jats:sec <jats:title content-type="abstract-subheading">Purpose</jats:title> jats:pThe purpose of this paper is to propose a framework describing teachers’ affective and cognitive thought processes, as well as the sensemaking and decision making ongoing within them, during the various stages of the appropriation of an educational innovation.</jats:p> </jats:sec> jats:sec <jats:title content-type="abstract-subheading">Design/methodology/approach</jats:title> jats:pThe Rubicon model of action phases, borrowed from psychology, is first used as a lens to understand teachers’ will. The model is subsequently adapted to reconcile it with existing literature on teacher beliefs, teacher sensemaking, and teachers’ resistance.</jats:p> </jats:sec> jats:sec <jats:title content-type="abstract-subheading">Findings</jats:title> jats:pThe proposed framework shows that teachers’ appropriation of an educational innovation is multi-layered and multi-dimensional. This contradicts appropriation as simply a procedural implementation of research recommendations, culminating in only success or failure.</jats:p> </jats:sec> jats:sec <jats:title content-type="abstract-subheading">Originality/value</jats:title> jats:pThe paper sensitises policymakers, school leaders, and teacher educators to the complexity of the appropriation process. The proposed framework serves as a starting point for school and reform leaders, to re-examine their school’s implementation of an educational innovation from a more human relations perspective.</jats:p> </jats:sec>