After reading this article, I drew a picture that helped me to understand, in a simplistic way, Dervin’s theory of sensemaking. It looked something like this: This process is called sensemaking.
I found myself longing for real-world examples throughout the article, so I was delighted to see that the author included examplars. I found interesting how different factors, including self-perception, view of the situation, and perception of outcome can influence (or not) someone's sensemaking. One counterintuitive point is that, in at least two of the exemplars, race and demographics didn’t affect sensemaking. In most of what I’ve read elsewhere, life experience and environment greatly affect a person’s perspective, which would, in turn, affect their sensemaking of a situation. If I were to I attempt to explain sensemaking to high schoolers (disclaimer: I teach first grade), we would absolutely act it out. We'd start off with a real-world scenario and work through the resolution. Of course, this would require the students to use their own sensemaking abilities. After resolving the situation, it would be time to reflect. How did you make sense of the situation? How did your life experience affect your sensemaking? If you were to try to understand someone else’s sensemaking, what questions could you ask or observations could you make? What are factors that affect sensemaking? Why is this important to understand?
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