District leaders’ sensemaking about equity and school mathematics: Implications for the design of equity-minded policies in specific subjects

Background To improve and create more-equitable schools, education policies can support technical, normative, and political change. Educational leaders are consequential in policy design, as their sensemaking about educational issues shapes how teachers learn about and enact policy. This is important because policy implementation requires that individuals develop new skills, knowledge, and practices.Methods In this multicase study of two school districts, I analyzed interviews with school and district leaders, observations of policymaking, and policy artifacts to understand how educational leaders make sense of equity in their policymaking, especially for mathematics.Findings District leaders made sense of equity in mathematics mainly in terms of access and achievement, with technical changes in tools, routines, and roles constituting the primary policy response. At the same time, community politics, district organizational contexts, and meaning-making about mathematics constrained political change in the distribution of resources and status and in normative shifts around identity, culture, and belonging.Contribution My findings reveal how sensemaking about the subject and equity interact, posing learning demands that policy design can address. This raises implications important for education leaders and learning scientists designing for equity in specific subjects.” No apostrophe after scientists.