Sustaining educational and psychological support during protracted war: a regional laboratory model from Ukraine

Protracted wars create challenges that extend beyond immediate educational disruption and humanitarian response. As crisis conditions become embedded within everyday life, educational communities must continuously adapt to emerging psychological, social, and educational needs affecting children, families, teachers, and schools. While existing research in Education in Emergencies (EiE) and school-based Mental Health and Psychosocial Support (MHPSS) has substantially expanded the understanding of child wellbeing and intervention strategies during crises, considerably less attention has been devoted to the mechanisms through which educational communities sustain support capacity over time. This study examines a regional Educational-Psychological Laboratory operating in the Kherson region, Ukraine, between 2023 and 2026. Rather than evaluating child-level outcomes directly, the study investigates how educational professionals collectively identified emerging wartime challenges as reflected in practitioners' representations, transformed professional concerns into reported strategies and practical recommendations, and redistributed knowledge through educational networks. A longitudinal qualitative case study design, supplemented by descriptive quantitative indicators, was employed. The empirical corpus included official documents, annual plans, seminar programmes, transcripts of open laboratory sessions, methodological materials, participant questions, consultations, and available feedback generated through laboratory activities. The laboratory functioned as a regional support structure involving approximately 110 educational institutions and a stable professional community of school psychologists, teachers, social pedagogues, and educational leaders. Analysis revealed four major domains of emerging wartime challenges: psychological stability and emotional wellbeing, educational participation and motivation, digital overload and distance-learning adaptation, and support capacity among educational professionals. Findings indicate that the laboratory functioned not simply as a provider of professional development activities but as a mechanism of sustained professional accompaniment through which practitioner-identified concerns were translated into collective reflection, practical knowledge generation, and contextually adapted educational action. Based on these findings, the article proposes the Collective Educational and Psychological Adaptation Model (CEPAM), conceptualizing adaptation as a cyclical process linking emerging challenges, professional requests, collective interpretation, practical recommendations, implementation, and renewed inquiry. The study contributes to Education in Emergencies, professional learning, and knowledge mobilization research by demonstrating how educational communities can sustain response capacity when war becomes part of everyday educational life.