Crisis leadership: Developing and validating a scale for school principals’ crisis management in Israel

In an era of uncertainty and frequent crises, understanding how school principals lead effectively under adversity has become increasingly important for ensuring educational continuity and resilience. This quantitative study aimed to develop and validate a new scale for school principals’ management during a crisis, with exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses of the scale items to examine factorial validity. Three samples from Israel's educational system were used: the first included 50 principals (pilot study), the second, 130 principals, and the third, 95 principals and 954 teachers. The research was conducted from February 2022 to June 2024. Results yielded a developed (second-order) scale based on five main factors (32 items) influencing school-management during a crisis: (1) promotion of internal and external learning processes; (2) inclusion and support of students, parents, and the community; (3) sustaining principal's resilience; (4) enabling systems management; and (5) collaboration with external organizations and principals’ peers. The crisis-management scale was positively related to principals’ cognitive complexity and systems thinking, organizational resilience, and teachers’ ability to cope with crises. This scale holds both theoretical and practical significance in addressing schools’ effective management during times of crisis, enabling schools to prepare practical strategies for crisis situations based on its various dimensions.