To illustrate the theoretical dynamics involved in analysis of the process of "metasensing," this paper investigates the language of 22 elementary school principals and their strategic actions during school improvement programs. The study's grounded theory approach frames the principals'"epistemology of practice"--thereby eliciting metasensemaking. The paper reviews organizational theories that employ language indicators. Metasensemaking, which describes motivating procedures and interpersonal negotiations, discloses how organizations change. Assisted by ethnographic methods, this research sought a common "knowledge-in-action" within successful principals' explanatory language about improvement strategies. Discoveries were as follows: (1) effective principals share a knowledge-in-action built upon pragmatic experience; (2) effective principals link classroom actions by planning that is implemented through communication adjusted in units of strategic dialog; and (3) during these dialogs, principals create organizational learning, or metasensemaking, which furthers program momentum. As an intuitive process, metasensemaking employs goal and other frames; a sample unit of strategic dialog between a principal and a teacher illustrates these cognitive frames. Principals choose an appropriate enactment environment for change, epitomized in the "criterion of effectiveness"--the uppermost educational value. The conceptual foundations of metasensemaking contain elements of negotiation that align the school's improvement program components with its constituencies. Twenty-eight references are included. (CJH)