Abstract
Discussions about experiential education abound in the Canadian higher education sector, as well as more broadly across the international landscape. In Canada, experiential learning opportunities are increasingly embedded within institutional mission statements, administrative priorities, and pedagogical frameworks. Despite its spread, research has tended to overlook faculty perspectives, including how they make sense of experiential education and its impact on their professional roles or disciplinary priorities. To shore up these gaps, this article reports the findings from in-depth semi-structured interviews (n = 47) with faculty members across eight disciplines from six universities. Drawing on international literature on experiential education and organizational sensemaking, the findings of this study reveal four sensemaking lenses that faculty use to make sense of experiential learning: the disciplinary lens, the institutional lens, the pedagogical lens, and the professional lens. Both collectively and individually, these lenses have implications for the successful institutionalization of experiential education, as they are the frames through which faculty form meaning and enact their responses. By distinguishing these lenses, this article reinforces sensemaking as a process of bricolage and that faculty draw on multiple lenses to understand organizational changes. The article concludes with recommendations for future research on faculty sensemaking.
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Notes
For a classic review of tight and loose coupling, see Weick (1976).
This methodological approach follows other Canadian research on experiential education. For an empirical example, see Buzzelli and Allison (2017).
This was a methodological decision. Not all universities in Ontario offer the same programs. In order to ensure adequate representation of the three institutional categories, some concessions needed to be made. The trade-off here was that UG1 did have these programs, ensuring science-based disciplines were represented in the undergraduate category.
Tenured and tenure track refer to full-time faculty members who have been successful, or are working toward tenure review.
Sessional instructors refers to teaching staff who are not-tenured and non-permanent employees of the university.
Ceremonial change allows organizations to strategically couple administrative change to environmental developments, while buffering the technical core from environmental jolts or change-making stimuli (Meyer & Rowan, 1977).
Profession is here used in a general sense, to underscore the occupational logics that shape sensemaking. To be sure, the term “profession” has a storied conceptual past and may be interpreted in numerous ways. Keeping with the spirit of scholars like Friedson (2001), it is used here to demarcate the professional boundaries that shape the professoriate.
An enduring trend in the Canadian higher education labor market is the over-reliance on sessional instructors to teach a bulk of undergraduate courses (Rose, 2020). Some estimates suggest that one-in-three academics in Canada work on a contract-to-contract basis (Canadian Association of University Teachers, n.d.)
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Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Dr. Janice Aurini, Dr. John McLevey, and Dr. Stephanie Howells for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this article. I am also grateful to my participants for their contributions to this research.
Funding
This project is supported by the Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarships—Doctoral award, issued by Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.
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LaCroix, E. Making sense of experiential education in Canada: the four lenses of faculty sensemaking. High Educ (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-024-01238-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-024-01238-6