It Does Add Up: A Descriptive Phenomenological Study of Sense Making among Math Teachers

Authors

  • John Christopher Mesana
  • Jason Benedict Guillermo
  • Trojan Rosh Sealongo
  • Kathlyn Anne Ventura

Keywords:

Sense making, descriptive phenomenology, Math teachers, lens model of sense making, 3Cs of sense making

Abstract

Sense making is defined as the process through which people work to understand issues or events that are novel or ambiguous (Maitlis and Christianson, 2014). While most studies regarding sense making focused on organizations and school leaders, there’s a scarcity of literatures regarding sense making among Math teachers. Thus, with the aid of descriptive phenomenology, this study aimed to grasp the essence of sense making as it is lived and experienced by a select group of public high school Math teachers (n=9). The participants were subjected into a two-part data gathering procedure (robot foto and semi-structured interview). Notably, through the cool and warm analyses, three themes surfaced which revealed the views and experiences of Math teachers regarding sense making. These are constitution, contextualization and contemplation. The aforementioned findings can pave the way for advancing the current literature by shedding light to areas in sense making previously not studied.

Published

2018-05-18