Sensemaking Process Research Articles

Socio-technical innovations and participation

The dual nature of socio-technical systems requires new design paradigms that go beyond conventional informatic instrumental approaches. With the realization that digital applications change social practice but also that social influences affect design principles of digital technologies, design principles must be oriented towards real-world practices and thus towards situated forms of appropriation of the intended user groups. This is achieved with newer approaches of practice-based design, which are based on ethnography-based and participatory design principles and share anumber of basic assumptions of participatory approaches in gerontology. The aim of the article is to explain basic approaches of practice-based design from the field of socio-informatics and to relate them to participatory approaches in gerontology. The article develops an interdisciplinary perspective on the design of socio-technical systems. Interdisciplinary connecting lines are listed that can inspire current development projects, thus opening acorridor for efforts in the further development of analytical, conceptual and methodological perspectives. The discussion provides interdisciplinary approaches for the conception, design and appropriation of IT applications and infrastructures for and with older people on the basis of participatory and qualitative empirical approaches. The aim is to align IT design more closely with situated practices, sociocultural contexts and sense-making processes of older people.

Flipping the expert: faculty educator sensemaking during transition to an active learning-based curriculum

PurposeCurricular change is becoming a standard feature of medical schools as they respond to learners’ evolving needs. Implementing change is not always straightforward, however, especially when it directly shifts the expected roles of faculty educators. The authors investigated how faculty educators navigated a significant transition to the Active, Competency-Based, and Excellence-Driven (ACE) curriculum at one state medical school.MethodThe authors employed a qualitative descriptive design and conducted thematic analysis. From June 2018 to January 2019, the authors conducted individual, in-depth interviews with faculty educators and administrators involved in first-year medical student education. Data were analyzed inductively to identify the sensemaking process for faculty.ResultsTwenty-one faculty educators participated in interviews averaging 58 min. Four phases were identified among educators as they moved through the change: (1) Making Sense of the Change; (2) Grieving the Lecturer Educator Role; (3) Risking an Active Learning Educator Role; and (4) Identifying the Rewards of Active Learning-based Teaching.ConclusionFaculty buy-in is an essential component of successful curricular change implementation. While most faculty in this study reported eventual enjoyment from the new interactional teaching that fostered critical thinking, navigating the change was not always smooth. This study suggests faculty development around curricular change should be tailored to address the varying faculty concerns relevant to the four phases that were identified. Effective and optimal faculty support during large-scale curricular change must take into account not just new skills but also the grief and risk faculty may experience as their roles shift.

Family caregivers’ sense-making of the results of functional neurodiagnostics for patients with Prolonged Disorders of Consciousness

ABSTRACT Functional neuroimaging and electrophysiological assessments can identify evidence of residual consciousness and cognition in patients with prolonged disorders of consciousness (PDOC) who are otherwise behaviourally unresponsive. These functional neurodiagnostics are increasingly available in clinical settings and are recommended by international clinical guidelines to reduce diagnostic and prognostic uncertainty, and thereby assist family caregivers in their best-interests decision-making. Nevertheless, little is known about how family caregivers make sense of the results of these state-of-the-art functional neurodiagnostics. By applying Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) to interviews with family caregivers of patients with diagnoses of PDOC who had received a functional neurodiagnostic assessment, we identify three primary themes of sense-making: The special significance of “brain scans”; A dynamic sense-making process; Holding on to hope and holding on to the person. These themes highlight the challenges of helping family caregivers to balance the relative importance of functional neurodiagnostic results with other clinical assessments and identify an ability of family caregivers to hold a contradiction in which they hope for recovery but simultaneously express a rational understanding of evidence to the contrary. We offer several recommendations for the ways in which family caregivers can be better supported to make sense of the results of functional neurodiagnostics.

“Can I be More Social with a Chatbot?”: Social Connectedness Through Interactions of Autistic Adults with a Conversational Virtual Human

The development of AI to function as communicators (i.e., conversational agents), has opened the opportunity to rethink AI’s place within people’s social worlds, and the process of sense-making between humans and machines, especially for people with autism who may stand to benefit from such interactions. The current study aims to explore the interactions of six autistic and six non-autistic adults with a conversational virtual human (CVH/conversational agent/chatbot) over 1–4 weeks. Using semi-structured interviews, conversational chatlogs and post-study online questionnaires, we present findings related to human-chatbot interaction, chatbot humanization/dehumanization and chatbot’s autistic/non-autistic traits through thematic analysis. Findings suggest that although autistic users are willing to converse with the chatbot, there are no indications of relationship development with the chatbot. Our analysis also highlighted autistic users’ expectations of empathy from the chatbot. In the case of the non-autistic users, they tried to stretch the conversational agent’s abilities by continuously testing the AI conversational/cognitive skills. Moreover, non-autistic users were content with Kuki’s basic conversational skills, while on the contrary, autistic participants expected more in-depth conversations, as they trusted Kuki more. The findings offer insights to a new human-chatbot interaction model specifically for users with autism with a view to supporting them via companionship and social connectedness.

Commercializing University Innovations: A Sense-Making Perspective to Communicate Between Academics and Industry

Technology transfer offices (TTOs) play a key role in helping universities commercialize research and distribute knowledge. Nonetheless, there remains an incomplete understanding of the communication, which takes place between academics, industry partners, and TTO staff. The aim of this article is to examine, with the use of sense-making theory, strategies used by TTO employees as they work with academics and industry partners to commercialize intellectual property. In order to achieve this aim, an ethnographic exploratory case study was undertaken at a university TTO. The collected information then became the basis for qualitative interviews with TTO staff from 13 universities in Scotland. The study contributes to the sense-making theory by explaining how, during the commercialization conversations, TTO employees can deliberately interrupt the sense-making process through “dumbing down.” Our research introduces the TTO employee as a mediator and examines the role of the TTO staff in facilitating the sense-making process. The findings illustrate how someone who is not an expert in the field can add to the sense-making process. The study suggests that TTO employees intentionally engage in a “dumbing down process” to make complicated conversations easy to understand.

A Faith-based Entrepreneurial Sensemaking Lens: Empowerment, Risk, and Agency

Starting a business is an endeavour that requires the ability to identify an opportunity, match the necessary resources and manage the uncertainty and risk associated with doing so. Using a qualitative methodology, we explore the role that faith plays in this new venture creation as regards Christian entrepreneurs in South Africa and how it affects their sensemaking process. We find that that their faith influences the entrepreneurial sensemaking process in complex ways and demonstrate the formation of a shared sense of agency between God and the entrepreneur - a paradox of agency. This agency shifts from the entrepreneur in the creation phase to a faith-aligned agency over time, which helps mitigate identity conflict and uncertainty. We demonstrate the dynamics and webs of association between the economic and the social realms both in terms of the initial decision-making process but also the entrepreneurs’ desire for both an economic and social impact.

Experiences and Sense-Making Processes of Online Teaching Internship: A Master of Teaching Programme

Teaching requires a student-teaching internship for the license and registration, usually completed from the face-to-face and on-campus components. However, due to the covid-19 pandemic, many classrooms have switched to online platforms, regardless of the levels. This study aims to understand student-teachers’ experiences of an online-based student-teaching internship and how such internships influence the sense-making processes of student-teachers in online school environments. In line with the self-efficacy theory and social cognitive career and motivation theory, the case study method was used to invite a group of Master of Arts in Teaching students (a total of 18) to share their experiences and sense-making processes of their online student-teaching internship. Semi-structured interviews, focus group activities, and member-checking interviews were used to collect data from the participants. Based on the qualitative data, three themes were categorised: 1) positive experiences, 2) technology education is the trend, and 3) preparation for online classroom environments. The study may provide support or ideas to university leaders, supervisors, department heads, student-teachers, and policymakers to reform and polish their teaching qualification programmes with different types of delivery modes in order to meet the needs and educational trends of the coming decades. Keywords: case study, Master of Arts in Teaching, online learning, self-efficacy, sense-making process, social cognitive career, motivation theory, student-teaching internship

Decolonising Qualitative Analysis: Collectively Weaving Understanding Using Talanoa and Fa’afaletui Pacific-Indigenous Research Methods

Sense-making processes shape the messages and impacts of qualitative research. Using qualitative data analysis methods embedded within a Pacific-Indigenous research paradigm decolonises research. This article discusses the Pacific-Indigenous data analysis processes of talanoa and fa’afaletui employed within a study of Pacific elder care in Aotearoa New Zealand, conducted by scholars of Pacific/Moana heritage. While research literature has primarily identified talanoa and fa’afaletui as data collection methods, we discuss our use of talanoa and fa’afaletui as methods of analysis. Talanoa and fa’afaletui were engaged as collective processes of orality weaving understanding from the researchers’ lived experiences and navigating across languages. Enhancing authenticity and actionability are identified as benefits of talanoa and fa’afaletui collective data analysis. Considerations for implementing these methods are language, logistics and location.

Iceberg Sensemaking: A Process Model for Critical Data Analysis.

We offer a new model of the sensemaking process for data analysis and visualization. Whereas past sensemaking models have been grounded in positivist assumptions about the nature of knowledge, we reframe data sensemaking in critical, humanistic terms by approaching it through an interpretivist lens. Our three-phase process model uses the analogy of an iceberg, where data is the visible tip of underlying schemas. In the Add phase, the analyst acquires data, incorporates explicit schemas from the data, and absorbs the tacit schemas of both data and people. In the Check phase, the analyst interprets the data with respect to the current schemas and evaluates whether the schemas match the data. In the Refine phase, the analyst considers the role of power, articulates what was tacit into explicitly stated schemas, updates data, and formulates findings. Our model has four important distinguishing features: Tacit and Explicit Schemas, Schemas First and Always, Data as a Schematic Artifact, and Schematic Multiplicity. We compare the roles of schemas in past sensemaking models and draw conceptual distinctions based on a historical review of schemas in different academic traditions. We validate the descriptive and prescriptive power of our model through four analysis scenarios: noticing uncollected data, learning to wrangle data, downplaying inconvenient data, and measuring with sensors. We conclude by discussing the value of interpretivism, the virtue of epistemic humility, and the pluralism this sensemaking model can foster.

Using feedback loops from computational simulations as resources for sensemaking: a case study from physical chemistry

Sensemaking is an important way of learning and engaging in science. Research has shown that sensemaking activities, such as questioning, hypothesizing, and model building, are pivotal in developing critical thinking and problem-solving skills in science education. This paper investigates the role of computational simulations in facilitating sensemaking in chemistry education, specifically examining how these simulations can sustain the sensemaking process. Through a detailed case study in a physical chemistry course, we explore the interplay between students' real-world experiences, theoretical knowledge, and computational simulations. This analysis reveals that computational simulations, by providing interactive and visual representations of chemical phenomena, can create a conducive environment for sensemaking, where students actively engage in exploring and resolving conceptual uncertainties. Based on these results, we argue that computational tools, when effectively integrated into educational settings, can facilitate sensemaking in science education.

COLLECTIVE SENSEMAKING AND INTERSEMIOTIC DISSONANCE: A STUDY OF CRISIS DISCOURSE ON TIKTOK

Social media applications are an important medium of crisis information exchange. Of growing importance and use is TikTok, an application with a multi-modal curation structure that enables users to share content of various interests. Previous TikTok scholarship on crisis research has not considered how the application sustains a cultural understanding of a crisis event. Using a semiotic analysis approach, this study explores TikTok’s role in crisis communication by examining the process of collective sensemaking of the Port of Beirut, Lebanon explosion on August 4th, 2020. The preliminary findings reveal intersemiotic dissonance obscuring crisis discourse, thus negatively influencing the process of collective sensemaking. The results of this study motivate further research that examines tacit guidelines for crisis communication on TikTok and similar applications.

Communicative Leadership among Local Leaders in Indonesia during covid-19 Crisis Management

The covid-19 pandemic is one of the health crises that demand effective communication and timely, accurate, and culturally sensitive communication to reach coordinated and more effective responses. Regarding this function, communicative leadership becomes critical in reaching the success of a health crisis, particularly among local communities which are frequently associated with resistance towards health initiatives. This research is intended to explore the communicative leadership performed by local leaders in managing covid-19 pandemic from 2020 to 2022. To meet this aim, the present study employed interviews with 6 local leaders in Kabupaten Pasuruan, Jawa Timur as informants. This research revealed that in responding health crisis due to covid-19 pandemic, leadership involved communication to construct and negotiate meaning through shared narratives about covid-19. This leadership had been performed to help communities in the sense-making process about the pandemic through a series of strategies comprising (1) operating religious frame and local values to construct a shared reality about covid-19 pandemic and how to respond to it, (2) providing narratives as the evidence, (3) performing openness, presence and empathy. This research also found that maintaining sustainable coordination with the authorities is performed by local leaders to assure communities about the pandemic response plan, thus, community involvement in covid-19 measures could be developed easily. This study confirmed some previous research highlighting the importance of faith-based organizations (FBOs) in communication intervention in the health context and research on the importance of narrative to persuade people to adopt new health behaviours.

THE POLITICS OF PLATFORM IMAGINARIES

Examining the competing images, values, and purposes attached to digital health tracking platforms, this paper analyzes how platform imaginaries are constructed and negotiated in complex intersectional realities. It pursues this inquiry through a case study on how Fitbit and Apple Health have become involved in recent societal negotiations over female digital health tracking in the US. Female health tracking has a well-documented history of negotiation and contestation. Developing this case study, we build on and rethink the concept of socio-technical imaginaries. We propose to consider the articulation of platform imaginaries not as a one-sided sense-making process, but as negotiations between multiple stakeholders of which platforms are but one. This conceptual perspective allows us to analyze the construction of imaginaries as a dynamic process, open to constant renegotiation, shaped by power differences between stakeholders, and affected by the intersectional positioning of user groups within platforms. The research is operationalised through a combination of critical discourse analysis of user and platform content and walkthroughs of Fitbit and Apple Health. The analysis highlights how digital health tracking platforms have become centrally imbricated in crucial societal issues, such as female bodily autonomy and reproductive rights. And it shows how quickly platform imaginaries of female self-determination and autonomy, associated with health-tracking apps, can be overthrown and reversed.

Understanding and Text Properties: Investigating Readers’ Sense-making Processes

Literary reading and the comprehension of literary text(s) has long been a key part of education. While reading comprehension in general has received a fair amount of attention, empirical research on comprehension processes of literary texts is still relatively rare; and yet, it is advisable to gain a thorough understanding of comprehension processes along with potential difficulties and hurdles to understanding specifically of literary texts. To address this issue, we analyse such comprehension processes in a group of university students of English as a second language, drawing on a test based on Shakespeare’s sonnet 43 which employs standardised, open-ended questions. Our research has two goals: firstly, to analyse readers’ approaches that result in a more or less successful decoding of the text they are presented with, and, secondly, to explore whether different textual phenomena help or hinder understanding. We find that strong and weak readers employ similar reading strategies, they do differ, however, with regard to their literary response, with weak readers more likely to draw on irrelevant associations not warranted by the text. In addition, we are able to show that some textual phenomena are more difficult to understand than others. We discuss possible implications of our findings for teaching.

The frontstage-backstage of organizational identity and management control system: the tale of British Petroleum’s embarrassment in DWH

PurposeThis study aims to investigate the dynamic interplay between the management control system (MCS) and organizational identity (OI) in the Deepwater Horizon incident involving British Petroleum (BP). It examines how the MCS manages challenges, particularly those addressing the embarrassment stemming from identity disparities between external portrayal (frontstage) and internal operations (backstage), with a focus on the often-underestimated influence of the media.Design/methodology/approachThis study builds upon the frameworks developed by Ravasi and Schultz (2006) and Malmi and Brown (2008) to construct a theoretical framework that profoundly investigates the relationship between MCS and OI. The framework developed guided the research design and incorporated a qualitative approach complemented by an illustrative case study. The research data was rigorously gathered from diverse sources, including official BP documents and influential media outlets, with a particular focus on well-established American and British newspapers.FindingsBP’s MCS plays a dual role: it exposes discrepancies in safety, leadership and values, causing embarrassment and identity damage, yet catalyses a sense-making process leading to organizational transformation and shifts in the OI. This transformation influences sense-giving and prompts changes in MCS. The study reveals an intricate interplay in identity management between frontstage audiences (e.g. influential media) and backstage actors (e.g. BP’s senior management). It highlights interdependencies both within and between MCS and OI, emphasizing their roles in interacting within identity management. The longitudinal recovery is intricately tied to mutual political interests between BP and the USA, which are significantly facilitated by the media’s role.Research limitations/implicationsThis study acknowledges limitations that point future research opportunities. Interviews could provide a more dynamic understanding of MCS changes and organizational transformations. Investigating the role of leadership, particularly the new chief executive office, and the influence of political versus organizational factors in shaping identity claims is essential. Additionally, the effectiveness and historical context of interdependencies should be quantitatively assessed. Theoretical limitations in the OI and MCS frameworks suggest the need for context-specific categorisations. This research serves as a foundation for further exploration of the intricate dynamics between MCS, OI and organizational responses to crises.Practical implicationsThis study offers valuable insights with practical implications for organizations facing identity challenges in the wake of significant incidents. Organizations can better navigate crises by recognizing the multifaceted role of MCS in identity damage and restoration. It underscores the importance of addressing both frontstage and backstage aspects of OI while managing identity discrepancies, thereby enhancing transparency and credibility. Additionally, understanding the intricate interdependencies within OI and MCS can guide organizations in implementing more effective identity restoration strategies. Furthermore, the study highlights the significance of media influence and the need to engage with it strategically during crisis management.Social implicationsThis study’s findings have significant social implications for organizations and the broader public. By recognizing the multifaceted role of MCS in shaping identity, organizations can enhance transparency and credibility, rebuilding trust with the public. Additionally, the study highlights the critical role of media in influencing perceptions and decision-making during crises, emphasizing the importance of responsible and ethical reporting. Understanding the intricate interplay between MCS and OI can inform better crisis management strategies and improve how organizations respond to and recover from incidents, ultimately benefiting society by promoting more accountable and responsible corporate behaviour.Originality/valueThis study’s distinctness lies in its innovative exploration of MCS, which transcends traditional methodologies that focus narrowly on front or backstage aspects of OI and often adhere to predetermined MCS practices. It underscores the importance of concurrently addressing both the front- and backstage audiences in managing the embarrassment caused by identity discrepancies and restoration. The research uncovers multifaceted interdependencies within MCS and OI, and these extend beyond simplistic relationships and emphasize the complex nature of identity restoration management.

A phenomenographic exploration of course leaders’ understandings of interdisciplinarity

ABSTRACT The number of interdisciplinary courses being developed in higher education across different countries is increasing. The people responsible for developing and enacting interdisciplinary courses can have significant design and teaching autonomy, but little is known about how they understand interdisciplinarity. This study uses phenomenographic interviews to address the question: how do interdisciplinary course leaders understand interdisciplinarity? This includes exploration of the relationships between different understandings of interdisciplinarity. Findings from interviews with 23 interdisciplinary course leaders reveal understandings of interdisciplinarity expressed in relation to (A) definitions, (B) knowledge spaces, and (C) situated knowledge work practices. Understandings were multiple and heterogeneous; they varied between participants and more importantly participants each expressed understandings belonging to multiple categories. Findings show that academics’ views about what interdisciplinarity means are rarely exclusively aligned with normative definitions, but instead are marked by individuals’ construction of meaning through processes of acquisition, sense-making and situational judgment. The study’s findings could be used in future educational design and planning work to elicit and discuss different stakeholder understandings of interdisciplinarity.

(Un)translatable Identities: Dialogic Monolingualism in Wong Bik-wan’s ‘Nausea’ 

Colonial Hong Kong (1842-1997) was a multilingual, multicultural ‘migrant society’, and its identity is complex and intersectional. Based on a close reading of Wong Bik-wan’s ‘Nausea’ (1994), this essay discusses how characters from drastically different backgrounds encounter one another in the multicultural space of Hong Kong. These two characters, a Black-Asian biracial woman and a native Hong Kong Chinese man suffered various forms of oppression, geographical dislocation, and political alienation in the postcolonial world. This created a mysterious bond between them, and as the narrative unfolds, the male character gradually contracted the woman’s disease of nausea. A dialogism of empathy emerged, as the characters experience each other’s trauma intersubjectively. At the same time, ‘Nausea’ simultaneously dialogs with Jean-Paul Sartre’s La Nausée (1938) through possessing the voice of the Sartean hero while also injecting the voices of a female character/author. This results in a literary double-voicedness, which in turn animates the text’s own deterritorialization and puts Hong Kong literature in dialog with a wider literary discourse of existentialism. Ultimately, the dynamic processes of sense-making and emotive exchanges in ‘Nausea’ resembles ‘untranslation’, defined as the interminable process of translation between incommensurable languages.

Uždaros visuomenės fenomenologija Antano Vienuolio „Paskenduolėje“: antropologiniai profiliai

The inquiry formulates the fundamentals of the hermeneutics of narrative against the background of the history of reception of the work under examination, “The Drowned Girl” by Antanas Vienuolis, and draws on the relevant phenomenological descriptions and resources of structural analysis to foreground the operative mechanisms of closed society. Such mechanisms are foregrounded on three planes: (1) social, of the rules of relationships between people, which in the story constitute a hierarchal system of power relations modelled on the structure of the traditional family of the agricultural holding, (2) significative, comprising sense-making discourses (traditional customs and Christianity) whereby the culture, in this story, configures the world without transcending corporeally perceivable horizons of the actually lived present, and (3) anthropological, where sociocultural praxis and self-perception are grounded in the essentially unhuman nature which the culture tries to assimilate and erase without recognising its essential otherness. This threefold configuration emerges at the crossroad of the (author’s and reader’s) Modern and (the represented) archaic cultural self-conceptions, which produces the conflict of interpretations and facilitates both the cathartic effect and the ongoing process of sense-making. All these configurations are derived from the story’s poetics, simultaneously exposing the discursive operative mechanisms of closed society.

Predicting instabilities: an embodied perspective on unstable experiences with art and design.

Predictive Processing (PP) provides a theoretical framework that describes perception as a process attempting to increase the predictability of stimulations by updating predictions or exploring new sensations. Moreover, perception and action are assumed to be closely linked within this process. While organisms seem to strive for predictability, we sometimes expose ourselves to objects and situations that challenge sense-making-such conditions often break perceptual habits or offer multiple possible meanings. This paper updates a previous qualification of these experiences of 'Semantic Instability' (SeIns) by following an embodied and situated understanding of perception and cognition. We suggest that art perception essentially differs from problem-solving as in engaging with art, we typically integrate contradictory elements dynamically and without the ultimate goal of resolving the contradictions-on the contrary, SeIns itself can generate aesthetic hedonics and interest. We discuss how current embodied accounts of PP might help understand what motivates such unstable yet insightful and pleasurable nonlinear sense-making processes. This article is part of the theme issue 'Art, aesthetics and predictive processing: theoretical and empirical perspectives'.

Reconciling duty: a theory and typology of professionalism

BackgroundProfessionalism is expected of health professionals and advocated by professional regulators in the United Kingdom (UK). Concepts of professionalism have evolved in sociological discourse and its meaning for dentistry is unclear. It is, none-the-less, considered a core domain of dental education and professional practice by the United Kingdom regulator, the General Dental Council. This paper reports the sense-making process, or social process, of professionalism in practice within England.AimTo explore the research question ‘What does dental professionalism mean in practice?MethodsTaking a constructivist grounded theory approach, involving purposive and theoretical sampling, 24 dental professionals were recruited to participate in this qualitative study. In-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted by one interviewer (AT). Interviews were recorded, transcribed verbatim, and analysed leading to the development of a theory grounded in the data.ResultsA focus on the social-professional constructs used by participants to make sense of their experiences, resulted in a grounded theory where Reconciling Duty emerged as the core category. This represents a process of meeting professional duties to different parties that are often mutually exclusive. It is comprised of three supporting categories: Applying order to the system, where individuals attempt to identify what constitutes professional attitudes and behaviours, Rationalising what is fair, where individuals make judgements on how the conflict between duties should be resolved, and finally Responding to the System, where individuals attempt to actualise these desired resolutions in the context of the complex social system in which they practice. Three dentist archetypes (typologies) emerged, which involved a personal (Type 1), patient (Type 2), or a societal (Type 3) compromise.ConclusionProfessionalism can be conceptualised as process of reconciling multiple, competing, legitimate duties to different parties, in seeking a fair solution. Once this has been identified, individuals need to work within the complex system of dentistry to make their identified outcome a reality. The findings suggest that using the theory of Reconciling Duty helps us to engage with the meaning that the participants drew from the term ‘professionalism’, and anchors it in the lived, everyday professional experiences and challenges faced. A novel typology is proposed, commensurate with calls for a systems approach to the topic.