Sensemaking in crisis: Unpacking how teachers interpret and respond to online education as street-level bureaucrats

The COVID-19 pandemic has posed numerous challenges for Street-Level Bureaucrats (SLBs). This paper adopts the sensemaking framework to examine the teaching experiences of high school teachers in the online environment, specifically focusing on their interpretation and implementation of COVID-19-related policies. Sixteen teachers from different high schools in Vietnam were selected purposely as participants in this study by considering the geographical influence and school rankings. The study reveals that decision-makers tend to grant higher levels of discretion to SLBs during crises compared to normal circumstances in the Vietnamese context, emphasizing the role of socio-cultural and political contexts in shaping policy implementation within centralized education systems. Also, recognizing the significance of policy signals and adopting a bottom-up approach that acknowledges the impact of SLBs on policy outcomes is paramount. By providing valuable insights to policymakers and school officials, this study provides an implication for reevaluating how better-established policy signals are received during times of crisis to prevent unintended consequences that may arise from local-level policy implementation.