Graduation Year
2025
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree
Ph.D.
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)
Degree Granting Department
Leadership, Policy, and Lifelong Learning
Major Professor
William Black, Ph.D.
Committee Member
Zorka Karanxhas, Ed.D.
Committee Member
Michael Sherry, Ph.D.
Committee Member
Jose Castillo, Ph.D.
Keywords
Crisis Sensemaking, Enacting, Poetic Inquiry, Problem-setting, Reflecting
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to investigate high school principals’ Sensemaking of a school reopening policy during the COVID-19 pandemic. I inquired about four high school Principals, in the State of Florida, made sense of an Executive Order to reopen schools during a pandemic. As method, I applied Weick (1995) interpretivist framework of Sensemaking as reconceptualized by Coetzee & Wilkinson (2020), as both a theoretical and an analytic framework for a priori analysis. Weick (1995) included seven guiding principles of identity, retrospect, ongoing, enactments, social, extracted cues, and plausibility. Coetzee and Wilkinson (2020) emphasize an eighth principle of reflection and divide the framework into a three-phase metaphoric journey: Mapping the Journey, Travelling the Road, and Reaching the Destination. I collected the data using a protocol of semi-structured interviews and conducted analysis using a trio of Reflexive Thematic Analysis, the eight Sensemaking principles as a priori categories, and Poetic Inquiry, an arts-based method. I drew conclusions from Principals’ retrospective narratives of their problem-setting, interaction and enactment, and handling contradictions. I found Principals managed/negotiated the unexpected pursuant to an Executive Order by fusing individual beliefs and collective understandings; Making meaning, operationalizing policies/procedures, and reflecting; and Engaging in ongoing work, trial and error, and looking back in time. This inquiry has implications for research, policy and practice. There are opportunities to fill the gaps on principals’ Sensemaking as theory of leadership resiliency, systematic Sensemaking to include crisis leadership, and use of Poetic inquiry as a complementary Sensemaking method. There are also opportunities for policy design that democratically engages Principals, as policy actors pre-implementation.
Scholar Commons Citation
O'sullivan, Andrea, "Managing/Negotiating the Unexpected: Principals’ Sensemaking of a School Reopening Policy During a Crisis, the COVID-19 Pandemic" (2025). USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations.
https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/etd/10894
