Understanding How Educators Make Sense of Content Standards

The purpose of this paper is to put forward a new conceptual framework that depicts how educators make sense of content standards and the changes that content standards engender. The Sensemaking of Content Standards (SoCS) Framework brings together different models that have been used in the literature to understand how content standards are framed by sensegivers, filtered through sensemaking processes, and implemented in classrooms. We begin by offering a rationale for the need for such a framework. Following, we build the framework by introducing each of its major research-based components. Finally, we test the framework by applying it to the cases of two state-level science education leaders in the United States reflecting on the changes that new K-12 science standards will bring to classrooms and their concerns about resistance to change.