Sensemaking e tomada de decisão na gestão educacional de escolas privadas de Simão Dias–SE

Abstract

Basic education as a benchmark for building citizenship and the right of all suffered a significant impact during the pandemic period, when schools were forced to close their doors, abdicating daily socialization among their students. Despite the existing difficulties, school administrators found themselves faced with a time to mediate even more elements: such as concern for everyone's health, thinking about strategies that maintain the operation of the school institution and the teaching-learning process, as well as achieving support the challenges in the financial impact that the situation brought to keep private schools active. Faced with this scenario, which impacts children, adolescents, families, managers, teachers and society itself, considering the obstacles to maintaining learning for future generations, it was considered important to study the understanding of the sensemaking process in decision-making in the educational management of private schools in the city of Simão Dias-SE. The aim was to carry out an analysis from a more subjective perspective, considering the singularities of each individual's experiences and personality that impact the way they analyse and create meanings of situations and events. Considering these points, theoretical concepts of sensemaking, decision-making and school management were used. In order to make an in-depth analysis of the subjective aspects possible, an exploratory and descriptive qualitative research was carried out, with the application of a semi-structured interview and a psychological personality test, in a multiple case study. As for the construction of meanings of the interviewed managers, one can notice the influence of personal experiences and personality and emotional aspects in the way they create meaning and make their decisions, as well as the strong presence of intuition in the decisions taken. Decisions do not always occur in a structured manner or in accordance with pre-established decision-making models, but are built on a day-to-day basis based on the uniqueness of each event and on the managers' sensemaking and intuition process. The study brings contributions about the process of understanding decision-making in educational management.