Coping under fire: Street-level school leadership in wartime

The coping strategies of street-level managers

Coping has been conceptualized within street-level bureaucracy as a key mechanism through which discretion materializes in practice. While the concept of coping originated in the psychological stress theory (Lazarus and Folkman, 1984), it has been incorporated into public administration scholarship as a behavioral expression of frontline discretion (Lipsky, 1980 [2010]; Tummers et al., 2015). Coping may be expressed through behavioral or cognitive efforts that are carried out dynamically, depending on the changing circumstances of the threatening or stressful situation the individual encounters (Lazarus and Folkman, 1984).

Consistent with this perspective, Lipsky (1980 [2010]) emphasized that frontline public employees must develop coping mechanisms to do their work. Researchers have tried to identify which coping strategies street-level workers adopt (see e.g. Döring and Jilke, 2023; Lavee, 2021), the conditions that prompt them to choose different strategies (Lotta et al., 2024; Nielsen, 2006), and the effects of these strategies (Edri-Peer and Cohen, 2026; Lotta et al., 2024). The rationale underlying this focus is rooted in empirical efforts to trace the factors shaping frontline workers’ discretion in implementing policy (Davidovitz, 2023).

Tummers and colleagues (2015) developed a typology of the most common coping strategies that frontline public service workers use: moving toward clients, away from clients, and against clients. Each strategy describes how workers exercise their discretion to reduce the conflicts and tensions encountered in their interactions with citizens. Thus, moving toward clients involves bending or breaking the rules, prioritizing certain citizens over others, and using personal resources to help clients. Moving away from clients includes strategies such as routinized and standardized interactions with clients and rationing services. Moving against clients involves strict adherence to rules and procedures, and aggressive behavior toward clients. Subsequent studies have demonstrated that coping strategies that might appear to move toward clients can actually be a way of appeasing clients rather than genuinely acting in their best interest (e.g. Davidovitz & Cohen, 2026).

Although crisis leadership has been extensively examined, wartime conditions constitute a distinct context characterized by sustained violence, persistent and tangible security-related uncertainty, and the need to function under existential threat and risk (Gutman, 2024). These conditions fundamentally shape how school principals are required to cope with and navigate the educational environments for which they are responsible (Al-Said et al., 2024). This distinction is critical for understanding how coping operates under extreme conditions, as the nature, intensity, and duration of wartime challenges fundamentally reshape principals’ decision-making processes (Davidovitz & Schechter, 2026)

The coping strategies of school leaders as street-level managers

The scholarly literature on school leadership has long examined the coping strategies that principals use, the factors shaping these strategies, and their implications for school management. A recent review by Tamadoni et al. (2024) highlighted the range of challenges principals face, including pressure from institutional arrangements, sociocultural contexts, students and parents, school staff, and various stakeholders, and offered recommendations for practical coping methods. For example, Poirel and Yvon (2014) found that principals in Quebec experience feelings of anger in response to reproaches from staff members, and that the most common coping strategy they adopt is emotional inhibition. Mahfouz's (2020) study of school principals in Pennsylvania reveals three main sources of stress for principals: professional pressures related to the work environment, interpersonal dynamics, and time constraints. In addition, principals cope with their feelings of loneliness, guilt, unfairness, or disappointment by spending leisure time with friends and family, and engaging in personal interests outside of work. Finally, Elomaa et al. (2023) reported that elementary school principals in Finland identified their workload, interpersonal conflicts, insufficient resources, and internal pressures as their major sources of stress. To cope with these challenges, the principals relied on emotion-focused, problem-focused, and social coping strategies. The study also emphasized the importance of social support in strengthening the principals’ success in coping with these challenges.

In addition, a substantial body of literature emphasizes the importance of context in understanding the coping strategies that principals adopt. Context plays a major role in the nature of their decision-making processes and underscores the inherently discretionary nature of their actions in dynamic, extreme, and rapidly changing environments (Grissom and Condon, 2021; Striepe and Cunningham, 2022). One of these challenging conditions about which we know little is how principals cope during wartime.

The coping of principals under prolonged wartime conditions

Prolonged wartime conditions disrupt the educational agenda of the school community in ways that extend beyond typical crisis situations (Smith and Riley, 2012). Beyond the already eroding routines, demanding working conditions, and multiple policy requirements, emergency situations such as war can profoundly destabilize the educational system in which school principals operate, pushing them to the limits of their decision-making processes (Grissom and Condon, 2021; Tamadoni et al., 2024). A substantial body of research has focused on understanding how principals have coped with recent, extended crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic (Chatzipanagiotou and Katsarou, 2023; Grissom and Condon, 2021; Striepe and Cunningham, 2022). For example, Grissom and Condon (2021) emphasized the need for targeted leadership training in crisis management, both prior to assuming leadership roles and throughout the principals’ ongoing professional practice. In addition, the study by Tamadoni et al. (2024) focused on how school principals in Turkey coped with the pressures that emerged during the COVID-19 crisis. Their findings indicated that the stressors experienced by principals were reflected in the actions they adopted, and that ensuring their own self-care and personal well-being was perceived as a prerequisite for successful coping during times of crisis.

Nevertheless, the issue of how principals cope during wartime has received comparatively limited attention in the literature. Wartime conditions differ from other types of crises, such as a global pandemic, as they are characterized by violence and traumatic situations that may persist over extended periods (Bar-On & Schechter, 2026). These conditions are often accompanied by the destruction of infrastructure and the displacement of civilians from their homes due to complex security circumstances (Berthold, 2014; Musisi and Kinyanda, 2020). Such realities may reverberate throughout the entire educational space, generating traumatic effects that significantly influence students, educational staff, parent committees, and school principals. Such conditions expose school principals to prolonged instability and ongoing violence, which impose a severe and enduring psychological toll on these leaders, manifested in heightened levels of stress and persistent trauma that they experience (Muthanna et al., 2022). For example, the study by Arar et al. (2019b) revealed how principals in Turkish schools, who were required to absorb an influx of Syrian refugees, did so through compassion, the humanistic inclusion of the school community, and leadership styles that emphasized collective cohesion and solidarity as the foundation for social unity. In addition, recent scholarship suggests that under wartime conditions, schools function as critical sites of resilience, where leadership involves continuous decision-making under uncertainty, requiring principals to navigate competing demands while maintaining stability and continuity (Gutman, 2024).

Recent scholarship following the events of October 7, 2023 has documented the unique challenges faced by school leaders in the Israeli context (see e.g. Davidovitz & Schechter, 2026; Gutman et al., 2026). For example, Gutman and colleagues (2026) examined how religious school supervisors operated as leaders during this war. Their findings identified four central themes: bearing the weight of faith while leading under traumatic conditions; encouraging innovation among educational staff in response to the emergency context; fostering spiritually grounded leadership; and leading pedagogical processes that integrate healing with instruction. These findings highlight the emotional and entrepreneurial roles assumed by supervisors, as well as the affective demands placed on leaders under wartime conditions. Similarly, Bar-On and Schechter (2026) explored the perceptions of school principals who were displaced from their homes due to the war. The findings indicate that these principals were required to create safe spaces for their educational communities, strengthen collaboration and coordination with stakeholders, provide emotional and psychological support, and maintain pedagogical continuity through innovative and digital practices. This study underscores the unique and heightened sensitivity required of school leaders operating under conditions of displacement and ongoing disruption. Taken together, in war contexts, leadership extends beyond instructional responsibilities to encompass the navigation of trauma, community needs, and persistent security threats, while maintaining stability and continuity under conditions of prolonged uncertainty (Gutman et al., 2026).

At a time when a growing number of international conflicts place school principals before unique challenges, understanding how they navigate these extraordinary, prolonged wartime conditions may shed light on how educational leadership operates under prolonged wartime and conflict-affected conditions. Existing research has paid limited attention to how principals cope under prolonged wartime conditions, particularly from a governance-oriented perspective that conceptualizes coping as an operative mechanism of professional discretion in decision-making under extreme and uncertain conditions. Accordingly, our approach is grounded in the street-level bureaucracy literature, specifically drawing on Tummers and colleagues’ (2015) typology of the strategies that frontline professionals use to cope with the challenges of performing their professional responsibilities during wartime conditions.

Research context

The war that erupted following the Hamas invasion of Israel on October 7, 2023 caused extensive disruption to the national education system, including the evacuation of entire communities, prolonged interruptions of learning routines, widespread student and teacher absences, and significant emotional and organizational strain on schools. Fifty-five communities, 25,000 students, and hundreds of educational staff were relocated to other parts of the country. The educational system nationwide was required to immediately establish alternative learning frameworks. Principals had to devise ways to deliver instruction in the face of extensive geographical dispersion, integrate in-person and online learning, and provide a holistic response to both the academic and emotional needs of the students and faculty—all while managing staff shortages and the needs of evacuated personnel (Myers-JDC-Brookdale Institute, 2024).

Participants

Because of this extreme emergency situation, participants were recruited through a snowball sampling (Merriam, 2002). Nevertheless, to maximize the depth and richness of our data, we also used maximal differentiation sampling (Creswell et al., 2016), also known as heterogeneous sampling. This purposive sampling technique captures a wide range of perspectives and provides insights into a phenomenon from various angles (Merriam, 2002). The maximal differentiation sampling in this study refers to the principals’ gender, years of teaching experience, years of experience as a principal in general, and years of experience as a principal in their current school. We also included state schools, state religious schools, and schools in various geographical areas of the country, all of which fall under the Ministry of Education's national vision, strategy, and budget. We did not begin with a set number of participants. In fact, we defined the study's sample on an ongoing basis as the study progressed.

Data collection

This study is part of an extensive research project examining principals’ perceptions of their role during wartime. We collected data during 2024 through 60 semistructured interviews designed to explore the principals’ personal perspectives (Rossman and Rallis, 2011). All participants were informed of the purpose of the study. They were also promised confidentiality, anonymity, and the option to leave the study whenever they wanted. Interviews generally lasted an hour and were recorded and transcribed verbatim. A specialist in both languages translated the transcriptions from Hebrew to English. During the interviews, we asked the principals identical questions about their challenges and how they coped with these challenges during the war. Participants were asked to reflect on their experiences of coping with the challenges that emerged during the war. Among other questions, they were asked to describe the most significant challenges they faced as school principals during the war. They were also invited to recount meaningful experiences following the outbreak of the war and to reflect on formative events that shaped their role as principals during this period. In addition, participants were asked to explain how decisions were made within the school, to describe patterns of communication during the wartime within the leadership team and with teachers, parents, and students, and to discuss how previous crises they had experienced at school influenced the ways in which they coped with the war.

Importantly, in a qualitative exploration, researchers should pay attention to how their backgrounds and personal experiences inform the theoretical and methodological perceptions concerning the inquiry (Rossman and Rallis, 2011). Both researchers also experienced this national traumatic situation. Our joint work, which includes ongoing mutual reflection, allowed us to become more aware of the conceptual and methodological issues pertaining to the current research, thus deliberating on the empirical data and being conscious of our experiences to ensure critical thinking.

Data analysis

The data were analyzed using a hybrid inductive–deductive thematic analysis approach (Fereday and Muir-Cochrane, 2006), which combined inductive sensitivity to the data and deductive engagement with Tummers et al.'s (2015) coping typology. Epistemologically, our analysis revealed how these participants constructed and described the reality they confronted in their schools during the war. While we drew on the conceptual framework of coping as an analytical foundation, the analysis remained data-driven, allowing us to identify the coping patterns emerging from the principals’ narratives about their experiences during the war.

We coded the data using ATLAS.ti software. In the initial stage, we read all of the interview transcripts word for word and recorded analytic memos throughout the process, noting relevant observations and analytical insights to guide subsequent stages of the analysis. Next, we created initial codes related to the challenges the principals described facing during the war, how they coped with these challenges, the factors that supported their coping efforts, and their emotional responses to the dynamic conditions created by the prolonged wartime conditions.

Specifically, the data were analyzed using thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2006). The analysis was conducted by the first author, and the final themes were established through a process of negotiated consensus. First, all interview transcripts were read in full, transcript by transcript, line by line, and word for word, without relying on prior assumptions. Following this stage of familiarization, initial analytic impressions were documented. Next, the data were systematically coded by identifying meaningful units within the text. The search for initial themes was based on identifying recurring patterns across the data. These preliminary themes included, for example, challenges faced by principals in the context of the war, general challenges, and principals’ coping with wartime-related challenges. In the next stage, we reviewed the themes in relation to the data, ensuring internal coherence and consistency, and refined them through processes of splitting and merging where necessary (Rossman and Rallis, 2012).

We then further defined and named the themes, clarifying their meanings and establishing clear boundaries between them through precise terminology. At this stage, we engaged more explicitly with the theoretical framework, linking the data-driven themes to Tummers et al. (2015) coping typology. This allowed us to categorize the coping strategies described by principals according to different directional orientations. For example, we developed themes such as coping strategies directed toward stakeholders and coping strategies characterized by distancing from stakeholders. In the final stage, the themes were integrated into a coherent narrative that illustrates how principals navigated different directions in their interactions with stakeholders within the educational arena while coping with the challenges of wartime. Importantly, the analytic process was iterative rather than linear, involving continuous movement back and forth between the data, codes, and emerging themes (Braun and Clarke, 2021). This recursive engagement enabled us to refine our interpretations, ensure alignment between empirical material and theoretical framing, and strengthen the overall rigor and credibility of the analysis. To enhance the credibility and rigor of the analysis, we constantly compared principals’ voices, actively searching for those that did not fit into existing categories. We maintained an audit trail documenting our analytic decisions and theoretical reflections (Braun and Clarke, 2006).

Moving toward stakeholders

During the wartime, principals must go beyond simply implementing educational policy. They must also attend to the mental well-being of members of their school communities, ensure the safety of their personnel, and provide material support to community members. To deal with these expanded roles, they adopt various coping strategies. Some dealt with these new demands by moving toward stakeholders. For example, one principal, a man in the north of the state with 10 years of experience in a secondary school, described how he reallocated his budget to address these issues, which are not part of his responsibility in routine times:

My role as a principal during a crisis is different from routine management. I deal less with the technical aspects of management and focus more on providing a sense of security to the students and the staff. The war is not felt here in a direct way, and therefore my role is to maintain balance, not to create unnecessary pressure, but also not to ignore what is happening around us. It is also important for me to make use of the increased budgets from the Ministry of Education in order to reduce learning gaps and to strengthen the emotional and educational resilience of the students.

Another principal, a woman from the south of the state with 12 years of experience in a secondary school, noted that she too had to address informal issues that were beyond the formal definition of her job and adopt practices that were unique to this extreme situation. Examples include the evacuation of members of the school community from their homes following missile strikes, dealing with staff members who were mobilized for reserve military service, and providing emotional support during this highly emotional and traumatic period:

Throughout the period of the war, there were significant changes in the perception of the role and in the way the school was managed. At the beginning of the war, the situation was particularly complex, and there was a need to adapt quickly to the new reality. We implemented a comprehensive support system in order to ensure continuous contact with every student. The significant innovation was the expansion of the support system to also include the teaching staff and employees. We created a mechanism in which every staff member, including teachers, secretaries, and cleaning staff, received at least two phone calls per week from a member of the school leadership. This was intended to respond to the wide range of complex situations the staff were dealing with, such as evacuation from homes, family members serving in the reserves or at the front, and personal anxieties.

Another principal, a woman from the south of the country with 19 years of experience in an elementary school, explained the increased number of “hats” she had to wear during the war:

It is a role that has taken on many more aspects than what we knew until now, a role that requires a lot of flexibility, a lot of mental flexibility, a lot of strengths that were not required before, a lot of virtuosity… The role is divided into several roles. The principal is an organizational manager, the principal is a psychologist, the principal is an advisor, the principal is a treasurer… because today, with self-management, all the money is in the hands of the principal, and you need to manage the finances in ways that are completely different from what we planned in the summer at the beginning of the school year. And you need to be very attentive to the staff, because the staff has also gone through crises, and in order for there to be resilience among the students, you need to take care of the resilience of the staff. Because if you have a teacher whose husband was mobilized, and she needs to be focused on her children, then how do you help her with an adapted schedule so that she can maneuver between home and work… okay? So this requires a lot, a lot, a lot, of both mental resilience and an understanding of how much a person can handle, and a lot, a lot of listening and empathy toward the people who work with you…

Moving away from stakeholders

Some principals found that the only way to cope with the increasing demands placed on them during the war was to reduce their involvement, limit their accessibility, and introduce routinization. For example, one principal, a woman with 1 year of experience in an elementary school in the central part of the state, described how, despite a demand from the inspector to submit grades, she prioritized students’ sense of safety and postponed responding to the inspector. Thus, her method of dealing with the demands of one stakeholder, the regulatory authority, was to move away from them to move toward another stakeholder, the students: “There are many things at the school that we stopped completely, and when the inspector said, ‘I want grades,’ I told her that she would not get grades; first of all, she would get protected children.” This example demonstrates how coping directions often overlapped in practice, as moving away from one stakeholder simultaneously enabled movement toward another.

Another female principal with 5 years of experience in a middle school in the central part of the state emphasized that coping in ways that built resilience during this complex period was also related to her ability to set boundaries vis-à-vis the different stakeholders within the educational community:

Resilience in wartime is knowing how to hold onto things; it is knowing not to get overly emotional about the changes. Resilience also means being aware that there is difficulty, that we are indeed in a period of war, but that it is not the end of the world. Knowing that in the end everyone is doing the maximum they can… that is exactly what I told the staff, that no one is asking anyone to do beyond their capacity. That we need, on one hand, to take care of ourselves, and on the other hand, to know how to give from our strengths in a smart way, and also to know how to set boundaries. In the end, the staff is not the parents and not the home. Therefore, the balance between what an educational staff can give and what the home gives together is the right combination. And therefore, resilience for me is knowing how to give and how much to give.

The security situation led many parents to demand real-time updates from the educational staff regarding the students’ protection from missile fire. Thus, one principal with 25 years of experience in special education from the south of the country, who works in a kindergarten as preparation for elementary school, explained:

At a certain point I set a very clear boundary with the parents, in the sense that at first they wanted us to photograph every child in the protected room, and I told them that I would send a group photo. We need to be there for the children. We cannot be busy with documentation, not with phone calls, not with answering one by one that the child is okay. I upload a photo, I write ‘everything is fine, we are in the protected room,’ and that is the boundary that I set. And I said that you can talk to me a few minutes after we come out, but give us this time to be with the children and to keep them safe. They come before everything. It is quite a challenge.

Moving against stakeholders

During wartime, principals sometimes used their authority to make managerial decisions, even when these decisions conflicted with the intentions or preferences of various actors within the educational arena. The principals acted decisively, at times forcefully and without apology, against stakeholders in order to lead under extreme conditions. For example, a female principal with 1 year of experience in an elementary school in the central part of the state explained how she had to stand her ground in the face of external pressures:

Throughout the war I made decisions and people were not satisfied with them, sometimes parents, the staff. But if I am satisfied with the decision, then I need to stick to it. That is, it is okay to listen and to try to consider the arguments, but I would tell myself, if you have already decided, be at peace with it. At least you will be satisfied with your decision.

Another female principal with 2 years of experience in an elementary school located in the Samaria region adjacent to the Palestinian Authority, which experiences many security threats, described how she had to take a firm stand and fight vigorously in order to devise a security arrangement for her school:

Most of the attacks are really in our community, and because of that, they are tougher. They will say things that in other communities they would not say. There is a great deal tension in the area, but they live with this kind of tension all the time. For example, I’ll give you an example: at the beginning of the war, I didn’t have a weapon, and I didn’t have a guard. I called the person in charge, and he said, there is no guard, there is nothing to do. I turned to the council and they were not upset. And I called my husband and asked him, how can I open a school without a weapon or a guard? I turned the whole world upside down. I called the committee, the community. I even called the community police officer.

Another female principal with 6 years of experience in an elementary school in the central part of the state described how, despite numerous complaints from parents about Zoom-based learning, she chose to set a clear boundary and enforce it in her interactions with parents:

In the first and second month I fought, I struggled. In the third month I told my deputy, enough…there will always be complaints. We will do what we think is right to do and move forward and that's it. And that's what happened… the complaints stopped coming because they understood that it was over…I created a document. I put a complaints box at the entrance to the school and I told them that they could put envelopes there and that's it. From this moment on, I don’t want to hear it, only compliments. If you don’t have something good to say, don’t say it. Before the war I still had patience for this. I am a very patient principal, but enough is enough. You need to understand I also manage a home. I have a family. I have a brother who was mobilized…

Moving between stakeholders

In addition to Tummers and colleagues’ three categories, we added a fourth that captures how principals cope in ways that go beyond operating along a single, fixed direction during wartime. Importantly, these coping directions did not always operate separately in practice. Rather, this category reflects the dynamic movement of principals across different coping directions and vis-à-vis multiple stakeholders, sometimes simultaneously, depending on the context, the actors, the emergency, and the timing. For example, principals described providing emotional support and care by moving toward students, while at the same time moving against regulators or enforcement authorities in order to implement decisions they saw as necessary under prolonged wartime conditions. Taken together, this theme underscores the inherent complexity of emergency coping and reveals the dynamic, processual nature of coping during wartime. This dynamic movement was particularly evident in the context following the events of October 7, where principals were required to navigate multiple, often conflicting demands stemming from the intersection of educational responsibilities, community needs, and ongoing security conditions.

In another example, one female principal with 3 years of experience in a middle and high school in the Jerusalem area described how, despite constraints imposed by institutional stakeholders that limited her room for action, she found ways to bypass institutional channels, thus moving against them, while at the same time responding to and moving toward the school community. In doing so, she actively selected which stakeholders were relevant for action:

I think that on one hand there is a feeling that my ability to act is limited during such a tense and complex time like this war, but on the other hand I don’t let it affect me. I do try to find the places where there is an opportunity for flexibility and creativity in finding solutions. For example, one of the strong things in our school is the feeling of solidarity and community partnership, and that is something that, fortunately, has not been harmed. There is mobilization of the families to provide responses to immediate needs, to create shared spaces, to do activities together. This is something that still exists with us.

Another participant described how, despite the paralysis of the educational system and the high level of ambiguity surrounding procedures during the emergency period, she was constantly torn between conflicting demands. In response, she seized every window of opportunity to create solutions ex nihilo for the community for which she was responsible. Although the system imposed significant constraints on her actions, she adopted coping strategies that moved toward students and teachers and operated within defined boundaries “below the radar” of formal supervision:

My sense of freedom of action as a school principal during this period was quite limited. On one hand, I felt that I had to act quickly and efficiently in order to protect the students and the staff and to maintain educational continuity. At the same time, the educational system as a whole was paralyzed, and the guidelines were contradictory or changed constantly. We could not promote meaningful educational initiatives when we were busy delivering basic instruction through improvised and problematic means. However, within the constraints of reality, I took advantage of every small loophole to promote more innovative ideas. For example, encouraging teachers to teach in small groups on Zoom or using more advanced digital tools. And as I mentioned, we also slowed down and devoted part of the lessons to talking about the war and making sure that no student was left alone in coping with the situation. So in that sense, I did have freedom, and no authority was examining me on that.

Another female principal with 4 years of experience in a secondary school in the country's north described how she was required to set priorities while interacting simultaneously with different stakeholder groups:

I think that, paradoxically…until the system really managed to organize itself and issue guidelines and what is called formal directives, it required us to organize independently. And personally, I looked at it as something that allowed for more freedom of action, managerial freedom… I saw it as an opportunity. In the absence of clear guidelines or formal directives, we had to decide for ourselves what we were putting at the center now. And during this period, we…emphasized the whole issue of social involvement, contribution to society, social activities, cohesion building activities for the students and also for the staff. …And I think that, again, our experience working with students at risk gave us added value. We organized quickly, because for me, as a school, the whole issue of social involvement and contribution to the community and involvement in the community is something we do on a daily basis, routinely. And then we mobilized it more strongly and pushed it more during the recent period, and it worked. And I also mentioned the work with the network and with the supervision, the coordination with them and the presentation of clear plans to them. That also helped us to get through this in a freer and more adapted way.

The principal explained how she moved away from the formal curriculum while moving toward the students and school staff, but at the same time was required to coordinate with the supervising authority. In this context, school principals were required not only to provide safety and protection to their educational communities but also to operate while mediating the blurred boundaries between civilian and military spheres. These contextual conditions significantly shaped how principals engaged with different stakeholders and the directions they adopted in navigating the challenges of this highly sensitive period. Taken together, these findings demonstrate that coping during prolonged wartime conditions was often characterized by simultaneous, overlapping, and sometimes contradictory movements across stakeholder groups, rather than by fixed or stable coping orientations.

Limitations and directions for future research

Our study, like others, is not without limitations, which also point to important directions for future research. First, our data are based on interviews with school principals during wartime, allowing us to examine the phenomenon solely from a managerial perspective. However, it is likely that incorporating the perspectives of additional stakeholders within the educational arena, such as students, parents, school staff, and policy-makers, would have enriched the understanding of how the educational field coped with the challenges of war.

Second, the data were collected while principals were actively coping with the war, a period in which emotional intensity was likely at its peak. This limitation highlights the value of future studies that examine how these leaders reflect on and interpret their coping processes retrospectively. It would also be valuable to compare participants’ accounts collected during the war with those gathered afterward to determine whether and how narratives of coping change over time in relation to the emergency situation.

Finally, our data were collected in the context of the October 7, 2023 war. The characteristics of this unique war may shape the particular coping strategies principals used. This context may therefore influence both principals’ narratives and the ways in which they cope with the complexity of their experiences. Future research could also compare principals’ coping strategies in different types of crises, such as political, economic, or social conflicts. Such comparative analyses may highlight contextual variation as a key factor shaping the principals’ dynamics with different stakeholders to identify coping patterns that are distinctive to specific types of crises.