Teaching Under Fire: A Cross-Sectional Study of Dispositional and Life-Stage Correlates of Perceived Resilience Among Israeli Educators Under Missile Threat

Educators who keep teaching under wartime missile threat occupy a demanding dual role, sustaining instruction and students’ emotional needs while personally exposed. This descriptive cross-sectional study examined dispositional and life-stage correlates of perceived resilience among 234 educators in Northern Israel during active missile threat (April–July 2024); all shared the same regional context, though individual exposure was unmeasured. Participants completed the CD-RISC-10 and the Ten-Item Personality Inventory. Two confirmatory questions concerned personality–resilience associations; a third, exploratory question concerned the parent–non-parent contrast. In a hierarchical regression, Emotional Stability (β = 0.37) and Conscientiousness (β = 0.24) were the strongest observed dispositional correlates, and the model accounted for 41.0% of the variance; because Emotional Stability and the resilience measure overlap conceptually and in method, it is reported as an observed correlate rather than a predictor. Parents scored higher than non-parents (d = 0.68), but minimal covariate overlap (only 27 of 186 parents matchable) means parenthood cannot be separated from an incompletely measured life-stage configuration; it is retained only as an exploratory marker. Interpreted within a Conservation of Resources framework, this study offers a contextual extension of established personality–resilience findings to educators under sustained missile threat; all findings are associational.