Feeling the Chaos: The Role of Emotions in Sense-Making at the District Level

• In Event: Pandemics and Organizational Dynamics in Schools

Abstract

Education leaders grappled with many challenges due to COVID-19. This context of disruption and ambiguity provides an opportunity to explore an under-theorized aspect of sensemaking in education policy: the role of emotions. To build a better understanding of the emotional dimensions of sensemaking, the paper examines how district/system leaders made consequential organizational decisions.

We draw on sensemaking theories to understand how emotions interacted with cognitive schemas, beliefs, and attitudes to influence organizational decision-making. Sensemaking is a theoretical basis for understanding how actors interpret and react to new, ambiguous, or disruptive occurrences (Weick et al., 2005). In education policy research, scholars primarily emphasize the cognitive aspect of sensemaking (e.g., Coburn, 2001; Spillane et al., 2002; Sutherland, 2020). Organizational sociologists produced a nascent research base on emotional sensemaking (e.g. Maitlis et al., 2013), and yet the emotional dimensions of sensemaking in education policy studies remains largely unexamined. We use sensemaking to elucidate how emotional reactions may have influenced education leadership and policy decisions during the pandemic.

We employ case study methodology (Yin, 2014) to answer the question: How did emotions shape the sensemaking processes of educational leaders during the COVID-19 crisis? We draw from two research projects focused on pandemic response conducted across six states/regions in the United States in 2020-21. We analyzed 68 system or district level leader interviews: 6 participants come from charter school management organizations (CMOs), and 62 from traditional public districts, including superintendents, CMO leaders, and other top administrators. Analyses consist of multiple rounds of inductive and deductive coding. Document and social media analysis serve as a form of triangulation (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016).

In the face of an unprecedented global pandemic, little prior knowledge of crisis response, and local discretion, leaders engaged in complex meaning-making processes to guide action. Preliminary analyses indicate variation in the ways in which emotions manifest in these processes. In many cases, fear played a central role, allowing leaders to notice empirical data while continuing to pursue actions that were not always supported by those data (e.g., purchasing large amounts of personal protective equipment such as hand sanitizer). Decisions around re-opening were also related to leaders’ tolerance for risk and feelings of anxiety related to potential virus spread. In other instances, discomfort with chaos drove leaders to categorize needs and actions, focusing on easily “fixable” problems.

In contrast, crisis communications often resulted from sensemaking that engaged positive emotions which spurred expansive/creative thinking (e.g., care, pride, honoring and celebrating teachers). Emotions may have given greater credence to personal experience (e.g., experience with prior crises, parenting) or complicated cognitive dimensions of sensemaking (e.g., how to interpret public health data). Consistent with ideas around “emotional contagion” (Wang, 2020), the social dimensions of sensemaking appeared to engage emotions– for example, how leaders responded to vocal stakeholder concerns and demands.

This paper expands conceptions of sensemaking to include emotional processes. In addition to these theoretical implications, the paper concludes with lessons for practice – including leadership development.

Authors

• Kate Kennedy, RAND Corporation

• Julie A. Marsh, University of Southern California