School Leaders’ Sensemaking and Sensegiving

In this book, Judith Norris presents a theoretical model that demonstrates a new approach to understanding how school leaders respond to conflicting expectations and demands. The idea of sensemaking and sensegiving is theoretically interesting and allows the reader to focus on how school leaders make sense, but also how they give sense to others in the complex conditions that educators now must negotiate. Like the Eucalyptus tree, educational leaders must adapt to their contradictory environments. Written in the most accessible way, the theory and its application will likely appeal not only to researchers, but also to teachers and school administrators. Norris has created a real applicability to school leadership in various international contexts.

Judith M. Norris, Ed.D. (2017), Australian Catholic University, is Senior Lecturer of Educational Leadership Studies at that university. She has co-published with colleagues in educational leadership, blogging regularly for Master students and researching about and with school leaders.