Making Sense Of Worldview Diversity At Public Universities

This study advances our understanding of how students are making sense of their encounters across worldview differences related to religion, spirituality, faith, and values at public higher education institutions. Critical sensemaking (CSM) was used as a conceptual framework to understand the in-the-moment process of individual sensemaking and how individual and organizational sensemaking is influenced by the formative, structural, and discursive contexts of higher education (Helms Mills, Thurlow, & Mills, 2010). The study employed content analysis methodology (Mayring, 2000) and a two-tiered structural and concept coding analysis strategy (Saldaña, 2011) to explore secondary focus group data from five public institutions from a qualitative case study dataset created through the longitudinal, mixed-methods Interfaith Diversity Experiences and Attitudes Longitudinal Survey (IDEALS) project. The key findings of this study are: 1) students use sensemaking as an opportunity to shed old ways of being and knowing; 2) student sensemaking is highly social and students often make sense of their encounters with worldview diversity through the lens of perceived social norms; and, 3) students perceive the university as sensegiving about worldview through funding allocations, space reservation priorities, staff member availability, and in comparison with other social identity work. These results are relevant to research because they extend the use of CSM to college students as actors, focus groups as data, and diversity as a topic for examination. They also show that two properties of CSM, social and extracted cues, are particularly important to student sensemakers and highlight the relevance of formative, structural, and discursive contexts of higher education influence sensemaking about worldview diversity. Additionally, these results provide guidance for practitioners and faculty who want to help students engage with and across worldviews, indicate that institutions of higher education should more specifically communicate how they support worldview development and difference, and confirm that worldview is a relevant part of student identity at public institutions. Taken together, the knowledge gained through this study about the student sensemaking process can be used to maximize student development related to worldview diversity.