Learning in times of dynamic complexity through balancing phenomenal qualities of sensemaking

Abstract

This article provides the scaffolding for a more holistic approach towards sensemaking and learning by arguing that learning to navigate dynamic complexity requires a sensemaking lens grounded in different phenomenal qualities. Widening the aperture of the sensemaking perspective, we advance a more holistic and integrative approach towards sensemaking and learning, by taking sensemaking’s processual and temporal nature seriously. Inspired by phenomenological work of Heidegger’s three modes of being-in-the-world – ‘availableness’, ‘occurentness’ and ‘involved thematic deliberation’ – we argue that learning ‘becomes’ through the continuous re-enactment of sensemaking grounded in absorbed, detached and mindful coping, respectively. It follows that learning in times of dynamic complexity is reappraised as occurring during the continuous re-enactment of sense being made at the crossroad of detached, absorbed and mindful coping, in an effort to weather dynamic complexity at the intersection of order and disorder by both reducing and exploring equivocality.