Policy communication, sensemaking, and institutional sustainability in Ethiopia's 2023 education reform

Abstract

This study examines how communication processes shaped stakeholders' understanding of Ethiopia's revised Education and Training Policy (2023) and analyzes the implications for institutional sustainability. A qualitative descriptive design was used, based on semi-structured interviews with 11 purposively selected stakeholders, including ministry officials, regional experts, university scholars, principals, and supervisors. Data were analyzed through iterative thematic coding informed by policy implementation and sensemaking theory. Findings indicate that dissemination relied mainly on a centralized, one-directional transmission model. This pattern was associated with fragmented sensemaking, limited ownership among frontline implementers, and emerging policy cynicism. Participants frequently equated reform with the structural 6–2-4 model while showing less understanding of the competency-based pedagogical rationale. Communication problems were intensified by linguistic constraints: eight of eleven participants (73%) cited the Amharic-only policy document as a barrier. Political instability and digital infrastructure gaps further limited access to implementation guidance. The study's contribution is a middle-range Communicative Sustainability Framework that connects policy communication, sensemaking, trust, and reform continuity in fragile governance settings. Rather than claiming to generate a new grand theory, the framework specifies how communication failure can become a systemic sustainability risk when reform authority, implementer interpretation, and institutional trust are weakly connected. The findings offer analytically transferable propositions for comparable low-resource and politically fragile reform contexts.