Sensemaking in the gendered academy: The role of storytelling in effecting change

Abstract

In this paper, we have drawn on our experiences of using storytelling as a sensemaking tool to argue for the benefits of this as a means of better understanding the gendered academy and the role storytelling can play in effecting change. We aim to demonstrate how storytelling helped make visible the gendered practices in our workplace and how this led to a change in our experiences of our workplace. As well, we highlight the need for such stories to be heard more generally in the workplace, as a means for prompting change through negotiation. We argue that, ideally, a triple loop learning environment would allow for meaningful exchanges, but how to enable this in practice is still unclear.