Emotion-triggered sensemaking in leadership: How novice principals reconfigure school reform

Abstract

This study examines how novice principals lead reform when change is first encountered not as a clearly defined agenda for implementation but as emotionally disruptive condition. Drawing on a qualitative multiple-case study of three schools, it traces how disruptive events unsettled established meanings, triggered sensemaking, and consequential through leadership practice. The findings show that reform began not with technical execution, but with interpretive work undertaken when trust, direction, or organizational identity became unstable. Leadership became consequential when these interpretations were enacted through practices that reorganized relationships, coordinated participation, and reoriented collective action. The analysis further identifies three differentiated reform trajectories: stabilization through trust reconstruction, expansion through collective generation, and regeneration through identity re-articulation. By conceptualizing reform leadership as a process linking emotional disruption, sensemaking, and enactment, the study offers a processual account of how novice principals make reform interpretable, actionable, and sustainable under conditions of uncertainty.