Sensemaking, Sense-Breaking, Sense-Giving, and Sense-Taking: How Educators Construct Meaning in Complex Policy Environments

• In Event: 18.035 - Managing Complex Systems for Implementation and Scale

Abstract

Studies on educational change are commonly examined from a sensemaking perspective, one which focuses on how norms and cultural conceptions get framed and integrated into the classroom. This study examined how educational reform changed how educators think about their reform-related roles, identities, practices. Seventy-two early childhood educators working in classrooms in which the reform was enacted were observed and subsequently interviewed. Thematic content analysis revealed the different ways that educators identified with reform through positive, negative, and ambivalent associations. Educators’ reform-related identifications were attributed to their sensemaking constructions, ones capturing how they break sense from previous role constructions, give sense to new ones, and take sense about external circumstances and the possibilities of their policy environment.

Authors

• Noa Rom, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

• Ori Eyal, Hebrew University