Sensemaking and Discourse in Context: A Critical, Integrated Framework to Study School Board Policy Making

• In Event: 56.033 - School Boards in Changing Contexts: An Analysis of Equity and Opportunity in Policy Making Across Missouri

Abstract

Few studies examine school board members’ experiences and decision-making processes (Frankenburg & Diem, 2013), especially across diverse, changing communities (Turner, 2015) in suburban and rural contexts (Hess, 2002). In turn, we argue that policy studies must examine board members’ work using a conceptual framework that integrates sensemaking and critical discourse analysis in studies of policy implementation. Such a framework provides a lens for understanding both the individual and social experiences that shape policy processes, as well as board members’ responses (or lack thereof) to diverse/minortized communities and educational inequalities.

Educational Policy Implementation and Sensemaking
Educational policy studies have moved from exploring “what” policies get implemented, to examining the more complex picture of “what works” for whom in which kinds of local contexts (Honig, 2006). Such research demonstrates how people and places matter. What gets implemented in one district may not in another. Perhaps board members use different types of research evidence in their deliberations, depending upon their contexts and relationships (Asen & Gurke, 2014). Alternatively, local values and beliefs can shape public debate and board decision-making (Author, 2011). It follows: differing policy processes and decisions may be due, in part, to local stakeholders’ sensemaking.

Put simply, sensemaking is the process of coming to understand something new, to make sense, to structure the unknown (Weick, 1995). The educational policy process involves sensemaking of various stakeholders: teachers and school leaders must figure out what a policy means before they can adapt their practice (Spillane, 2000); parents may study district policies as they consider registering children for a new program (Author, 2012); and students decide how to behave based on their understanding of new school regulations (Anagnostopoulos, 2006). Similarly, before policies are even passed, board members must make sense of proposals and whether they meet community needs (Turner, 2015).

Sensemaking is an individual and a social process (Weick, Sutcliffe, & Obstfeld, 2005), which is shaped by multiple factors: (1) one’s personal knowledge and beliefs (Spillane, Reiser, & Reimer, 2002), (2) the language used in policy documents (Hill, 2001), (3) one’s context and networks (Coburn, 2001; Coburn & Russell, 2008), and (4) the values and political discourse of a community (Turner, 2015). Figure 1 demonstrates how individual and social sensemaking processes are embedded and intersect, with each level shaping, and being shaped by, the others.

Sensemaking and Discourse
We must not forget, however, that power and politics overlay these processes of sensemaking (Levinson & Sutton, 2001). Policies work as both “text” and “discourse” (Ball, 2006); they are both the actual text of a political decision, and a broader cultural statement about the way things can or should be (Yanow, 2000). In terms of critical discourse analysis, they are a discourse/Discourse (Gee, 2011) and set boundaries for what individuals say and do. In turn, to understand board members’ responses to their communities and issues of inequality, the following case studies examined not only various components of sensemaking, but also how language-in-use/discourse shaped access to knowledge/power, representation, and inclusion/exclusion of particular groups.

Author

• Lisa M. Dorner, University of Missouri - Columbia