Making Sense Leading Change: A New Superintendent's Challenge

Abstract

This quality improvement study seeks to inform the school district of additional actions, decisions, and conditions the superintendent and leadership team can make to improve sensemaking of their individual and collective roles during the transition to a new superintendent. The capstone project explored the ways that a new superintendent and district leadership team individually and collectively interpreted and understood their roles in leading a small rural district to enact new policies and practices related to both re-opening schools amidst the Covid-19 global pandemic and simultaneously creating a significant shift through a new strategic plan. Central to this capstone is the notion that individual and collective policy interpretations influence what practitioners do or do not do as a result of the sensemaking they experience (Yannow, 1996).