low income increased the likelihood of probable PTSD and GAD within the attacked neighborhood. The findings highlight the substantial mental health impact of mass trauma on an entire town, worsening with event proximity. Low income was a specific risk factor for individuals in the attacked neighborhood, which raises questions about whether economic support could buffer the impact of mass trauma in low-income individuals.

Abstract This short editorial introduces the special issue in the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology ‘Workplace coaching at the crossroads’. We outline how workplace coaching has grown into a preferred helping relationship to support workers and leaders in navigating increasingly complex and ever‐changing workplaces. Our definition of coaching frames it as a facilitative, dialectical process that enables positive change and outcomes for the coachee. We summarize that meta‐analytic evidence tells us that coaching ‘works’ by documenting positive impacts on a range of outcomes, including performance, learning and wellbeing. Yet, we know far less about how coaching works and the role of coaching contexts. The five contributions in this special issue address the coaching process. They are methodologically diverse and include both longitudinal and observational data. We posit that the meta‐theme for coaching to work is the coachee's active engagement in shaping the coaching process as they work towards proximal (e.g., self‐awareness) and more distal (e.g., long‐term goals) outcomes. We conclude with a call for future research to address the coaching context by considering micro‐level (e.g., stakeholder alignment), meso‐level (e.g., organizational strategy, coaching culture) and macro‐level considerations (e.g., societal culture, technological transformation).

This paper examines the critical importance of integrating mathematics into high school physics education. This study presents mathematics as an integral component of understanding the physical world, not merely a technical tool. The paper identifies four fundamental roles of mathematics in physics: creating syntactic structure, generating multiple representations, providing reasoning tools, and facilitating discovery. The research demonstrates how mathematics enables transition from qualitative to quantitative description and provides predictive capabilities, illustrated through contemporary examples including GPS systems, smartphone technologies, medical imaging, and vaccine development. Practical applications across technology, medicine, and sports demonstrate relevance to students’ daily lives. The study emphasizes how mathematical understanding in physics prepares students for higher education, develops analytical thinking, and deepens world comprehension. Pedagogical recommendations include connecting to everyday life, using multiple representations, and implementing logic-checking strategies. This research offers a practical framework for educators to enhance physics instruction and supports the argument that mathematical literacy in physics is essential for informed citizenship in our technological society.

The emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) coaching challenges the professional roles and identities of human coaches, yet empirical research on this transformation remains scarce. This qualitative field study investigates how professional coaches navigate their roles following the organizational adoption of AI coaching. Drawing on the automation-augmentation paradox, occupational role identity, and role ambiguity theories, we analyzed 15 semi-structured interviews with 12 professional coaches in an Asian coaching firm, contextualized by pre- and post-interviews with the company CEO and the AI provider. Findings reveal that top-down AI implementation triggered significant role ambiguity, catalyzing both protective and expansive identity work. Coaches defended their unique human value (e.g., empathy), while simultaneously experimenting with AI, shifting their perception from threat to collaborative tool. This adaptive process enabled the emergence of distinct AI functions and new "blended" human-AI coaching models. Our resulting conceptual framework demonstrates that resolving the automation-augmentation paradox in relational professions is fundamentally an identity-driven process rather than a technical task reallocation. Furthermore, our findings demonstrate that organizationally induced role ambiguity can serve as a catalyst for professional renewal and vocational adaptation, particularly when supported by participatory leadership, thereby advancing theory and contributing new insights to the literature on technological and vocational transformation in organizational contexts.