To investigate the 21st-century skills used by educational leaders who established temporary formal educational settings in evacuation centers for evacuated kibbutz communities in Israel after the October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks, and to examine how these skills were applied during the ensuing war to sustain educational continuity for evacuees.
This qualitative-phenomenological study employed a theory-driven conceptual approach. Open interviews were conducted with 40 national, regional and local educational leaders who organized and implemented education in evacuation centers. The interviews examined their roles, experiences and challenges. Previous research on 21st-century skills informed the analysis, and the OECD Learning Compass 2030 was applied as a conceptual lens in the discussion.
Content analysis revealed five key sets of 21st-century skills: critical thinking, teamwork and collaboration, flexibility, endurance and perseverance and creativity and innovation. These sets coalesced into two overarching themes, stability and adaptability, which together formed a pattern of adaptive stability in which leaders created routines and anchors while adjusting structures and practices to evolving circumstances. The three skills of critical thinking, collaborative teamwork and flexibility were associated with both themes but served different functions in each, operating as bridging skills sustaining this dynamic pattern.
Conducted in an under-researched wartime setting, the study shows how interdependent skills operate as an integrated mechanism enabling adaptive stability and offers a concise way to connect the OECD Learning Compass to wartime educational leadership and to training for interdisciplinary teams in emergencies.
