Sense-making Activities Research Articles

How Students Make Sense of Mentorship Experiences During the Transition from High School to College: A Positioning Analysis

<i>Mentorship in higher education is widely acknowledged for its positive impact on students. Many institutions have implemented one-on-one guidance systems, such as faculty advising programs and faculty/peer mentorship initiatives. Yet, there remains a gap in understanding how students perceive mentoring, particularly during the transitional period before and early in their time in college. In light of the increasing focus on emerging adulthood within the field of developmental psychology, understanding students’ academic development during their transitioning years, particularly the role of mentorship becomes increasingly essential. This qualitative study employs positioning analysis to explore students’ evolving sense-making of mentoring relationships during two distinct phases: the final year of high school and the first year of college. This research conducts a comparative analysis to investigate how two students’ perceptions of mentorship change during their transition into college and differ from one another. The study aims to illuminate students’ sense-making of mentors and mentorship experiences throughout their high school and college transition and explores the unique ways students discuss mentorship as they transition. The findings unveil the contrasting experiences and evolving roles of mentors of each participant through the lens of their lived experiences, providing an insight into students’ individual developing conceptions of mentors and mentorship experience. This study offers a nuanced understanding of first-year college students’ sense-making activities as they navigate the complexities and academic demands of college. The insights gained from this study not only illuminate how qualitative methods provide yet-to-be-understood processes but also can further contribute to designing mentorship programs in higher education settings tailored to meet students’ needs from the moment they step onto campus. As the research landscape continues to evolve, qualitative studies like this contribute to the ever-advancing knowledge and practice of mentorship in higher education, supporting the diverse developmental needs of today’s college students.</i>

Elite athletes’ values in action: an important yet complicated aspect in anti-doping education

ABSTRACT Values-based education seeks to cultivate personal responsibility, empathy, and integrity to encourage critical reflection on the (anticipated or actual) consequences of one’s choices and behaviours. To comply with the World Anti-Doping Agency's International Standard for Education, anti-doping education programmes must incorporate values-based components. To facilitate this development, we explored how elite athletes interpret and apply their values in various situations throughout their athletic careers. Adopting a qualitative description design, 13 focus groups were conducted with 60 elite athletes from 13 countries participating in 27 sports at national or international levels. Audio recordings were transcribed/translated and analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. Athletes noted that their values guide their actions but struggled to articulate how these values influence their behaviour. Three overarching themes were created to capture: (1) value consciousness and clarity, (2) intrapersonal value continuity, and (3) value conflict and management. Dynamic relationships between athletes’ values, priorities, and decision-making processes were evident. Specifically, the results illustrate shifts in value priorities as athletes matured and progressed in their careers, and across situations to meet situational demands whilst making behaviour personally permissible. To live up to the fundamental principles of values-based education, anti-doping programmes must incorporate activities that facilitate conceptually sound discussions and provide athletes with time and support to unpack the behavioural meaning of their values. Developing athletes’ decision-making abilities through conscious sense-making activities to anticipate the pain of a value transgression and the value of value fulfilment is key to this process.

Building boards into better coxswains through sensemaking

AbstractThis response to von Schnurbein and Ahmad's article delves deeper into the authors' recommendation that foundation boards focus on developing their sensemaking skills. This article discusses five practical suggestions for incorporating sensemaking activities into the work of the board. These recommendations include hiring a coach, including training in board meetings, evaluating the board's performance, bringing a beneficiary to speak at board meetings, and acting as a convenor in the community.

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.

Promoting epistemic agency and reinscribing boundaries in mathematics education

Epistemic agency has been named as key to supporting sense-making and equity in mathematics education. This study investigates how instructional practices that align with supporting students’ mathematical agency may both disrupt and simultaneously reinscribe boundaries that have historically governed who is valued and vice versa. Coordinating extant studies of institutional exclusion with observational data from a fourth-grade classroom, our analysis shows that sense-making activities that invite students to generate and share their own strategies for solving mathematics problems may function to elevate certain students while marginalizing others. This study calls into question prevailing discourses framing epistemic agency as a self-evident good and raises concerns about the danger of reinscribing values that have long operated to privilege some and exclude others.

Institutional context and agile team innovation: A sensemaking approach to collective knowledge creation

This study offers a phenomenological account of the institutional context's role in Agile teams' knowledge work. Drawing from 44 semi-structured interviews and naturalistic observations of Agile teams in the Telco sector, the study emphasizes sensemaking activities through which team members navigate daily situations, revealing internal mechanisms underlying knowledge management and sensemaking processes within Agile teams. The findings emphasize the value-driven character of knowledge creation and highlight distinctive modes of knowledge creation and utilization within teams. The study also uncovers the role of managers in leveraging high-level learning beyond project boundaries, illustrating the tension between teams' priorities and managers' suggested actions. Overall, we contribute to a deeper understanding of the relationship between Agile practices, team environment, and product innovation performance, offering valuable insights for organizations seeking to maximize innovation potential while implementing Agile methodologies.

Unpacking researchers’ embodied sensemaking: A diffractive reading-writing of Mann Gulch disaster

The Baradian optical metaphor of diffraction grounds a methodology at the core of Feminist new materialism. It considers materiality, included the corporeal materiality of the body, as vital and vibrant and thus it may be the entry point for exploring embodiment in sensemaking. Diffraction is put to work to explore embodied sensemaking of researchers by performing a diffractive reading-writing of two notable sensemaking texts that make use of the Mann Gulch disaster, Weick’s (1993) account of the Mann Gulch disaster with sensemaking breaking down, and Introna’s (2019) re-appreciation of this disaster, which develops sensemaking as always already present. Based on two neologisms, comprising a noun and a verb - fire-burning and death-dying - a diffractive grating is built for discussing reading and writing as embodied sensemaking activities. As a result, the concept of sensemaking may be appreciated not only as a cognitive but also as a material and affective process. Diffractive reading-writing, as a methodology, contributes to organization theory an ethical alternative to critique and grounds a corporeal ethics of more-than-human care in academia that may help researchers to make embodied sense of the research phenomena they study.

Developing a model for primary care quality improvement success: a comparative case study in rural, urban and Kaupapa Māori organisations.

Introduction Primary care is under pressure to achieve accessible, equitable, quality health care, while being increasingly under resourced. There is a need to understand factors that influence quality improvement (QI) to support a high-performing primary care system. Literature highlights the impact of context on QI but there is little primary care research on this topic. Aim This qualitative case study research seeks to discover the contextual factors influencing QI in primary care, and how the relationships between contextual factors, the QI initiative, and the implementation process influence outcomes. Methods The Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research was used to frame this qualitative study exploring primary care experiences in depth. Six sites were selected to provide a sample of rural, urban and Kaupapa Māori settings. Qualitative data was collected via semi-structured interviews and compared and contrasted with the organisational documents and data provided by participants. Results Cases reported success in achieving improved outcomes for patients, practices, and staff. Strong internal cultures of 'Clan' and 'Adhocracy' typologies supported teamwork, distributed leadership, and a learning climate to facilitate iterative sensemaking activities. To varying degrees, external network relationships provided resources, knowledge, and support. Discussion Organisations were motivated by a combination of patient/community need and organisational culture. Network relationships assisted to varying degrees depending on need. Engaged and distributed leadership based on teamwork was observed, where leadership was shared and emerged at different levels and times as the need arose. A learning climate was supported to enable iterative sensemaking activities to achieve success.

Imagination: A New Foundation for the Science of Mind.

After a long hiatus, psychology and philosophy are returning to formal study of imagination. While excellent work is being done in the current environment, this article argues for a stronger thesis than usually adopted. Imagination is not just a peripheral feature of cognition or a domain for aesthetic research. It is instead the core operating system or cognitive capacity for humans and has epistemic and therapeutic functions that ground all our sense-making activities. A sketch of imagination as embodied cognition is offered, followed by suggestions of how to organize imagination studies into a more rigorous science–humanities research area.

Forming a Learning Environment Within a Senior-Citizen Community of Practice

Senior citizens’ communities of practice (CoPs) in Taiwan focus on the sharing of experiences and expertise, and engagement with issues of mutual concern. Because most of their members have a wealth of social experiences, as well as the time and strong motivation to learn new skills, these CoPs have strong potential to become learning environments aimed at the sharpening of expertise. To better understand the senior citizens’ interactions in such an environment, the research team conducted a qualitative study of six CoPs in Taiwan, guided by the following research question: What are the key factors to construct the learning environment of senior citizens’ CoPs? The researchers visited selected CoPs, including two self-sponsored groups, two interest groups, and two volunteer groups. In total, 24 interviewees were recruited, and the semi-structured interview method was employed to explore how a learning environment is created for a senior citizen CoP. The findings highlight that a free-yet-practical communicative environment with a culture of respect for the individual fosters practice-oriented mutual engagement and joint enterprise. A facilitation-based method of building up senior-citizen learning environments is recommended. Collaborative tasks trigger comparisons and self-reflection. When sense-making activities work well, ample time will be needed to cement these activities into organizational routines, so that shared repertoires can be formed. The study also explained how the keys work as a whole.

Academic staff perspectives on an institution-wide shift to Active Blended Learning

This study identified barriers and enablers of a university-wide pedagogic shift to Active Blended Learning (ABL). ABL is an approach to learning and teaching that promotes student centredness through teaching in small groups, with a focus on sense-making activities and interactions in and outside the physical or virtual learning space. Data gathered through a survey of academic staff, followed by in-depth interviews, were analysed using thematic analysis. The normalisation and effective embedding of digital technology and small group teaching were two major enablers of pedagogic transformation to ABL. Inconsistent teaching practices and the lack of student engagement with learning activities emerged as two of the main barriers. An in-depth understanding of effective, student-focused higher education teaching is a cornerstone of large-scale pedagogic change processes. Recommendations are put forward for higher education institutions considering changes to their learning and teaching strategies.

Together telling: reconciling information equivocality in crisis response

Information is essential during crises. In a crisis response operation, information is usually shared among autonomous relief agencies to facilitate collective understanding and action. However, this may evoke the problem of equivocality, the presence of multiple competing or contradicting interpretations of the same information. The aim of this study is to offer pragmatic means of managing equivocality so collective understanding within and among groups can ensue in order to improve crisis response efforts. The primary theoretical constructs underlying this study are sensemaking, sensegiving, and storytelling. Sensemaking activities seek, process, create and use the information to come up with plausible understandings by assigning one meaning out of many plausible meanings in a situation, which is then communicated to others through the sensegiving efforts. Storytelling, as a communication tool, helps with the building of narratives in which open and negotiated conversations can lead to share understandings and coordinated actions. Built on the case of a garment factory fire incident in Pakistan that led to the death of 289 workers, the study adopted a Design Science Research approach by combining both existing theoretical understandings and relevant empirical data collected in two related settings. The data collection phase in Pakistan included analysis of investigation reports that examined the contributing factors and challenges faced by the first responders in handling the fire incident at the factory. Interviews with different actors of the factory fire incident, including survivors, victims’ family members, and emergency responders, were conducted. The second data source came from fieldwork conducted at Illinois Fire Service Institute (IFSI) in the United States. This was reinforced with reports retrieved from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) database investigating the common causes of firefighter fatalities. The data were analyzed using content analysis and validated through the member-checking process. Based on the theoretical and empirical data, this study developed and introduced the concept of Together Telling (TT). By using storytelling exercises adopted from the theatre ensemble, TT addresses the information-sharing issue of equivocality by enhancing the dialogic competencies of the crisis handlers so they can collectively understand the situation and move towards action. This study has important theoretical and practical implications. Theoretically, it facilitates episodes of collective sensemaking by improving sharing of information among team members and the application of storytelling techniques in the context of crisis response as this has been largely used in pre-crisis and post-crisis settings. TT provides practical incremental steps towards achieving common understandings while managing misunderstandings and confusions among the crisis response teams which is crucial in moving forward jointly. It also allows new form of leadership to emerge where everyone contributes to developing the larger narrative of the ongoing situation.

Gender differences in classroom experiences impacting self-efficacy in an AP Physics 1 classroom

Sense-making activities in AP physics courses played an important role for both boys and girls in developing a sense of self-efficacy as well as developing a physics identity.

Health Care Professional Association Agency in Preparing for Artificial Intelligence: Protocol for a Multi-Case Study.

BackgroundThe emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) in health care has impacted health care systems, including employment, training, education, and professional regulation. It is incumbent on health professional associations to assist their membership in defining and preparing for AI-related change. Health professional associations, or the national groups convened to represent the interests of the members of a profession, play a unique role in establishing the sociocultural, normative, and regulative elements of health care professions.ObjectiveThe aim of this paper is to present a protocol for a proposed study of how, when faced with AI as a disruptive technology, health professional associations engage in sensemaking and legitimization of change to support their membership in preparing for future practice.MethodsAn exploratory multi-case study approach will be used. This study will be informed by the normalization process theory (NPT), which suggests behavioral constructs required for complex change, providing a novel lens through which to consider the agency of macrolevel actors in practice change. A total of 4 health professional associations will be studied, each representing an instrumental case and related fields selected for their early consideration of AI technologies. Data collection will consist of key informant interviews, observation of relevant meetings, and document review. Individual and collective sensemaking activities and action toward change will be identified using stakeholder network mapping. A hybrid inductive and deductive model will be used for a concurrent thematic analysis, mapping emergent themes against the NPT framework to assess fit and identify areas of discordance.ResultsAs of January 2021, we have conducted 17 interviews, with representation across the 4 health professional associations. Of these 17 interviews, 15 (88%) have been transcribed. Document review is underway and complete for one health professional association and nearly complete for another. Observation opportunities have been challenged by competing priorities during COVID-19 and may require revisiting. A linear cross-case analytic approach will be taken to present the data, highlighting both guidance for the implementation of AI and implications for the application of NPT at the macro level. The ability to inform consideration of AI will depend on the degree to which the engaged health professional associations have considered this topic at the time of the study and, hence, what priority it has been assigned within the health professional association and what actions have been taken to consider or prepare for it. The fact that this may differ between health professional associations and practice environments will require consideration throughout the analysis.ConclusionsUltimately, this protocol outlines a case study approach to understand how, when faced with AI as a disruptive technology, health professional associations engage in sensemaking and legitimization of change to support their membership in preparing for future practice.International Registered Report Identifier (IRRID)DERR1-10.2196/27340

Two Enactive Approaches to Psychiatry: Two Contrasting Views on What it Means to Be Human

Two Enactive Approaches to Psychiatry: Two Contrasting Views on What it Means to Be Human Sanneke de Haan (bio) Shared Sources and Different Aims The relevance and potential value of insights from enactivism for the field of psychiatry have been recognized for some time now. Recently, two overarching frameworks have been proposed, one by Nielsen (Nielsen, 2020; Nielsen & Ward, 2018, 2020), and one by me (De Haan 2017; 2020a; 2020b; 2020c).1 As mentioned by Nielsen (2021), we developed our approaches largely in parallel: I was not aware of Nielsen’s work, and he only became aware of my work in the last phase of his PhD. Nielsen (2021) compares our approaches and concludes that our frameworks are ‘largely compatible, do different work to one another, and are best understood as complimentary’ (p. 175). I think, however, that the differences between our positions run much deeper, so that they are, in fact, incompatible. These differences result from fundamentally opposed views on what it means to be human. But before I get into our differences, let me acknowledge what we share. Nielsen and I are attracted to enactivism2 for similar reasons. We are both critical of neuroreductionist views that depict psychiatric disorders as internal problems in individual brains, and instead stress the relevance of taking the individual’s whole body and larger (sociocultural) context into account. In enactivism, we find a framework that spells out how the mind is fundamentally tied to the body and to interactions with the environment (Thompson, 2007; Varela, Thompson, & Rosch, 1991). More specifically, ‘mind’ refers to the sense-making activities of an organism interacting with its environment, which it depends on for its survival. Enactivism, furthermore, argues that the organism in its environment is best described as a complex, dynamical system. Applied to psychiatry, enactivism offers a) an integrative perspective on the relation between body, mind, and world;, and b) a complex systems approach which acknowledges causal complexity without ascribing a priory primacy to any of the processes involved. Our aims—what we use enactivism for—are different though. My aim is to solve psychiatry’s integration problem, that is, the problem of how to relate the heterogeneous factors that are at stake in the development and persistence of psychiatric [End Page 191] disorders. Even though many people would be willing to embrace the (potential) influence of biological, psychological and social factors, the proof of the pudding will be in providing a proper explanation of how these factors work together and how (causal) interaction between them works. Enactivism provides an excellent basis for explaining such interactions, without resorting to either reductionism or dualism (de Haan, 2020a). As such it can offer an extended and improved version of Engel’s (1977, 1980) biopsychosocial model (de Haan, 2020c). My enactive approach to psychiatry is thus clearly not a ‘first person or phenomenological approach,’ as Nielsen (2021) calls it. Personal experiences are indeed vital when trying to understand and explain psychiatric disorders—but so are (neuro) physiological processes, sociocultural influences, and existential considerations. The purpose of my account is precisely to relate personal experiences to these other processes and explain how these four heterogeneous dimensions affect one another. Enactivism’s thesis about the continuity of life and mind and its concept of sense-making are useful to explicate how ‘matters of the mind’ are necessarily also matters of the body and matters of the world too (de Haan, 2020a, 2020b). Nielsen, in contrast, is primarily interested in solving the demarcation problem between mental health and mental illness, or: ‘why some behaviors should be considered disordered’ (Nielsen & Ward, 2018, p. 801). This should in turn help to carve out psychiatry’s ‘diagnostic entities’ (Idem, p. 813) and classify mental disorders accordingly. Nielsen mainly draws on enactive ideas to ‘naturalize normativity’ (Nielsen & Ward, 2020, p. 121) as he calls it. Because mere statistical rarity is not enough to establish a phenomenon as ‘disordered’, we need to adopt some norms to distinguish between ‘dysfunction and functionality’ (Nielsen & Ward, 2018, p. 811). Nielsen appeals to the enactive idea of organismic self-maintenance to establish such norms. Being alive is a precarious condition that requires constant, adaptive interaction...

Help me to help you to help me: a conversation analytic study of other-initiated repairs in a case of Korean–Russian interpreter-mediated investigative interviews in South Korea

ABSTRACT This paper uses a conversation analytic approach to examine the phenomenon of repair and its critical role in interpreter-mediated investigative interviews. The approximately 160–minute long video-recorded data demonstrate that the Russian-speaking suspect–who was suspected of killing her own child–frequently initiated repairs not only to understand the questions she was asked but also enable herself to be understood clearly. This was mainly due to the interpreter’s lack of proficiency interpreting between Korean and Russian. In her repair attempts, the suspect tried to avoid misunderstandings in this critical stage of the criminal procedure and oppose the murder charge she was facing. Although her repair attempts were crucial in facilitating the interview to some extent, they often fell short of resolving serious miscommunication issues, which were mainly caused by the interpreter’s incompetence. Although this paper focuses solely on a case study that was based on a relatively small data set, the findings indicate that repair was an important part of collaborative and co-constructive sense-making activities in the interpreter-mediated interview. Overall, the results demonstrate that it is crucial to engage competent interpreters who can not only make the repair process transparent to all parties but also resolve repairs successfully.

Talking datasets – Understanding data sensemaking behaviours

The sharing and reuse of data are seen as critical to solving the most complex problems of today. Despite this potential, relatively little is known about a key step in data reuse: people's behaviours involved in data-centric sensemaking. We aim to address this gap by presenting a mixed-methods study combining in-depth interviews, a think-aloud task and a screen recording analysis with 31 researchers as they summarised and interacted with both familiar and unfamiliar data. We use our findings to identify and detail common activity patterns and necessary data attributes across three clusters of sensemaking activities: inspecting data, engaging with content, and placing data within broader contexts. We conclude by proposing design recommendations for tools and documentation practices which can be used to facilitate sensemaking and subsequent data reuse.

A Critical Realist Perspective on Organizations’ Approach to Blockchain

Blockchain technology, a decentralized infrastructure validating tamper-resistant transactions, was introduced roughly one decade ago. Till today, numerous financial serviceproviders (FSPs) claim to have developed and test use cases as well as prototypes of blockchain-based solutions. However, hitherto organizations do not scale their existing solutions. As a result, the actual business value of blockchain falls short of the expected business value of the technology. Information systems (IS) researchers increasingly criticize this situation and develop recommendations for FSPs how to foster the adoption of the technology, thereby trying to realize their dream of a fully decentralized blockchain-economy. This paper asserts, however, that despite having good intentions, IS researchers currently neglect an essential characteristic of blockchain technology, i.e., equivocality. IS researchers should consider that FSPs apply the technology not only in different ways but also because of a plethora of reasons and causes, which is why we cannot treat FSPs as equal based on the assumption that they are all ‘adopters’. Using a critical realist perspective, we found divergences between FSPs’ actions taken toward the adoption of blockchain technology, i.e., what they do, and why and how they adopt the technology. Our results disclose the need to develop more differentiated recommendations that take into account the impact of sensemaking activities as well as the divergent motives of FSPs which induce them to adopt blockchain technology.

Conceptual Model of Visual Analytics for Hands-on Cybersecurity Training.

Hands-on training is an effective way to practice theoretical cybersecurity concepts and increase participants' skills. In this article, we discuss the application of visual analytics principles to the design, execution, and evaluation of training sessions. We propose a conceptual model employing visual analytics that supports the sensemaking activities of users involved in various phases of the training life cycle. The model emerged from our long-term experience in designing and organizing diverse hands-on cybersecurity training sessions. It provides a classification of visualizations and can be used as a framework for developing novel visualization tools supporting phases of the training life-cycle. We demonstrate the model application on examples covering two types of cybersecurity training programs.

Electronic Systems of Information Exchange as a Key Tool in EU Health Crisis and Disaster Management

Decision 1082/2013 on Serious Cross-border Health Threats (Health Threats Decision) was adopted in 2013 with the aim of preparing for and responding to serious health threats. In this legislation, the European Union adopts an “all-hazards” approach which strongly relies on the exchange of information as a driver of regulatory activities. This article first demonstrates that the electronic systems of information exchange constitute a key tool in EU Health Crisis and Disaster Management (“EHCDM”). Second, it identifies the distinctive features of these mechanisms in the EU context: the reinforcement of a statutory policy shift towards securitisation of public health, the peculiarity of the EU composite administrative procedures as well as the facilitation of the quality of the sense-making activities. Finally, the article uncovers the possible problems which may affect the adequate functioning of EHCDM and argues the routes for further research. The piece links legal analysis with the interdisciplinary conceptual lens to offer an important contribution to closer characterisation of the EHCDM as a field in its own right together with a better understanding of the EU public health law and administration in the context of transboundary crisis management and health security governance.