Many research studies on how teachers make sense of policy in past decades have mainly explored the effect that given changes make on schools and teachers. This focus has been later changed by some researchers to observe how teachers rather shape the policy, because it has been noticed that as teachers implement the policy, they interpret, adapt and modify it according to their contexts (Coburn, 2001). However, little on organised research practices on how teachers interpret and adapt the policy was known, except the known element that they could do it in their professional communities of practice where the sharing of information could take place. Earlier research studies (Cohen & Ball, 1990; Jennings, 1996; Spillane & Jennings, 1997; Weatherly & Lipsky, 1977 as cited in Blignaut, 2011; Coburn, 2001) that have explored the process of teachers’ policy sense-making have solely focused on individual interpretation. The reasoning behind ineffective policy implementation has been ascribed to technicist factors such as inadequate skills and knowledge by teachers to carry out the innovation practice; use of policy messages for personal interests and gains; as well as a lack of will and intention to sabotage the initiative by implementing agents (Blignaut, 2011).
Several studies worldwide have used the cognitive analysis to explore how the policy is interpreted by the implementing agents. These studies have therefore, used the inclusive cognitive view, but not the one modified by Spillane et al. (2002). Coburn (2001), in California, explored how elementary school teachers make a collective sense of state reading policies in their professional communities. The data from the study reveal that the nature and structure of formal networks and informal associations among teachers shape the process. In their longitudinal case study of five schools in the two states, California and Florida, Schmidt and Datnow (2005) examined the role of teacher emotions in the process of sense-making in comprehensive school reforms (CSR). They found that teachers attach more emotions to their sense-making at classroom levels because, unlike schools, classrooms are their basic contexts for meaning-making.
In Namibia, Boer (2012) makes use of the cognitive lens to explore how the Namibian high school teachers experienced the information and communication technology (ICT) policy in their schools. Although she has referred and drawn some elements from Spillane et al. (2002), she has not used the integrated cognitive framework per se. The study has combined the quantitative and qualitative designs supplemented by classroom observations. The findings indicate that the way teachers implement the policy reveals that their understanding of the policy goals still need to be developed and improved. In addition, the initial design and
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actual application of the policy support the notion of disregarding the real actualities in which teachers work; lack of school motivation and willingness; and inadequate support to teachers. The origin of an inclusive analysis has turned the research focus in a different direction (Coburn, 2001; Spillane, 1999) by looking beyond individual interpretation and thus paved the new way to understand that teachers also make meaning of policy codes through discussions deeply rooted in and influenced by social, professional and cultural context factors (Blignaut, 2011). The cognitive sense-making perspective has been widely used in the field of education to explore how implementing agents construct an understanding of education policy (Boer, 2012; Honig, 2006; Mantere, 2000; Schmidt & Datnow, 2005; Spillane, 2000).
The inclusive review succeeded in detecting the variables or factors that impact on policy implementation; however, it is found limited due to its inability to include other aspects from the social and policy contexts. It is against this background that Spillane and his colleagues designed the integrated cognitive sense-making framework which sketches the cognitive elements of the implementation process by classifying the concerned concepts and the relationships amongst them. The framework is both theoretical and empirical-based, grounded on the argument: “what policy means for implementing agents is constituted in the interaction of their existing cognitive structures, their situation and the policy signals” (p. 388); and it aims to describe teachers’ sense-making action during the policy implementation process. Studies that specifically used Spillane et al.’s (2002) improved integrated cognitive sense-making model included Quinn (2009) which is international; Blignaut (2007; 2008; 2011) and Lombard (2012) which are all conducted in South African contexts.
Quinn (2009), in Maryland (USA), examines the sense-making of middle school science teachers who received training and sought to implement the reading apprenticeship program in their teaching practice. His findings revealed that policy implementation varies for different members of the team. While the implementation was negatively affected by the conflict with other policies and resistance by learners, it was also enhanced by participation of teachers in communities of practice. In South Africa, Lombard (2012) explores the experiences and responses of Arts and Culture teachers about the implementation of the National Curriculum Statement (NCS). The findings show that teachers find it hard to adjust to the more demanding methodologies, since they are time consuming and call for very different roles in classrooms. Teachers have rather adapted the curriculum than adopting it, implying that instead of implementing it as it is, teachers rather have it modified according to
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their circumstances. Blignaut (2011) examines how an individual teacher in the South African context interprets the new policy and how his understanding is manifested in classroom practice. The findings indicate that individual existing beliefs and knowledge of what the teacher believes to be good teaching guide him or her to reshape and adapt the policy to his or her own teaching situation; the process is seen as diluting and abating the policy messages at classroom level.
Although this cognitive sense-making theory by Spillane et al. (2002) has been found to be a useful theory in understanding how implementing agents interpret or make sense of policy for implementation, it also has its critiques. Blignaut (2008) highlights that the framework originates from the western systems of education that are democratically and traditionally homogenous, assuming there are no inequalities in terms of school resourcefulness and teacher supply. The theory takes for granted that all schools are equally and richly supplied with infrastructure and facilities, as well as teaching and learning resources. It assumes that all teachers have received the same basic and higher quality education and are highly professionally qualified. The sense-making theory fails to take into consideration the background messes or inconsistencies that have existed in different education systems in some colonised African countries, such as the discriminations and anomalies experienced in the apartheid education system that was predominant in South Africa and Namibia, whereby citizens did not have equal opportunities to quality education. It does not consider the contexts where teacher education and training have been only limited to certain levels and where the learner-teacher ratios are very high due to shortage of qualified teachers.
Identically, the theory does not consider that the contexts of Namibian schools are basically determined by the previous position of the schools in the Apartheid era because it takes for granted that teachers are plentifully supplied in terms of professional development and teaching resources. Schools for the previously advantaged citizens have retained their facilities and resources from the past and are still well-off unlike those of the formerly disadvantaged. This has maintained and broadened the inequalities between the school conditions and situations.
This study acknowledges that personal and school contextual differences could be caused by numerous background variants stemmed from the apartheid education system. Although the system has been eliminated two decades back, its effects and influences can still predominate the current education system because, experiences from the apartheid education system are
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still used as reliable personal and contextual factors in the sense-making process as teachers endeavour to implement new education reforms. It is in this light that this study has selected its participants who came from unvarying cultural and educational backgrounds, and from rural or developing schools to avoid too diverse ideas. This is because teachers have different and complex explanations inherent in their academic, historical, social or political backgrounds which guide the way they respond to new changes the way they do (Blignaut, 2007, p.50).
The integrated cognitive sense-making framework developed by Spillane et al. (2002) was found useful in answering research questions on the implementation of curriculum reform in Namibia. The study intended to establish if there is a mismatch between policy messages and how they are practised by the teachers. The internal tension observed as they interpret the reforms detects that there is a problem that negatively influences the way reforms are implemented. From cognitive perspective, countless numbers of different practical opportunities embedded within the abstract philosophies of a policy depend on what is inside teachers. One of the critical elements for effective policy implementation is whether and how teachers, the implementing agents, come to understand their practice. This is significant because the extent of professional development opportunities and support provided to teachers regarding policy updating and the manner it is communicated have the potential to convince teachers that there is a need to shift their existing knowledge, beliefs and attitudes towards new ways of doing things. Policy cognition involves valued aspects such as intellectual representations, views, judgments and reasoning. They are valuable because they are critical in investigating and understanding how the education policies are implemented.
Like many education initiatives, learner-centred education policy demands more of intellectual understanding of both content and pedagogy because it poses a challenge to teachers’ ground beliefs and knowledge about teaching and learning. Teachers interpret and understand new policy innovations about local behaviour within the boundaries of their existing knowledge and beliefs, with much influence from social and structural conditions of immediate worlds such as working places. The framework is cognitive because it involves reasoning, the processing of basic information with its complexity and influence about abstract ideas; influence of motivation and affect; and the ways social context and social interaction affect this sense-making. According to Blignaut (2007, p. 53), “humans are today because of who they were yesterday” meaning that teachers’ basic individual reasoning is not independent, but it is linked to their life histories rooted in their personal, cultural and social
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contexts. The researcher believes that this framework helps to understand teacher responses to learner-centered education policy in Namibia because, as Blignaut (2011) asserts, responses of teachers which manifest in their classroom practices is a result of their cognitive interpretation. The researcher hopes the theory exposes the differences hidden in personal and contextual dimensions of sense-making and help to understand the impact that inequalities in education can make. This is because it allows for the exposure of teachers’ understanding of policy by probing questions into their existing beliefs, knowledge and experiences about teaching and learning, learners, and working conditions. Teacher responses will indicate whether their beliefs are on par or in conflict with policy; and will also help determine if teachers reshape or adapt the curriculum policy according to their beliefs and situations or not. The contextual element embedded in this framework enables this study to investigate the school or community contexts in which the teachers work. This framework challenges the technicist approach to reform implementation which solely attributes technical factors and overlooks other aspects. Nevertheless, it recognizes other aspects from individual and situational contexts of the reform implementers and acknowledges interpretation that precedes implementation, is influenced by tensions and emotions generated by personal and contextual factors.