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Cultivating a community of practice: an action research study on cultivating a community of practice that engages in trauma-informed dialogue and critical reflection

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Cultivating a Community of Practice: An Action Research Study on Cultivating a
Community of Practice That Engages in Trauma-Informed Dialogue and Critical
Reflection

Kristi Lee Jacobs

Rossier School of Education
University of Southern California
A dissertation submitted to the faculty
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Education

May 2023

© Copyright by Kristi Lee Jacobs
2023 All Rights Reserved

The Committee for Kristi Lee Jacobs certifies the approval of this Dissertation

Briana Hinga
Julie Slayton
Artineh Samkian, Committee Chair

Rossier School of Education
University of Southern California
2023

iv
Abstract
This qualitative study examined my leadership in cultivating a community of practice (CoP) with
special education administrators in one district that engaged in critical reflection and dialogue
informed by trauma-informed principles (TIP). This study focused on facilitating change to
address the defined problem of practice within the setting where I worked. Professionally I was
committed to adopting and enacting TIP and engaging in critical reflection to interrogate my
assumptions and biases about the families we supported. In addition, I was committed to working
within a CoP where I could support my colleagues engaged in this work. The research question
for this action research project asked: How do I cultivate a CoP that engages participants in
critical reflection and utilizes a trauma-informed lens to then inform and improve equitable
interactions with the Latinx, Asian, Indigenous, and Black students and families we serve? Using
a qualitative methodological approach, I examined my andragogical and adaptive leadership
actions and observed how I created the learning conditions for White Special Education
administrators to unpack critical incidents to develop knowledge of practice. The data sources
included observational fieldnotes, participant reflections, documents developed for the study
sessions, and transcripts from our meetings. In-the-field analysis of the first cycle of action
revealed that I needed to shift from a teacher-centered approach to a learner-centered one in
order to facilitate deeper dialogue between me and my colleagues. I also learned that cultivating
a “brave space” requires vulnerability and takes continuous effort.

v
Dedication
To my beloved husband, Brian Jacobs, you are my rock, therapist, partner, best friend, and
soulmate. You have always supported my need to learn without question and I am grateful for
your loving support for these 30 years, especially during this doctoral journey.

To our children, Devon, Brenna, and Max, who I could not be prouder of and whose support and
love carried me through many long nights of typing.

To my she-warriors and cheer squad, Amy Noel O’Neal, Sandra Wood, and Kelly Thompson, I
am grateful for all you teach me about unconditional love and commitment, and for your
continual support, love, encouragement, and prayers. I am grateful to each of you for all we learn
together.

vi
Acknowledgements
My doctoral journey was possible because of the loving kindness and support of the
friends, mentors, and guides I met along the way. First and foremost, I would like to
acknowledge my husband and children. I am grateful for all you have taught me, and for all the
years you have supported my evolving leadership story. To the three outstanding special
education administrators who participated in this study—thank you for your willingness to be
vulnerable, without which this study would not have been possible. I wish you all the best as you
continue to improve your practices and grow. To my dazzling and wise study “sister,” Amy Noel
O’Neal, your companionship during those later semesters sipping caffeine, sharing book notes,
and commiserating about what we had gotten ourselves into lightened the burden with laughter.
You are more than a friend, you are a sister, and your wisdom, love, and insight were and are
invaluable. I will be forever grateful and cannot wait for our future adventures! Dr. Artineh
Samkian, I am grateful for your light when I was tumbling through the dark tunnels of data
analysis, reading and editing my sloppy writing, and helping me make meaning of it all. Sandy
Wood, thank you for coming to my rescue when the clock was ticking. Your support helped me
cross the finish line. Finally, thank you to Dr. Julie Slayton and Dr. Briana Hinga, for your
support, wisdom, and guidance.

vii
Table of Contents
Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... iv
Dedication ....................................................................................................................................... v
Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................................ vi
List of Tables .................................................................................................................................. x
List of Figures ................................................................................................................................ xi
Historically Entrenched Inequity ........................................................................................ 3
Context ................................................................................................................................ 6
Role ................................................................................................................................... 11
Conceptual Framework ..................................................................................................... 14
Community of Practice (CoP) ............................................................................... 17
Critical Reflection ................................................................................................. 30
Trauma-Informed Principles ................................................................................. 35
Adaptive Leadership ............................................................................................. 42
Andragogy............................................................................................................. 46
Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 52
Research Methods ............................................................................................................. 52
Participants and Settings ....................................................................................... 54
Actions .................................................................................................................. 56
Data Collection and Instruments/Protocols .......................................................... 62
Data Analysis ........................................................................................................ 65
Limitations and Delimitations ............................................................................... 66
Credibility and Trustworthiness ............................................................................ 68
Ethics..................................................................................................................... 69
Findings............................................................................................................................. 70

viii
Part 1: Actions and Reactions ............................................................................... 71
Part 2: Areas of Growth and Reflection .............................................................. 135
Afterword ........................................................................................................................ 146
Growth as an Educational Leader ....................................................................... 147
Implications for My Professional Life and Context ........................................... 153
Implications for My Personal Life ...................................................................... 154
References ................................................................................................................................... 157
Appendix A: Revised Lesson Plans ............................................................................................ 169
Action Research Cycle 1: Community of Practice Meeting 1 Objectives ...................... 169
Actions With Guiding Questions/Scaffolds ........................................................ 169
Participants Reflection Questions/Prompt(s) ...................................................... 170
Action Researcher Critical Reflection ................................................................ 170
Action Research Cycle 1: Cop Meeting 2 Objectives .................................................... 170
Actions With Guiding Questions/Scaffolds ........................................................ 171
Participants Critical Reflection Questions/Prompt(s) ......................................... 171
Critical Reflection/Self Check-In As Researcher ............................................... 172
Action Research Cycle 2: CoP Meeting 3 Objectives .................................................... 172
Actions With Guiding Questions/Scaffolds ........................................................ 173
Participants Critical Reflection Questions/Prompt(s) ......................................... 173
Critical Reflection/Self Check-In As Researcher ............................................... 173
Action Research Cycle 2: CoP Meeting 4 Objectives .................................................... 174
Actions With Guiding Questions/Scaffolds ........................................................ 174
Participants Critical Incident Reflection Draft 1 (15 min).................................. 174
Critical Reflection/Self Check-In As Researcher ............................................... 175
Action Research Cycle 3: CoP Meeting 5 Objectives .................................................... 175

ix
Actions With Guiding Questions/Scaffolds ........................................................ 176
Participants Critical Incident: Draft 1 ................................................................. 176
Critical Reflection/Self Check-In As Researcher ............................................... 176
Action Research Cycle 3: CoP Meeting 6 Objectives .................................................... 177
Appendix B: Ladder of Inference ............................................................................................... 180
Appendix C: Reflection Typology .............................................................................................. 181
Appendix D: Cycles of Reflection .............................................................................................. 182
Appendix E: Final Focus Group Questions ................................................................................ 185
Appendix F: Brave Verses Safe Space Agreements ................................................................... 186

x
List of Tables
Table 1: Planned Actions Cycles .................................................................................................. 58
Table 2: CoP Meeting 1 Lesson Plan Actions .............................................................................. 75
Table 3: CoP Meeting 2 Lesson Plan Actions .............................................................................. 78
Table 4: Verbal Participation Percentages .................................................................................... 82
Table 5: Verbal Participation Percentages .................................................................................... 99

xi
List of Figures
Figure 1: Conceptual Framework ................................................................................................. 16
Figure 2: The Key Components of a Community of Practice ...................................................... 19
Figure 3: Six Guiding Principles to a Trauma Informed Approach.............................................. 38
Figure 4: Participation Graph........................................................................................................ 99
Figure D1: Cycles of Reflection ................................................................................................. 184

1

Cultivating a Critically Conscious Community of Practice: An Action Research Study on
Cultivating a Community of Practice That Engages in Trauma-Informed Dialogue and
Critical Reflection
Existing research argues that implicit biases can be activated when adults make rash
decisions in response to immediate threats or do not pause to reflect critically on currently-held
assumptions and biases that may be present (Devine et al., 2012; Sevon et al., 2021). Engaging in
critical dialogue with colleagues in an open, non-judgmental fashion has the potential to facilitate
the awareness of biases (Douglas & Nganga, 2015; Lyons, 2010). In this action research study, I
asked the question: How do I cultivate a community of practice (CoP) that participates in critical
reflection and adopts and enacts trauma-informed principles (TIP) when engaging with the
Latinx, Asian, Black, and Indigenous students and families we serve? My goals were to examine
my leadership behaviors in relation to my participants (a subset of my colleagues) and support
them as we worked together to examine our practices as educational leaders.
1

At the time I began this study, the district in which I worked had taken the initiative to
commit to adopting and enacting TIP. Special Education administrators were required to attend
at minimum of three 1-hour training sessions, two 6-hour training sessions, and one or two
recommended district-wide 6-hour professional development (PD) opportunities. These
professional development opportunities specifically centered on TIP and mindful practice offered
by the district yearly. While these were important efforts on the part of my district, research has
shown that motivation weakens when professional development is mandated (Kennedy, 2016).
Additionally, educators forget the skills learned when they return to their practice if the PD is

1
I have chosen to use the linguistic term “Latinx” to represent students and families with a background from a
Latin-American geographical area (e.g., Mexico, Colombia, the Caribbean, Central America, etc.). This honored that
all represented geographic regions and mitigated the assumptions that all students would have originated from any
single geographic location.
2

taught in isolation of their practice (Elmore, 2003; Kennedy, 2016). The professional
development training centered on TIP in our district was taught in isolation from daily practice.
Also, at the time, the district did not focus on changing existing processes or structures regarding
engagement with those we serve, but primarily focused on self-care for the educators. While this
is a valuable effort, I observed that the TIP trainings were disconnected from our specific
problems of practice.
TIP as taught in our district in and of itself did not go far enough in terms of equipping
my colleagues and me to engage equitably with Latinx, Asian, Indigenous, and Black students
and families. Mindfulness training in isolation was self-care for us; however, I noticed that
mindful practice alone needed to take care of the problems we faced related to the lack of special
education administrators engaged in dialogue informed by TIP when engaging with families.
This action research aimed to take TIP and mindfulness beyond self-care and to pair them with a
commitment to critical reflection with the hopes of unearthing our biases and assumptions, which
can affect our interactions with families. The purpose was to allow us as administrators to
identify and work to interrogate biases and assumptions identified so as to ultimately improve
our practices. Collective trauma experienced daily by people of color can seem invisible to other
communities for whom it is not a daily reality (Brookfield, 2019; Freire, 2020, Haines et al.,
2015). Therefore, I contended that it was essential to come into awareness of these biases
through critical reflection.
As special education administrators, we must interrogate the assumptions and biases
about the families we serve so as not to reinforce harm or further it. I became committed to
adopting and enacting TIP and engaging in critical reflective practice so I could interrogate my
own assumptions and biases as a White female administrator. Furthermore, I saw the potential
3

benefit of forming a CoP where my colleagues and I could engage in mindfulness, critical
reflection, and dialogue informed by TIP to better our practices and ultimately to more equitably
serve our Latinx, Asian, Indigenous, and Black students and families.
Historically Entrenched Inequity
At the time of this study, I had observed within my context that special education
administrators often framed the students and families they served through a deficit lens. Special
education administrators, including myself, have stated that the pace of their day or workloads
contribute to their needing to be reactive and jump from “fire” to “fire,” failing to pause first and
be reflexive about their practice. “There just is not time to implement trauma-informed
principles,” one of my colleagues shared. However, when engaged in a reactive response that did
not frame students and families of color through an asset-based lens, we enacted practices that
ended in inequitable educational outcomes. These decisions lead to inequities such as over-
representation in Special Education and increased suspension rates of Latinx and Black students.
The National Center for Learning Disabilities (NCLD; n.d.) defined the term “significant
disproportionality” as the trend of students of certain racial and ethnic groups being identified for
special education, placed in more restrictive educational settings, and disciplined at significantly
higher rates than their typical peers. Due to bias, these students were placed in more restrictive
settings and experienced harsher discipline because of the intersectionality of race and special
education (Carter & Welner, 20213; CDE, 2021; NCLD, n.d.).
NCLD states that the most often discussed pattern of significant disproportionality is the
overrepresentation of Latinx and Black students in special education. Therefore, Latinx and
Black students have historically been identified for special education at a higher rate than their
White peers (NCLD, n.d.). This trend is also reflected in my district’s data regarding
4

disproportionality in special education. According to the California Department of Education’s
(CDE) website, my district was disproportionally identifying Black students as eligible under
other health impairments (OHI) and Latinx students as eligible under specific learning
disabilities (CDE, 2021). This data shows that U.S. public school systems, including the one in
which I work, have not served Latinx and Black students well (CDE, 2021; Milner & Lomotey,
2014; NCD, 2020; Umansky et al., 2017). However, most educators, who were predominantly
White at the time of this study, viewed school systems as culturally neutral spaces (Spikes, 2018)
due to not consciously accounting for how their White privilege was creating conflicts and
barriers, such as disproportionality in special education, for students of color (Milner &
Lomotey, 2014; Milner, 2003; Umansky et al., 2017; Utt & Tochluk, 2020).
It should be noted that the district where I worked at the time of this study did seek to
actively meet the needs of the students and families it served. The district was not setting out to
intentionally harm its students. I noticed a need for intentionality around this issue. It should also
be noted that this problem of practice was not unique to my context. Latinx, Asian, Indigenous,
and Black students and families are already experiencing trauma from the racist and oppressive
structures that have been in place in our larger society and nation for so long (Bindreiff &
Luelmo, 2021; Devine et al., 2012). As a researcher, I needed to consider a macro view of the
more significant societal issues that impacted the district’s Latinx, Asian, Indigenous, and Black
students and families if I was to understand better how those societal structures also play out
within my given context. As a society, we are surrounded by racial inequity (Kendi, 2019). The
educational world is a microcosm of that society (Brookfield, 2019). I will discuss larger societal
constructs in my context section.
5

An awareness of the larger societal structures at play served to facilitate a better
understanding of how unexamined biases, prejudices, and racial assumptions could perpetuate
harm to Latinx, Asian, Black, and Indigenous students and thereby reinforce these same systems.
The organizational habit of supporting students and families of color in a reactive way versus an
intentional way has been harmful and allowed space to reinforce assumptions and biases about
the Latinx, Asian, Indigenous, and Black students and families we serve (Matias, 2016). When
special education administrators in K–12 school districts failed to pause first to identify and own
their implicit biases, they further harmed the students and families they served by reacting to a
given request or need rather than engaging in a trauma-informed approach (Lipsky & Burk,
2009; Matias, 2016).
Engaging in critical dialogue with colleagues in an open, non-judgmental fashion has
been shown to facilitate the awareness of biases (Douglas & Nganga, 2015; Lyons, 2010).
Critical reflection in a CoP can help participants interrogate their own practices in a large
educational institution (Atkins & Duckworth, 2019). As such, I wondered if it could support
special education administrators to address their implicit biases to better interact with the
families we serve. As an organization, we could choose to act in ways that alleviate or aggravate
trauma’s effects on our students and families (Lipsky & Burk, 2009). My hope with this study
was to find a way to engage my colleagues in deeper dialogue about how our assumptions
shaped our interactions to, in the long-term, work towards addressing the historically entrenched
inequity of significant disproportionality in special education identification and a lack of asset-
based support to families.

6

Context
Anecdotally, prior to the study, through both observations and my own critical
reflections, I identified instances where my colleagues and I failed to frame students and families
using an asset lens and instead defaulted to a deficit framing of them. An example of framing
families in an asset-oriented way through a TIP-informed lens is when we see parents as allies
instead of enemies when seeking support from district administrators for a specific IEP request.
In the 2004 reauthorization, congress emphasized the importance of school-family partnerships
when they reauthorized IDEA.
Almost 30 years of research and experience has demonstrated that the education of
children with disabilities can be made more effective by strengthening the role and
responsibility of parents and ensuring that families of such children have meaningful
opportunities to participate in the education of their children at school and at home.
(IDEA 20 U.S.C. Section 1400 (c)(5)(B)
These meaningful opportunities for families to participate in their children’s education
only sometimes came to fruition in our district. I was drawn to this research because I believed
that, as special education administrators, we needed to facilitate equitable pathways for
communication and not create barriers to students and families who sought services from the
Office of Special Education. A barrier can take many forms. Inequitable partnerships between
predominately White and middle-class special education administrators and culturally and
linguistically diverse families have created cross-cultural and linguistic barriers within education
systems (Burke, 2017; Wong & Hughes, 2006). An example of such a barrier could be
advocating for your child’s needs while navigating English and unique special education jargon
when your primary language is Spanish. According to the California Department of Education,
7

2,555,951 California public school students spoke a language other than English in their homes
(CDE, 2021; Ed-Data, 2021). This number represented approximately 42.8% on average of the
state’s public-school enrollment in 2021 (Ed-Data, 2021). When we as district administrators
assumed and framed families’ frustrations as aggression or framed a family’s or student’s lack of
engagement as apathy instead of lack of an ability to communicate or some other valid reason,
we then placed a barrier in the way of the student ability to achieve equitable outcomes. When
administrators do not check their biases and frame families through a deficit lens, it leads to
educational outcomes that increase discrepancies in access and opportunity, such as
disproportionality in special education (Auerbach, 2007; Klinger & Hart, 2005; Miller, 2019). As
special education administrators, we needed to frame our students and families as assets, not as
having deficits.
At the start of this study, my district served sections of densely populated areas, such as
Santa Ana, Stanton, and Anaheim, where more centralized poverty and segregation were present.
The district is what Milner and Lomotey (2014) would call an urban intensive school district that
served increasingly dense populations of students of color, students with a primary home
language other than English, and students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. According to
the 2020 California State Department webpage, the district served a total of 42,301 students. The
district’s current enrollment as of March 11, 2022, according to the California Department of
Education Data Quest, data was as follows: Latinx, 53%, with a total of 23,050 students; Asian,
36% with a total of 15,453 students; Black, 2%, with a total of 247 students; and Indigenous
fewer than 1%, with a total of 34 students. The total number of students identified as two or more
races was at 2% enrollment with 841 students. Students who identified as White were 8% of the
total population, with 3,272 students.
8

At the time, current district special education demographics sat proportionally to the state
average indicated by CDE. The most current data breakdown using race as an identifier
according to the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES) of students identified to
receive special education services at the national level was as follows: American Indian/Alaska
Native students, 18%; Black students, 17%; students of two or more races, 15%; with the lowest
being Pacific Islander students at 11% and Asian students at 7% (NCES, 2021). The state data,
according to the California Department of Education website, was as follows: Out of 100% of
the total enrollment of students identified as eligible to receive special education services, there
were 51.7% Latinx, 10.1 % Black, 5.8% Asian; 0.7% American Indian & Alaskan Native
(Indigenous); 0.6% Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander; 2.8 % students of two or more
races; with White students standing at 26.8% (CDE, 2021) at the time this study began.
As a district and department, we had spent significant money and resources and allocated
thousands more on professional development (PD) that focused explicitly on TIP. Goal 2 of the
district’s strategic plan, as of May 3, 2021, stated that all learners would develop the personal
skills necessary to achieve academic and social goals. Goal 2 highlighted the district’s
commitment to social and emotional well-being. We had committed to engaging in practices that
TIP informs to align district practices and support to the social-emotional focus stated in Goal 2.
Mindfulness, self-care, and TIP were the key components of most of the district’s professional
development sessions I attended. However, these sessions failed to ask us, administrators, to
reflect critically or think about who we are and how our assumptions might shape our practices.
Suppose I failed to also reflect critically during mindful practice and did not call those thoughts
and emotions into awareness. In that case, I might also carry those assumptions and biases into
my following conversation with a family or student who sought my help.
9

As special education administrators, mindful practice taught us to pause and reflect when
facing conflict. We needed to learn to be present to develop self-awareness to acknowledge
thoughts and emotions to minimize the administrator’s stress. Research demonstrates that the
more we try to shield ourselves from challenging interactions and not be present with what is
unfolding, the more we feel the effects of stress and potential trauma exposure (Lipsky & Burk,
2009). Nevertheless, it stopped short and failed to emphasize the need to reflect critically on any
identified assumptions or biases that might be present. Why was it necessary to pair critical
reflection with mindfulness? My unconscious biases could impede my leadership if I did not
learn to calm my mind and pay attention to my thoughts and intentions, even if I professed a
value for diversity and inclusion (Drago-Severson & Blum-DeStefano, 2017). The active process
of critically reflecting to identify assumptions and biases at a conscious level allowed me and
those participating in this study to make informed decisions about our practices (Lyons, 2010). It
is tied to my commitment to knowing how to purposefully engage in decisions with a greater
awareness of the potential consequences of the choices I would make, because those
consequences ultimately shaped outcomes for the students and families I served.
Strategic Plan Goal-2c in our district stressed respecting and embracing differences so
that “We all benefit.” Who was currently benefiting from these allocated resources? I contended
that the predominantly White, middle-class administrators were benefiting because the training
was aimed at improving our working conditions. Who was still harmed? I contended that the
Latinx, Asian, Indigenous, and Black students and families we served were harmed. They were
still receiving inequitable direct support from those same administrators if they were not
thoroughly interrogating how their biases shaped their practices and interactions with these
families. Mindful practices were just a single component of TIP. The training covered the core
10

tenets of TIP, but only to recognize how trauma impacted us as administrators and only
minimally how it might have impacted others; it had yet to take the next crucial step of engaging
administrators in critically reflecting.
To address the historically entrenched inequity identified, I contended that we must
embed TIP into the dialogue between staff across the district, given that the district had already
allocated large amounts of funding to adopt TIP. As such, TIP would inform the dialogue
between Special Education Program Supervisors (SPED-PS) and the Latinx, Asian, Indigenous,
and Black students and families we served. I intended to build a CoP that adopted and enacted
TIP in ways that were close to our practice. My goal was to utilize mindfulness and critical
reflection, engage in dialogue informed by TIP, and ask colleagues to take the journey from self-
awareness to self-accountability. Only then would we “all benefit.”
Lipsky and Burk (2009) used the analogy of cleaning up a river. The district could pick
up trash to clean up our stream and riverbank section, which could affect the overall level of
pollution upstream. This action would also be in the hope that this effort starts a ripple of change
in the larger river and begins to work towards cleaning up the sources contributing to the
pollution (Lipsky & Burk, 2009). If we did nothing, we would further add to systemic oppression
that would continue to play out. It was almost guaranteed to play out if my colleagues and I used
our power to maintain the status quo of framing Latinx, Asian, Indigenous, and Black students
and families, through a deficit frame (Lipsky & Burk, 2009).
What motivated this study was my desire to see us function differently in my district. I
often observed my colleagues refer to their exhaustion level and lack of self-care as a valid
reason to “get through” and “clear” their to-do list in the fastest way possible. Nevertheless, as
special education district administrators, each checkbox on the “to-do list” was a family or
11

student with needs and concerns that deserved an empathetic, individualized trauma-informed
response. Our district mandated professional development was also not conducive to true
learning for us as educators. Therefore, a CoP was needed, one that discussed real problems of
practice and supported the enactment of TIP in our interactions with our families. This effort,
research shows, required intentional critical reflection on our part as educators. Otherwise, we
would run the risk of building callused layers of bias so hard that we no longer would serve our
students’ and families’ best interests because we would be walking wounded.
Role
Milner (2003) defined critical reflection “as a process to understand hidden values,
biases, and beliefs about race that were not to the forefront in a practitioner’s thinking before
conscious attempts to think about race” (p. 196). Professional development to improve staff’s
self-care strategies could have benefited the families we served if we also interrogated our own
biases and assumptions and where we hold power and privilege as White administrators. I was
less interested in learning how to pause to become a calmer, more positive racist mindfully. I
wanted instead to know how mindfulness and critical reflection could help me and my colleagues
critically interrogate our implicit biases we were bringing into the room and move from that into
an inclusive and trauma informed discourse with the families we served.
My colleagues have shared that they came into their careers to make a difference and
facilitate inclusion and inclusive practices. Some came with a savior complex of bringing
education and access to those they deem “less fortunate.” Did I? I sought to explore this through
critical reflection and root out my complicity if I found myself complicit. Peshkin (1988) talked
about the importance of being accountable to your subjective I(s) as a researcher. As a parent of
a daughter with autism and frontal lobe seizure disorder, I often thought of how hard it was to
12

navigate special education for my child. I have been homeless and took an alternative path to
finish my education. The subjectivity I carried from these experiences I owned and used as an
empathetic lens. However, families’ and students’ circumstances, realities, and lived experiences
are uniquely theirs. They do not hold the same White privilege and positional power I hold. I
sought to develop a critically reflective self-practice to become more critically conscious of
when White “saviorism” might be at play in my intentions and my interest in this problem of
practice (Willer, 2019).
I am and have been privileged as a White, middle-class woman working in Orange
County. Through my current doctoral program and critical reflection, I became more aware of
where that privilege benefited me. For example, my Whiteness enabled access to resources that
allowed me the privilege to earn a college education. With that knowledge came accountability. I
was and am accountable to be a voice and use that privilege and power to fight against and root
out the injustice and oppression surrounding me; otherwise, I am complicit in those patterns. As
a Judeo-Christian, White, cisgender, married, educated woman with children, my barriers are
few in the United States. My colleagues and I have been provided privileges and access to
resources we did not earn or even think to question. Professionally, I was and continue to be
committed to adopting and enacting TIP and engaging in critically reflective practice to
interrogate my own assumptions and biases. In addition, I was and continue to be committed to
developing, cultivating, and working within a CoP where I can support my colleagues in
engaging in this work with me.
As special education administrators, our duties at the district level included supervising
special education programs district-wide. We planned and implemented educational programs
for children who had been found eligible to receive an individual education plan (I.E.P.) under
13

the federal law of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (I.D.E.A.). We designed
professional development for the district’s special education staff to support the implementation
of defensible and effective classroom strategies for special education students. Our job was to
ensure adequate special education staffing and assess the level of assistance that special
education students needed. We directly supported teachers to help meet the needs of these
students in specialized classrooms or a regular classroom setting.
A more significant aspect of our role was directly related to working with students and
families, providing direct support. This support could take the form of phone conversations
where families called us directly to request support for a specific need or concern. Students and
families would also come into the office of special education to speak directly with us for a
request or need. These needs included navigating communication between the school site team
and families when communication had broken down or lost trust. Families also emailed directly
and engaged in other forms of written correspondence to request a need, service, or receive help
regarding facilitating communication or advocating for their student’s needs. Each of these
interactions was an opportunity to build towards equitable outcomes or reinforce barriers to
equity.
The goals of action research involved examining and making changes to my practice in
my own local context. My goals as the researcher were to examine my own leadership behaviors
and support my participants as we worked together to build a CoP that was critically reflective
and engaged in a shared domain of knowledge informed by TIP and critical reflection to uncover
implicit biases about the families we served. The potential outcome was worth what I might lose
or risk within my current job scope and context so that there could be better outcomes and access
for the students and families we supported. Challenging current practices and creating space for
14

us to reflect critically on our practices could have brought tension into pre-established
relationships. In my findings, I will speak to how that tension presented itself in the form of
vulnerable conversations and how that tension was managed through the need the cultivation of a
brave space. The common rules of a brave space and formal definition has been provided in the
conceptual framework under the concept of what constitutes a CoP.
Our discomfort or risk is minimal compared to the experiences of our students and
families seeking services from our office if we did nothing. Students and families have
experienced stress and crisis resulting from racist and inequitable systems that impact them
socially and politically daily. In addition to these inequities, Latinx, Asian, Indigenous, and
Black students and families often needed specific educational support and would seek and look
for an ally or advocate that would address those needs. In the department, I was middle
management. Nevertheless, as a member of the district administrative team, I had the ear of those
higher up than me. This was where I hoped this small study could produce the ripple of change
to build from. If I did not address how we, as administrators, remained complicit in actions that
could further harm, I would be complicit in these actions by ignoring where we could and should
do better. Equitable interactions with Latinx, Asian, Indigenous, and Black students and families
would only happen if we could interrogate our biases and assumptions, and this dissertation
focus was an attempt to take a single step in a more significant journey to do just that (Freire,
2020; Lipsky & Burk, 2009; Oldenski, 2002).
Conceptual Framework
A conceptual framework models the connections and interactions between a study’s main
theories and concepts (Maxwell, 2013; Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). A qualitative action research
framework was chosen because I was situated as an insider in the organization in which I was
15

conducting this study (Coghlan, 2013; Herr & Anderson, 2005). As an insider, I sought to
contribute to my setting and ultimately support the enactment of equitable interactions with the
Latinx, Asian, Indigenous, and Black students and families we served. The short-term goal of
this dissertation was to combine a critical lens with a mindful practice called mindfulness found
in TIP.
I initially contended that this step would occur once CoP practitioners built their
knowledge of TIP and developed a deeper understanding of what it means to be critically
reflective. The findings revealed that we are still on a journey toward the accomplishment of this
goal, but that we made important steps in the right direction. The purpose of including
mindfulness was to develop a more profound sense of awareness, become aware of our thoughts
and biases, and learn to pay attention to our intentions when engaging in dialogue and critical
reflection as a CoP. Research shows that harmful interactions can occur if educators’
assumptions and biases are not interrogated (Devine et al., 2012; Sevon et al., 2021). To directly
engage with Latinx, Asian, Indigenous, and Black students and families equitably, we needed to
interrogate held assumptions and biases and instead choose not to act on them and thereby
mitigate harm.
The intended long-term outcome and ongoing work were to improve my own and my
lateral administrative peers’ practice when engaging in interactions with Latinx, Asian,
Indigenous, and Black students and families seeking support from special education district
administrators. By engaging in critical reflection and shared dialogue informed by TIP, I
contended that we could more equitably serve the families who need us most because we would
be more aware of and disrupt the deficit assumptions we had about them. Figure 1 shows the
conceptual framework (CF) visual that will be further discussed in this section.
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Figure 1
Conceptual Framework

In this section, I present my conceptual framework, which grounds my study in specific
concepts and theory. I will deeply dive into each of the theories and concepts used to inform my
study that are represented in Figure 1. I contended that families seeking services from special
education administrators were more equitably served when those administrators took a
mindful/reflexive pause to challenge held assumptions or deficit ideology, and to engage in ways
informed by TIP. The CF visually demonstrates my intention to cultivate a CoP that engaged in
dialogue informed by TIP and utilized critical reflection to examine our positionality thoroughly
and how our ideologies shape our practice.
17

I theorized that critical reflection would provide a means to examine and root out implicit
and explicit biases and assumptions that are often all too common among White educators
(Matias, 2016; Utt & Tochluk, 2020). Matias (2016), in her book, Feeling White: Whiteness,
Emotionality, and Education, stated that the power structure of racial colonization has allowed
the White colonial mind to be positioned above others and, by doing so, never has to realize its
exposure if never forced to interrogate its position. White privilege embedded in Whiteness
never has to know itself because it has created a framework that feeds its false reality (Matias,
2016).
I contended that as White special education administrators, my colleagues and I were
unknowingly complicit in seeing Whiteness as the norm and standard on which our practices
rely. Therefore, the intended outcome of combining a critically reflexive action with the mindful
pause was intended to allow us to interrogate any hidden assumptions and biases and choose in
their place to engage in dialogue informed by TIP about how to more equitably serve Latinx,
Asian, Indigenous, and Black students and families. While in the field, I engaged in and
examined my andragogical and adaptive leadership strategies through critical reflections and
memos to address where I held assumptions and failed to decenter Whiteness. My conceptual
framework remained the same throughout this study; how I activated the concepts included in the
conceptual framework changed. I will provide specificity on those changes and what I have
learned post-study as I discuss each conceptual framework concept, starting with what makes up
a CoP.
Community of Practice (CoP)
My conceptual framework components are nested within a larger grey box entitled CoP
(See Figure 1). To achieve this study’s long-term outcome, my short-term goal was to form a
18

CoP that engaged my colleagues and me in critical reflection and dialogue informed by TIP.
Unlike traditional forms of professional development, I contended that an approach that allowed
us to meet in our own local context and discuss our own problems of practice would be more
effective than the district-mandated PD we had been exposed to. Research has also shown that
site-based, relevant professional learning promotes real learning rather than merely adding more
noise to the working environment (Kennedy, 2016). This study was designed to create a CoP in
which we could tie a shared domain of knowledge to our experiences, and to intellectually
engage participants so that the learning became meaningful to the participants.
A CoP is founded on three fundamental pillars and seven guiding principles (Wenger et
al., 2002). Figure 2 displays the three foundational pillars and highlights five of the seven
principles that were utilized in this study to guide the cultivation of a CoP. I grounded myself in
Wenger’s framework of the three fundamental aspects that make up a CoP. I referred to this
model as I coded the data from this study as evidence of whether and how I facilitated the
formation of a true CoP during the three fieldwork cycles. The evidence that we were able to
form a true CoP is presented in the findings section, under Finding 2.
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Figure 2
The Key Components of a Community of Practice

The first essential pillar of a fully formed CoP is the development of a shared domain of
knowledge. For this study, I sought to cultivate a shared domain of knowledge about TIP, which
I will further define further on. I introduced specific media, high-leverage discussion formats,
and asked open-ended questions informed by TIP to cultivate a shared knowledge domain. The
evidence of the shared domain will be discussed in the findings section. The second foundational
pillar is the development of a community of people who care about the domain (Wenger et al.,
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2002). In the past, I have been directly engaged in conversations with my colleagues where they
expressed frustration with their interactions with families seeking support. In specific scenarios,
colleagues have spoken in ways that blame or “other” the families with whom they work. In
some scenarios, colleagues have expressed frustration with forming connections and trust with
the students and families they serve. To accomplish the second foundational pillar, I would need
to make sure the people participating in the CoP cared about using critical reflection and working
through TIP informed dialogue to improve interactions with the families they served.
The three special education administrators who joined this study also received
professional development in TIP and expressed their interest in applying these principles to their
professional practices. Their expressed desire to form connections with the students and families
they serve and their commitment to the district’s focus on TIP was a starting point for developing
and adopting a shared domain of knowledge. In other words, they, like me, wanted to improve
their own practices and self-selected into engaging in this action research with me. While they
had also expressed frustrations, they were not resistant to the idea that they would need to
examine their own assumptions and biases to work towards different interactions. This study
provided a space to develop a shared domain of knowledge about TIP where we engaged in
critical reflection to mitigate the harm that may be contributing to less than equitable engagement
with Latinx, Asian, Indigenous, and Black students and families. Our success in doing so is fully
expounded in the findings section of this study.
The third and final foundational pillar of a CoP is the cultivation of shared practice that
the community develops to be effective in its domain (Wenger et al., 2002). Study participants
sought to learn what critical reflection is and what it is not. In the findings, I will discuss how the
decisions I made at the start of this study and the methods I had planned did not ultimately lead
21

me to unpack critical incidents early enough to provide the kind of benefit I initially sought. So,
while I still believe in the importance of critical reflection for special education administrators, in
this study, we fell short of truly critically reflecting.
This study was not seeking to share knowledge alone but to deepen our practice. With
practice comes the added accountability to engage with fidelity. The hope was for members of
the CoP to have a genuine commitment to be effective as special education administrators and
intentional in mitigating any harm we currently reproduced. As the facilitator of the CoP, I
guided and modeled a shared practice of critical reflection that utilized a trauma-informed lens to
inform the dialogue within the CoP, which is represented in the conceptual framework (see
Figure 1) as the connecting work between my colleagues and me. This CoP framework (with
shared domain of knowledge and commitment to “the work”) further informed the dialogue we
as special education administrators engaged in. I theorized that it was through this more
authentic professional learning setting that we could be better positioned to more equitably serve
our Latinx, Asian, Indigenous, and Black students and families, which is represented as the long-
term goal in the conceptual framework visual (Figure 1).
To cultivate a robust CoP within my organization, I embedded five of the seven core
guiding principles of CoPs in this study (Wenger et al., 2002). The principles are as follows:
Principle 1: plan for evolution; Principle 2: open dialogue between inside and outside
perspectives; Principle 3: invite different levels of participation; Principle 4: develop both private
and community spaces; Principle 5: focus on value; Principle 6: combine familiarity and
excitement, and Principle 7: create a rhythm for the community (Wenger et al., 2002). While not
a part of this initial study, the third and seventh principles will be incorporated into the ongoing
work that will extend beyond this study.
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The first principle I used was to plan for evolution (Wenger et al., 2002; Wright &
Lambert, 2019). As a social learning system, a CoP is ever evolving in its ways of knowing. A
social learning system involves engagement, imagination, and alignment (Wenger, 2000). As a
social learning system, the CoP is committed to lifelong learning. Current learning informs and
guides future practice, and as such, one must plan for an ever-evolving structure of a CoP. One
specific way we learned from current practices to inform future practice was by engaging in
critical reflection through unpacking critical incidents that occurred in our own practice.
Introducing critical reflection can be an effective tool to facilitate planning for evolution
(Farnsworth et al., 2016; Wenger et al., 2002). Critical reflection was a “meaning-making
process” that helped us set goals and use what we had learned in the past to inform future action
(Brookfield, 2017; Milner, 2003). In the Methods section, I explain the steps taken to ensure that
the community evolved by engaging in brave conversations with a TIP lens that can inform our
future practices.
The second principle utilized was maintaining an open dialogue between inside and
outside perspectives (Wenger et al., 2002; Wright & Lambert, 2019). Effective community
design brings information from outside the community into the dialogue about what the
community seeks to achieve (Wenger et al., 2002) to more equitably serve our Latinx, Asian,
Indigenous, and Black students and families. This principle involved educating CoP participants
about the lived perspectives and experiences of the Latinx, Asian, Black, Brown, and Indigenous
communities we served. In the Methods and Findings sections, I explain how and when I utilized
digital storytelling as an action step to bring in these outside perspectives. This also aligned with
the adaptive leadership strategy of protecting voices from below, such as CoP members with
minority views. My findings section discusses how data pulled from CoP participants' reflections
23

demonstrated that outside perspectives were present and considered. However, the work of
authentically bringing outside perspectives from within the virtual community we serve is yet to
come and was beyond this study. I discuss this in more detail in the discussion on adaptive
leadership behaviors. In the Methods section, I have laid out my actions to facilitate introducing
and discussing new perspectives, including online videos of lived experiences of students and
families that aligned with the demographics of those we were serving. In the findings section, I
have presented participants’ reflections on how this informed new perspective-taking.
The third principle I utilized in this study is the need to invite different levels of
participation. This third principle is a long-term goal and will continue beyond this initial
research study. As the CoP evolves and becomes fully immersed in a shared domain of
knowledge and inquiry informed by TIP, a long-term future practice would be to include voice
and input from Latinx, Asian, Indigenous, and Black students and families we directly serve to
inform reflection and practices further. Principle 3 differs from Principle 2 in that this would
involve including our families’ and students’ actual voices from the communities we serve in the
co-construction of the CoP. As such, I did not include action steps aligned to Principle 3 because
it was not a focus of this study and would require more time than I had.
The fourth principle centered on developing private and community space, or dynamic
communities rich in connections that include a web of relationships among the community’s
members (Wenger et al., 2002). In this study, community space was when we met as a CoP
utilizing an online digital platform. In comparison, private space was represented in the moments
of one-to-one exchanges between each participant and me, along with phone calls, emails,
written reflections, and backchannel conversations that strengthened the relationship and
connections within the community (Wenger et al., 2002). One such space was a conversation
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between me and Ann Elizabeth, a participant in the study. It is highlighted in the findings of this
study as it directly shaped the culture and climate of our community.
The fifth principle emphasizes that a CoP delivers value to the organization (Wenger et
al., 2002). Through the formation of a shared body of knowledge and reflexivity, the most
significant value was theorized to be felt by the Latinx, Asian, Indigenous, and Black students
and families directly served. I contended that when we as administrators engaged in the
necessary internal work and deepened our knowledge of and commitment to TIP, we could
mitigate harmful interactions that further oppressed those we serve. Instead, we could increase
dialogue that liberates and more equitably serves our families. The reward is in the creation of
shared knowledge and values. Again, this is a long-term goal of our work together.
Wenger’s sixth principle emphasized combining familiarity with excitement (Wenger,
2000; Wenger et al., 2002; Wright & Lambert, 2019). For this study, there was already a
building excitement. The participants in this study had verbally expressed the desire to work in a
small professional group to discuss challenging conversations to seek feedback so as to improve
future interactions and outcomes. The excitement grew when the study structure offered a group
format centered around new learning that allowed each community member to reflect on their
current situation. The CoP structure provided the space to explore the potential for change and
the opportunity for perspective-taking of one’s positionality and the positionalities of others.
There was familiarity because TIP and mindful practices were aligned with the district’s goals
that have been implemented since the district adopted TIP. The discussions were focused on
defining the entrenched inequity that this dissertation sought to address and connected it to the
work the district had already begun. The specific focus on examining our own assumptions and
practices in this work was the part that brought excitement to something familiar.
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The seventh and final principle focused on creating a rhythm for the community. This
rhythm is cultivated through the community members’ relationships, their interactions’ tempo,
and continued intentional focus on the knowledge domain beyond this research study. Principle
seven was not included in this study as it requires more time and will be evident only in the
continued evolution of the community well beyond my study.
The community was designed to be ever evolving as community members are committed
to lifelong learning and reflective practice that would inform future practice. This system was
held together by a shared understanding of what the community was about and how members
would hold each other accountable to the agreed goals (Wenger, 2000; Wenger et al., 2002).
Communities are best built through mutual engagement, and so there needed to be varying levels
of participation expected to facilitate that engagement best. The engagement was not intended to
be one-directional but to allow for open back-and-forth dialogue and thereby include feedback or
input from all members. In the findings, I discuss how I could have been more successful in
cultivating dialogue and the realization that the enactment of my actions was teacher-centered. I
have fully defined both teacher-centered and learner-centered approaches when I discuss
andragogy further on.
I discuss that to be effective as a CoP, we had to engage in more “shared” dialogue. That
meant I had to enact a learner-centered approach and guide their development towards
knowledge of practice, not just in engage and offer knowledge for practice (Cochran-Smith &
Lytle, 2001). The difference between knowledge for practice and knowledge of practice has been
defined under the section titled Andragogy. Also, input from multiple perspectives should have
been encouraged within the community so that the community could evolve in its knowledge
level to include multiple perspectives (Wright & Lambert, 2019). The findings section highlights
26

that we had yet to reach as far as we anticipated but were still on the journey towards sustained
deep dialogue and perspective-taking.
There are five stages to a community’s development: potential, coalescing, maturing,
stewardship, and transformation (Wenger et al., 2002). This study focused on the development of
Stage 1 and Stage 2. Stages 1 and 2 encompassed the initial formation of a CoP (Wenger et al.,
2002). The stages engaged in this study are highlighted in Figure 3. Given the limited time frame
of this dissertation, Stages 3 through 5 were outside the scope of this study and served as long-
term goals.
Stage 1 focused on forming a community and developing agreements that would position
the community to foster a brave space. Post-study, brave space is a concept that became a term
relevant to my conceptual framework. If I revisit this study, I will include brave space as a
specific component of a future conceptual framework model. The significance of the need to
cultivate vulnerability and the existence and need for a brave space are findings I discuss. Arao
and Clemens (2013) outlined the following five common rules or elements of a brave space as:
Controversy with civility, own your intentions and your impact, challenge by choice, respect,
and no attacks. The term’s definition and the importance of developing a brave space are further
connected and discussed under the critical reflection and TIP sections. Working towards a brave
space facilitated mutual engagement, an essential element of a CoP that was identified earlier. If
through critical reflection we were going to critically evaluate our shared experiences through
the unpacking of critical incidents then we had to be vulnerable and have courage to not let
problematic statements go unchecked. The participation level and mutuality within the CoP
expected to facilitate that engagement cannot be one-directional, but instead allow for open back-
and-forth dialogue and thereby include feedback or input from all members.
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As the community began to form, the critical scope of the domain was developed by fully
defining the inequity that this study sought to address: Latinx, Asian, Indigenous, and Black
students and families are harmed when special education district administrators fail to pause and
interrogate their assumptions and biases before engaging with families in dialogue that is
informed by TIP. In Cycle 1, I guided conversations that defined the inequity and aligned it with
critical reflection and the interest of participants in their organizational commitment to mindful
practice to establish further the critical community issue (Wenger et al., 2002; Wright &
Lambert, 2019). In the role of researcher, I defined the social inequity that this dissertation
sought to address, then facilitated the discussion and activities around these issues.
My intention when designing this study was for the CoP members to understand the
social inequity in the first stage and form a vision of where we wanted to go. After this
knowledge formation, we would move into the second stage, entitled coalescing. This next stage
would encompass planning and forming community norms and practices, building trust, and
encouraging vulnerability (Wenger, 2000; Wenger et al., 2002). The coalescing stage develops
relationships to build the confidence needed to engage in vulnerable conversations and rise to the
challenges of authentic dialogue informed by TIP. Trust is crucial when building safe and brave
spaces for social learning communities (Brown, 2015, 2017; Wenger, 2000). It is essential to
distinguish between creating a safe place and a brave space (Arao & Clemens, 2013). Arao and
Clemens (2013) stated that rather than using the term “safe space,” it would be more impactful
and effective to use the term “brave space” in programs. Arao and Clemens further stated that a
brave space emphasized the need for courage rather than the illusion of safety, and thereby better
positions us to accomplish our learning goals and more accurately reflects the nature of genuine
dialogue regarding challenging and controversial topics. The Oxford English Dictionary defines
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“safe” as protected from danger, harm, or loss (Simpson & Weiner, 1989). However, we could
not rule out risk from the process, and ruling out any conflict is ruling out the ability to have
critical conversations; vulnerability and empathy would be required (Arao & Clemens, 2013).
Developing empathy within the CoP, both in me and among my peers, is fundamental to
enacting trauma-informed practices, as empathy is an underpinning to connecting authentically
with others (Lipsky & Burk, 2009). Therefore, I sought to move beyond a safe space into a brave
space within our CoP. A brave space was where we, as learners, “Were willing and able to
participate and honestly struggle with challenging issues” (Holley & Steiner, 2005, p. 49).
A brave space was where shared engagement and participation navigated risk and
discomfort to challenge giving up former assumptions to engage in new ways of seeing and
knowing (Ryujin et al., 2016). In addition, a brave space was where the expectation was that
assertions could be challenged along with the beliefs that support those assertions (Boostrom,
1998). Study participants were assured that their ideas mattered and that they would be held
accountable for those ideas (Boostrom, 1998; Ryujin et al., 2016), especially if they caused harm
to other CoP members. When a brave space is cultivated in a CoP where each authentic self can
be fully vulnerable and share experiences, it can then navigate risk and discomfort and challenge
former assumptions. Then “the work” can include engaging in new ways of seeing and knowing
and bringing about real change (Arao & Clemens, 2013; Lipsky & Burk, 2009; Ryujin et al.,
2016; Wenger, 2000; Wenger et al., 2002).
In the findings, I discuss where it became necessary to revisit and revise the norms to
facilitate vulnerability and cultivate the beginnings of a brave space. It was not something we
established as a fully formed space. Instead, it was a tenuous start to forming a brave space that
could be cultivated or broken down based on the conditions set. I found that cultivating and
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maintaining a brave space included realizing that the leader must intentionally and continually
work to do so, and at any moment, it could be compromised.
The development of private and public community space (CoP Principle 4) that
encompassed shared values (CoP Principle 5) was facilitated by working towards the cultivation
of a brave space. As a CoP, we were able to co-construct agreements and, towards the end of the
study, begin to unpack critical incidents as we engaged in dialogue informed by TIP. I contended
that the formation of a CoP that facilitated a brave space would allow for various relational
dispositions such as trustworthiness (Brown, 2018; Herr & Anderson, 2005; Milner, 2003),
empathy, emotional intelligence (Brackett, 2021; Brown, 2017; Goleman, 1995; Goleman &
Boyatzis, 2017), care (Aguilar, 2016, 2018; Lipsky & Burk, 2009), and racial competence
(Brookfield, 2017; Brown, 2015, 2017; Drago-Severson, 2004; Milner, 2003). The beginnings of
a brave space are discussed in the findings; a brave space where discomfort was acknowledged,
and participants respectfully honored each other’s experiences and opinions to achieve
understanding. I guided my participants in the co-construction of norms or ground rules (Arao &
Clemens, 2013; Spikes, 2018). The agreements were inclusive of asking participants to
experience discomfort (see Appendix F for the full list of agreements).
One finding I discuss in the findings section is that forming a CoP provided my
colleagues and me the space to engage in brave conversations that did go on to inform future
practices. My goal as a researcher and facilitator of this CoP was to encourage participants to
acknowledge and critically reflect on their assumptions and biases, which could cause
discomfort. It was my goal that we would reflect on this discomfort as well as what was making
us uncomfortable (Spikes, 2018). However, for this to be possible, we needed to establish
expectations for how we engaged with each other in the CoP so that we could hold each other
30

accountable in ways that would move us to change our practices (Arao & Clemens, 2013). The
brave verses safe agreements included in the Appendix F facilitated us in establishing the
parameters of how we as community engaged and were able to hold each other accountable.
Critical Reflection
Once agreements were formed, I then set out to model and guide participants in critical
reflection by first modeling a critical incident of my own for the participants. As stated
previously, a CoP is a social learning system that is ever evolving in its ways of knowing; hence,
the CoP is committed to lifelong learning. Critical reflection was intended as one specific way
we learned from current practices and practiced lifelong learning. The intention was to do so by
unpacking critical incidents from our own practices. Critical thinking and inquiry were essential
to the CoP’s meaning-making and development of shared practices (Rodgers, 2002; Wenger et
al., 2002). For this study, I combined Brookfield’s (2017) and Milner’s (2003) definitions of
what critical reflection means and borrowed Huitt’s (1998) definition of critical thinking. As
such, I defined critical reflection as a sustained, disciplined, and intentional mental activity of
identifying and placing into question the validity of assumptions and hidden values, biases, and
beliefs about equity and privilege that were not at the forefront of a practitioner’s thinking, but
that can guide future actions (Brookfield, 2017; Huitt, 1998; Milner, 2003). Reflecting critically
was and remains a crucial component of my conceptual framework. I intended it to allow me and
my colleagues to unearth assumptions and power dynamics that shaped our work. As such, the
CF visual represents critical reflection in both the “self” and “colleagues” circles. In my findings,
I discuss data that demonstrates we were far from independent or proficient in critically
reflecting by the end of this study, despite our efforts.
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In Figure 1, as the researcher, I am represented by the circle on the right and engaged in
cycles of critical reflection to inform my practice throughout the study. Rodgers (2002) defined
reflection as;
Not an end in itself, but a tool or vehicle used in the transformation of raw experience
into meaning-filled theory that is grounded in experience, informed by existing theory,
and serves the larger purpose of the moral growth of the individual and society. (p. 863)
It is a way of seeing to facilitate meaning-making. Brookfield (2019) defined critical reflection
as an action that involves us reflecting and researching the assumptions that reinforce our
thoughts and actions within our community, work, and social relationships. It focuses on
uncovering assumptions, the conceptual adhesive that holds our perspectives, meaning schemes,
and habits of mind in place. Engaging in critical reflection made me accountable for my
subjectivity (Peshkin, 1988). As a researcher in my context, I had to contend with my own biases
and what they brought to the study. One’s positionality often shapes one’s subjectivity.
Positionality is how one is situated through the intersection of power and the politics of gender,
race, class, sexuality, ethnicity, culture, language, and other social factors (Douglas & Nganga,
2015). By using the reflexive practice of memo writing, and later analyzing those memos, I
became more aware of my subjectivities during data collection and analysis. The final findings
section discusses what I learned from this reflexive practice. One of the more significant
takeaways was that I assumed I presented an exemplar model of a critical incident to facilitate
participants to write a critical analysis of their own. During data analysis and upon further
reflection, I realized that I had provided a faulty example, the details of which I discuss in more
depth in my findings. No wonder consistent and engrained critical reflection as a tool never came
to fruition. At the time of this writing, we were still emerging in this practice as a CoP. Research
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has stated the importance of learning from the patterns around oneself to understand better what
we currently know (Brookfield, 2017; Milner, 2007). In this study, we began the journey towards
knowing our positionality through interrogation and attempts at authentic critical reflection of
our lived social, political, and historical experiences. And while we did not reach the goals I had
set out for critical reflection; we made important steps in that direction. As such, critical
reflection remains an important part of my conceptual framework.
By engaging in critical reflection through memos and voice memos, I sought to account
for my positionality and assumptions so that this knowledge might inform current and future
actions with the families I serve. Critical reflection did inform my practice as a researcher and
then informed actions further within my study (Brookfield, 2017; Peshkin, 1988). I discuss in my
findings section how through one particular reflection I completed after the first cycle, I realized
that we were not centering the students and families we served but instead centering ourselves in
our CoP discussions. Critical reflection provided me with moments of seeing (Rodgers, 2002). It
allowed me, as the researcher, to uncover any biases, assumptions, power dynamics, hegemonic
thinking, or new awareness about my learners.
An example of this was when critical reflection led me to realize where there were
missed opportunities to decenter Whiteness. Before critically reflecting, I perceived that we were
engaging as a community in deeper dialogue and more consistently decentering and interrogating
our Whiteness when, in actuality, we were not. I have presented this assertion in greater detail in
the third finding. Research has stated that critical reflection can be utilized to unpack how
Whiteness has come to be and what it means to hold privilege (Kendi, 2019). My intention was
to unpack recent critical incidents as a tool to interrogate how the study participants or I might
have been acting in racist or antiracist ways towards the Latinx, Asian, Indigenous, and Black
33

students and families we support. Our successes and failures to decenter Whiteness and utilize
this tool is addressed in the finding section. By modeling my own critical incident, I intended to
demonstrate to my colleagues how being transparent in my critical reflection and interrogating
my subjectivity could help me unearth the assumptions and biases I hold (Atkins & Duckworth,
2019). Additionally, I intended to engage in critical reflection to address how we could use it as
an informative tool to interrogate where we often are complicit in the marginalization of the
families we serve. It was only after data analysis that I came to the realization that I fell short
both in providing a worthy exemplar and in decentering and interrogating Whiteness.
The lateral peers who chose to participate in critical reflection cycles with me are
represented by the circle on the left in Figure 1 and they, too, have the term critical reflection
next to them in the conceptual framework figure. An interrogation of me and my colleagues’
positionality began with informed inquiry and an exploration of where we hold positions of
privilege. As a White middle-class woman working in Orange County, I have been privileged,
and through critical reflection, I have become more aware of where that privilege has benefited
me. The participants were also White middle-class well-educated professionals and have had
access to resources that allowed them the privilege to earn a college education and positions of
power. It was important for us to critically examine our positionality and to unearth any implicit
biases that may be reinforcing a deficit mindset about the families we serve.
With new knowledge gleaned from critical reflection comes increased accountability. If
my colleagues and I failed to use that privilege and power to fight against and root out the
patterns of injustice and oppression surrounding us, then we were complicit in those patterns. My
barriers have been few as a Judeo-Christian, White, cisgender, married, and educated woman
with children. In contrast to the families we serve, my colleagues and I have been provided
34

privileges and access to resources we did not earn or even think to question. Critical reflection
was intended as a tool to help us identify where oppression intersects to ascertain where we are
complicit and responsible for acting. This again pointed to the necessity to cultivate a brave
space in order to engage in authentic learning through critical reflection. Arao and Clemens
(2013) stated that to engage authentically around social justice issues it takes a level of risk and
requires the learner to step into controversy and difficulty that are incompatible with feeling
merely safe.
I intended to utilize critical reflection as a consciousness-raising activity that would
deepen our capacity to observe skillfully and think critically about ourselves concerning the
Latinx, Asian, Indigenous, and Black students and families we serve (Freire, 2020; Rodgers,
2002). A pattern I had observed in my context at the time of this study was my colleagues
regularly referring to their exhaustion level and lack of self-care as a valid reason to “get
through” and “clear” their to-do list in the fastest way possible. However, as mentioned
previously, as special education district administrators, each checkbox on the “to-do list” is a
family or student with needs and concerns that deserve an empathetic, individualized response.
This observation provided me better understanding of where we, as holders of power over those
seeking our support, needed to interrogate our assumptions and biases before biases are
triggered. We needed to learn how to go beyond adopting mindfulness to take notice of our
thoughts and move towards critically applying a trauma-informed lens in our interactions with
families. In the findings section, I have offered ways we were both successful and unsuccessful
in this endeavor and some of the contributing conditions for each outcome.

35

Trauma-Informed Principles
The intention of this study was to engage my colleagues in dialogue about TIP (our
CoP’s shared domain) so that we could engage in TIP informed interactions with the families we
serve. Research has defined trauma as an experience that terrifies, overwhelms, and violates. It
can be divided into two categories: primary trauma and shared trauma (Mathieu, 2012; Regional
Research Institute for Human Services, 2021). Primary trauma is an event that happens
specifically to you and is subdivided into primary trauma from your personal life and primary
trauma caused by work-related exposure (Mathieu, 2012). Shared trauma can be caused by
trauma that is witnessed but not directly experienced. An example of shared trauma would be
when you are not in actual danger but may be an observer at the setting event or exposed to the
trauma through somebody else’s retelling of their trauma, thereby becoming a trigger (Mathieu,
2012). Shared trauma is the premise that I still hold and own my trauma alongside being exposed
to or triggered by external trauma. We do not get rid of our trauma; we empathetically engage
with each other’s trauma and carry both simultaneously.
In the findings section, I have presented evidence taken from CoP meeting transcripts that
demonstrated the existence of dialogue which utilized a trauma-informed lens. I have further
discussed in the findings sections that while a dialogue with a TIP lens was present, it still
needed to be ingrained in us as a community. As a CoP, the short-term goal, as represented in
figure one, was for each community member to engage in dialogue informed by TIP when
unpacking critical incidents. The long-term goal was that these conversations would inform
future professional practices when engaging with the students and families they serve. This goal
would be “the work” we as a CoP continue to work to achieve beyond this study’s timeline.
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There are three distinct levels of trauma exposure: personal exposure, organizational
exposure, and societal exposure. Societal trauma is most closely aligned with the focus of this
study as it is directly tied to the impact of inequities (Lipsky & Burk, 2009). A lot of societal
trauma is centered around systemic oppression (Freire, 2020; Lipsky & Burk, 2009).
Understanding TIP paired with critical reflection allowed us as a CoP to better know these
principles. The intended long-term outcome was that the TIP principles became ingrained in the
communities’ dialogue. As practitioners, I contended that it would ultimately inform future
practices and lead to increasing equitable interactions with the students and families we serve.
Oppression has historically thrived on misunderstanding, alienations, and us versus them binaries
(Lipsky & Burk, 2009). Society as a whole primarily has maintained the beliefs that the world is
fundamentally just, and that bad things only happen to people who deserve them (Gillborn, 2013;
Lipsky & Burk, 2009). Yet this research discounted the impact societal trauma has on Latinx,
Asian, Indigenous, and Black students and families who face it every day and ways we are
complicit in it. It was our obligation as district administrators to disrupt these patterns.
Humans are social beings. Therefore, it became critical to understand trauma and its
responses within the context of human relationships (Perry & Szalavitz, 2006). Addressing
trauma within oneself and others is all about relationships and rebuilding trust, regaining
confidence, and returning to a new sense of security so there can be vulnerability (Brown, 2017;
Perry & Szalavitz, 2006). I argued that within the CoP, if we could choose to be vulnerable and
feel safe to do so, it would then allow us to deepen the development of mutuality (Lipsky &
Burk, 2009; Wenger et al., 2002). Being vulnerable was a choice, and the ability to do so would
not happen without establishing trust within the CoP.
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There was evidence that we were able to have brave conversations that challenged us as
CoP to grapple with our own biases and assumptions and be honest about “the work” we were
engaged in, which is presented in this study’s findings. Although, in the analysis phase, I also
found that this was isolated to specific conversations and needed to be an engrained practice.
Additionally, I have unpacked the elements needed to set the conditions for cultivating a brave
space further in this section and the second findings of this study.
There are six guiding TIP. These principles dictate trauma-informed practices (Regional
Research Institute for Human Services, 2021). Figure 3 displays the six guiding principles
developed by California’s Center for Disease Control (CDC; 2020). The TIP was utilized within
this study to establish how we operated as trauma stewards and the lens we used to unpack
critical incidents with the families we served. The long-term goal, beyond this study, is to extend
these principles and practices such that we enact trauma-informed engagement with the students
and families we serve. I have detailed how we would utilize the principles as a CoP.

38

Figure 3
Six Guiding Principles to a Trauma Informed Approach

The first principle utilized in this study was safety. The long-term goal was to extend the
conditions we utilized to establish safety for ourselves to inform our practices as administrators
into how we eventually would create safe practices for engaging with the students and families
we serve. As a CoP, we established safety for ourselves through co-constructed shared
agreements that contributed towards developing a space that was not just safe but was
momentarily beginning to become brave. The shared agreements have been included in the
appendices of this study. As a CoP, we engaged in a few challenging conversations centered
39

around unpacking critical incidents and engaged in dialogue informed by TIP. Development of
shared agreements was a necessary step to set the boundaries of how we engaged as a
community and contributed to establishing a safe space initially and heading towards the
facilitation of a brave space for us as a CoP (Brown, 2018; Perry & Szalavitz, 2006; Regional
Research Institute for Human Services, 2021).
The second guiding principle utilized in this study was that there must be trustworthiness
and transparency both during the study as we engaged as a CoP as well as when engaging with
those we serve as special education administrators (Aguilar, 2016, 2018; Regional Research
Institute for Human Services, 2021). To maintain the trust of the Latinx, Asian, Indigenous, and
Black students and families we serve, decisions we made as administrators needed to be
conducted with transparency.
TIP’s third and fourth principles are also tied directly to this study. Both principles
addressed the need to establish peer support (principle three) and collaboration and mutuality
(Principle 4). This study utilized these principles initially to develop a level of peer support and
mutuality to build a sense of community as a CoP. Evidence of where we engaged in peer
support and collaboration was demonstrated through the data in the following ways in the
findings section: co-constructed community agreements, transcript data of conversations
centered on unpacking critical incidents, and in my own memos where I have shared vignettes in
the findings section of informal conversations.
Peer support and collaboration contributed towards the formation of trust, mutuality, and
reciprocal relationships that we, as a CoP, developed. Consequently, it provided us with an
opportunity to tap into the synergistic capital that would help us as a CoP tackle the challenges
that are beyond our individual capabilities, which reinforced the value of forming a community
40

(Farnsworth et al., 2016; Wenger et al., 2002; Wright & Lambert, 2019). Trust and mutuality
were also needed to facilitate sustained engagement during challenging and critical conversations
(Eaker, 2002; Li et al., 2009; Regional Research Institute for Human Services, 2021; Wenger,
2000; Wenger et al., 2002). Although evidence has been provided in the findings that
engagement was present in vignettes, my findings also noted that we still needed to reach
sustained engagement as a community.
The final two principles, Principles 5 and 6, were absent within the parameters of this
study and were a part of the long-term work yet to accomplish. The fifth principle of TIP was
cited as empowerment, voice, and choice. Principle 5 is the need to develop practices that would
empower and give voice and choice to the families we serve. This study found evidence of a
shared commitment in participants to improve future practices when engaging with the students
and families they serve. Those future practices were not defined or a part of this study. As a CoP,
we were still in the beginning stages of engaging in dialogue informed by a TIP. That dialogue
still needed to be sustained, and TIP had yet to be fully engrained as a lens.
TIP’s sixth and final principle focused on the importance of honoring cultural, historical,
and gender issues. At the start of this study, I intended to pair TIP with interrogating our
identities through an activity entitled “I Am From.” This activity focused on identifying our race,
positions of power, and privilege. It was necessary first to establish our identity to move into
interrogating where we may have held any assumptions or biases when eventually engaging in
unpacking critical incidents as a CoP. Pulling from our shared domain of knowledge, we would
deepen our knowledge of TIP and our positionality to use this knowledge to inform and improve
practices when directly engaging with the Latinx, Asian, Indigenous, and Black students and
41

families we serve. Again, tangible implemented improvements to practice were outside the
parameters of this study and “the work” yet to do.
In order to move towards this long-term goal of improving practices and competency in
utilizing a TIP lens during engagement with families, there were certain practices for
administrators to engage in eventually. One such practice that our district professional
development had been promoting was mindfulness. Mindfulness created a space for us to anchor
and engage in mindful practice and has been a recognized tool utilized in trauma stewardship and
TIP (Lipsky & Burk, 2009). My colleagues and I utilized mindfulness by inserting a short
mindful guided meditation at the start of CoP meetings. The mindful practice was a tool to notice
and call attention to the inner noise that is present. Inner noise is your busy mind, continuously
jumping from one thought to the next and packing your mind with constant babble (Magee,
2021). The guided mindfulness meditations lasted 3–5 minutes in length and, as noted in the
Methods section, lesson plans, and CoP meeting transcripts of this study, provided the
opportunity to develop a skill to pause purposefully. By purposefully stopping and identifying
the inner chatter, we could call into question our subjectivity and more authentically unpack
critical incidents through a trauma-informed lens.
I theorized that we could utilize the discipline of taming our thoughts to then call
attention to our thoughts and become more aware of where there was a need to disentangle
ourselves from automatic and unexamined biases and consciously choose to step away from
overtly disregarding and othering those we serve (Lipsky & Burk, 2009; Magee, 2021). When
we decenter our Whiteness, we can center the students and families we serve and acknowledge
where they may hold trauma so as not to further cause harm to those we serve (Lipsky & Burk,
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2009). This cultivates a safe space for families directly tied to the first trauma-informed approach
that speaks to creating safe practices for engaging with the students and families we serve.
It was and is still my belief that if special education administrators engaged in dialogue
informed by TIP, the takeaways from such a dialogue could then positively impact future
awareness of the societal trauma that our students and families face. The long-term intended
impact would be to not build up defenses that frame the families we serve in a deficit lens but
seek to see them as assets. By engaging with the Latinx, Asian, Indigenous, and Black students
and families we serve through the lens of TIP, we could better support interactions based on
respect, access, and justice to address individual needs in an equitable way.
Adaptive Leadership
In Figure 1, adaptive leadership was represented by the dark grey circle above the light
grey dialogue oval that informed my interactions with my participants. I contended that adaptive
leadership strategies would be necessary as I guided the CoP. There are six core adaptive
leadership behaviors: Getting on the balcony, identifying an adaptive challenge, regulating
distress, maintaining disciplined attention, giving back to work, and protecting the voices of
leadership from below (Heifetz et al., 2009). Heifetz et al. categorized organizational challenges
as either technical or adaptive. Technical challenges are issues that rely on protocol, procedures,
rules, and regulations to solve them. Adaptive challenges depend on dynamic, people-centered
solutions. For this study, I chose an adaptive leadership approach because I sought to address an
entrenched inequity within my context that did not have an easy, technical solution, hence the
need to enact a people-focused solution (Heifetz et al., 2009).
The adaptive challenge I identified was that, as special education administrators, we
needed to consistently engage in dialogue informed by trauma-informed principle (TIP) and
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critically reflect on how our assumptions and biases shaped our interactions with the families we
serve. As an adaptive leader, I was obligated to protect the voices from below, the voices of the
students and families who were being represented in the critical incidents we would unpack but
who were physically not yet included in the CoP. As stated previously, including outside
perspectives was a long-term goal. Within the constraints of this study, I brought in digital
storytelling centered on the lived experiences of our students and families to facilitate bringing in
the outside voices of the students and families we serve. I was also obliged to facilitate all
participants’ opportunities to participate and not allow one participant to dominate in a way that
left other participants on the margins. Listening to all voices allowed me, as the leader, to arrive
at better solutions to an adaptive problem. In the findings, I discuss how the percentage of
participation from all participants grew across the fieldwork cycles. I also discuss the awareness
of when I was headed in the wrong direction and dominated the space with a teacher-centered
approach that inhibited the chance for full participation of all contributing voices.
To address the entrenched inequity, I contended there was a need to form and cultivate a
CoP that allows district administrators to reflect on our positionality and practices critically. This
contention was in the hopes that this direction would improve our interactions with the families
we serve. I also chose adaptive leadership because adaptive leaders see conflict resolution as an
opportunity to come to a mutually beneficial result or an outcome that is a win-win (Heifetz et
al., 2009). Developing a CoP addressed a problem of practice within the organization that
benefited the larger context. The afterword offers some examples of how the formation of a CoP
gave back to “the work” and directly impacted the larger context by providing an interest in its
continuation beyond this study. It also created a professional development structure that could be
utilized long past this project. Our power as special education administrators was both a resource
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and a constraint because we could create pathways that facilitated our students and families to
have a voice or to use our positional power to further create barriers for those same students and
families.
As an adaptive leader, I sought to engage vulnerably and empathetically with the study
participants (Heifetz et al., 2009, Heifetz & Linsky, 2002). At times this meant I also had to learn
to step aside and allow space for the CoP as a community to engage in “the work” (Heifetz et al.,
2009). In my findings, I discuss how I first came to the awareness that I was getting in the way,
was engaging as the keeper of all the knowledge and enacting a teacher-centered approach. I was
engaging in telling the information, not facilitating those I was leading to learning how to engage
in critical reflection. In summary, I have now come to understand that enacting a teacher-
centered approach was antithetical to an adaptive leadership approach.
At the start of this study, I theorized that getting on the balcony would be critical if I
wanted to support us as a CoP in reaching our goal of improving our own professional practices,
specifically increasing equitable engagement of the students and families we serve. Memoing
outside and between CoP meetings, re-watching the recorded CoP meetings and debriefing with
my dissertation chair between fieldwork cycles to get feedback and further insight surrounding
these reflexive moments provided me with a chance to get a balcony view of my study. It
provided an outside view of my leadership practices. In order to receive benefit from this view, I
needed to be open to feedback from others to understand better where I needed to make course
corrections. Being open to feedback fell under the core principle of character (Heifetz et al.,
2009). By providing opportunities to get on the balcony through the processes of my
comprehensive field notes, memos and feedback from my chair and participants, I could better
address adaptive challenges presented within each research cycle. Engaging in my memoing
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between cycles and seeking this feedback allowed me to get on the balcony and engage in
questions through authentic, reflective inquiry (Brown, 2018; Heifetz et al., 2009).
“Getting on the balcony” enabled me as the leader to gain some distance, and watch
myself, the participants, and the context while I was in the field (Heifetz et al., 2009). Northouse
(2015) stated that in addition to getting on the balcony and observing what people are facing,
adaptive leaders must analyze and accurately diagnose people’s challenges and ask themselves,
“What is going on?” This leadership behavior allowed me to see patterns in what was happening
in our CoP meetings that would have been hard to see otherwise. For example, the questions that
came up after memoing and meetings with my dissertation chair were opportunities to step back
and see the whole picture. Am I holding the group accountable to our agreements? Are you
headed towards accomplishing the goal of unpacking critical incidents soon enough? In
reflection, I determined the answer to both questions to be, no. In my findings, I further discuss
how this awareness led to course corrections in my actions.
As an adaptive leader, I sought to maintain disciplined attention to the attachment to the
status quo (Heifetz et al., 2009; Kegan & Lahey, 2009). The district’s structures, culture,
policies, and practices were deeply ingrained, self-reinforcing, and can be very difficult to
reshape. My intention was to build a CoP that through critical reflection, addressed adaptive
challenges that had the potential to disrupt what my colleagues have come to be comfortable
with (Heifetz et al., 2009). I acknowledge that through the enactment of this study’s framework,
I was operating in multiple systems simultaneously to identify and address an adaptive challenge
(Heifetz, 1994; Kegan & Lahey, 2009). Through the establishment of a shared commitment and
shared purpose (Heifetz et al., 2009), acknowledgment and collectively naming fear and
uncertainty, and the development a culture of belonging, inclusivity, and diverse perspective
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(Brown, 2018), we as a CoP worked towards pushing against the status quo of oppression and
towards liberation for all stakeholders.
I engaged in an adaptive leadership approach both in the hopes of transformative change
and developing a toolbox to deepen my developmental capacities in leadership (Drago-Severson
& Blum-DeStefano, 2017; Heifetz et al., 2009; Kegan & Lahey, 2009). As an adaptive leader, I
was committed to challenging the status quo that sustained oppression and ultimately contributed
to exclusionary practices and policies for Latinx, Asian, Indigenous, and Black students and
families seeking support from special education district administrators (Freire, 2020; Slayton &
Mathis, 2010). My short-term goal in this endeavor was to commit to challenging the status quo
and supporting those I lead by modeling and providing a protected space to engage in critically
reflective practice by unpacking critical incidents (Slayton & Mathis, 2010).
Andragogy
Forming a CoP required me to be engaged in my own learning and the learning of my
participants (Heifetz et al., 2009; Wenger et al., 2002), especially when building a shared domain
of knowledge (CoP Pillar 1). In my findings section, I discuss how, mid-study, I realized that my
intended andragogical intentions did not match my actions. That moved me from a teacher-
centered approach towards a learner-centered approach. This led me back into the literature and
specifically to the research centered on the differences between knowledge for and knowledge of
practice. If I revisit this study, I now see the value post-study of the term and knowledge of
practice, which should be included as a specific component of a future conceptual framework
model. I have fully defined the terms knowledge of and for practice further in this section. The
term andragogy was drawn from adult learning theory and referred to any form of adult learning
compared to pedagogy which specifically centered on teaching children and adolescents
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(Knowles, 1970, 1984). Andragogy was represented in my conceptual framework by the dark
grey circle nested within the CoP below the dialogue between the circle that represented cycles
of critical reflection and the circle that represented my colleagues’ cycles of critical reflection.
The center placement of andragogy was meant to represent that I must engage in andrological
moves to both do and model critical reflection for my colleagues (Brookfield, 2010), and to
facilitate dialogue about TIP. The intention to be learner-centered at the start of this study was
reflected in my lesson plans, but I came to realize mid-course that my actions were not aligning
with my intentions which then led to a shift from a teacher-centered approach to a learner-
centered approach.
Teacher-centered positions the teacher as the expert in charge of imparting knowledge to
students via lectures or direct instruction. In this setting, learners are described as “empty
vessels,” listening to and absorbing information (Ahmed, 2013; Serin, 2018). According to
Weimer (2013), a learner-centered teacher empowers students to take responsibility for learning
and uses course content to develop students’ learning skills. There are five characteristics of
learner-centered teaching:
• Learner-centered teaching engages students in the complex, messy work of learning.
• Learner-centered teaching includes explicit skill instruction.
• Learner-centered teaching encourages students to reflect on what they are learning
and how they are learning it.
• Learner-centered teaching motivates students by giving them some control over the
learning processes.
• Learner-centered teaching encourages collaboration.
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In my findings, I provide evidence of a shift to a learner-centered approach that is tied to the
existence of the characteristics list.
Malcolm Knowles first introduced the term andragogy and made revisions to his theory
between 1969 and 1997 (Knowles, 1970, 1984). Adult learning theory acknowledges that adults
and children learn differently. This theory guided my decisions and actions when working with
the study participants as learners. As previously stated, the development of a CoP was, at its
core, the development of a social learning system that was ever evolving and, thereby, had to
address the developmental learning needs of the CoP and its members. Kegan’s (1994)
constructive-developmental theory had two premises. The first premise was that learners and
knowers actively make sense of their experiences (constructivism). The second premise was that
how we make meaning of our experiences can evolve and change over time to become more
complex (developmentalism). Learning is experiential, so I needed to consider the study
participants’ mindsets to inform what work would be done (Kegan & Lahey, 2009). To
effectively teach adult learners, I first needed to understand their level of knowledge and
consider how that impacts each person’s meaning-making to support each colleague’s growth in
a way that would be experienced as supportive of their development as adult learners. Adults
define their own identities from their backgrounds and experiences. Therefore, the adult learners
in this study could utilize prior experiences and competencies, such as mindfulness, and apply
them to new learning, such as the addition of using a critical lens (Knowles, 1984; Merriam &
Bierema, 2013; Merriam & Tisdell, 2016).
I chose to situate andragogy below the light grey dialogue oval in Figure 1 because I
proposed to and ultimately taught, modeled, and guided the unpacking of critical incidents and
introduced my colleagues to a shared domain of knowledge, namely TIP. In the Methods section,
49

I have detailed the specific andragogical actions I enacted. Overall, my intention behind placing
andragogy here was to facilitate the understanding of the space in which the learning began
(Brookfield, 2019). The andragogical moves I made focused on teaching critical reflection
through unpacking critical incidents, which followed the four phases of the reflective cycle
(Rodgers, 2002).
A short-term goal of this research project was to model and guide the unpacking of
critical incidents to build my colleagues’ competencies, knowledge, and abilities, then facilitate
their self-efficacy and intrinsic motivation to engage in critical reflection. In my findings, I
discuss how I did not achieve this short-term goal and provided a faulty example centered on me
instead of the students and families we serve; in this example, my Whiteness was centered, I
never therefore interrogated it. These incidents are discussed in the third finding. Nevertheless,
critically unpacking critical incidents as an ingrained practice is an ongoing goal that has
persisted outside this study, and the CoP continues to meet informally.
Through the unpacking of critical incidents to interrogate and critically reflect on
assumptions and biases present, we continued to be mindful and present. Mindfulness was
utilized in the study a tool to facilitate learning to pay attention to the here and now and invest in
the present moment with full awareness (Lipsky & Burk, 2009, Rodgers, 2002). I took the
andragogical step of tying mindful practice to reflection. Dewey (2020) defined this reflection
phase as being alive to all forms of bodily expression and mental condition. When members of
the CoP engaged in critical reflection, it was an act of being aware of ourselves and our meaning-
making and our state of mind. My own memoing and reflections helped me to become more
fully aware of those I was leading and whose learning I was facilitating through modeling.
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One andrological step mapped out in the Methods section and aligned with CoP
principles was to develop a shared domain by developing shared definitions, and understandings
of words or terms participants might have assumed were commonly understood. Developing a
common language was critically important to forming a shared domain of knowledge
(Farnsworth et al., 2016; Wenger et al., 2002). Evidence of where we engaged in developing
shared definitions is provided in Finding 2. It provides a vignette demonstrating where I
facilitated the development of a shared definition for the term “assumption.” This data
demonstrated my efforts to work towards a shared domain of knowledge (Rodgers, 2002;
Wenger et al., 2002). This shared definition then informed knowledge of practice instead of
knowledge for practice. Knowledge for practice was defined as theory in practice, or the kind of
knowledge teachers may need to rely upon in developing their practice (Darling-Hammond &
Bransford, 2005). Knowledge of practice is constructed collectively (Cochran-Smith & Lytle,
2001). Knowledge of practice also emphasizes ongoing inquiry by learners in their professional
context and into other practical sources of knowledge for addressing problems of practice
(Darling-Hammond & Bransford, 2005).
Reflection, through drafted critical incidents centered around a shared knowledge
domain, utilized low inference description. I theorized that analysis of critical incidents would
lead the participants of this study to direct the course of similar future experiences that then
potentially lead to what Dewey (2020) calls and Rodgers (2002) borrows, “intelligent action”.
By learning to describe and differentiate, we are thereby involved in withholding interpretation
and exploring the details of an experience before trying to solve a problem (Rodgers, 2002). This
reflective cycle was utilized when participants drafted a critical incident using low inference
details. Participants would then move on to the analysis of the experience in order to learn to
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think from multiple perspectives. The action of unpacking critical incidents as a community was
facilitated by using open-ended questions, an andragogical strategy, some of which were
informed by TIP to facilitate deeper dialogue as a CoP. Their effectiveness is further discussed in
the findings section. As a CoP, through this trauma-informed lens and dialogue, we could
generate different interpretations about what was happening and see the problem from different
angles (Rodgers, 2002).
The fourth and final phase of reflection is experimentation or learning to take thoughtful
action (Rodgers, 2002), based on data gathered and analyzed during the earlier stages of the
cycle. The action research study and formation of a critically conscious CoP was the first step in
building self-efficacy in me and my participants to increase our ability to utilize critically
reflective practice and thereby utilize the group’s shared input and unique perspectives. While
this action research did not include what we as administrators would do as a result of our
reflective practices, it was a long-term goal to use our reflection to inform experimentation in our
practices with families.
Dewey (2020) stated that pausing to reflect supports an active inquiry and confirms or
refutes a suggestive belief. In the suspense of uncertainty, we metaphorically climb a tree; we try
to find some standpoint from which to survey, getting a more commanding view of the situation,
which may decide how the facts relate to one another. Dewey’s theory underpinned the basis for
including mindfulness and learning to notice thought patterns. I contended that this must be
taught and that adult learners rarely pause intentionally to examine their subjectivity. As such, I
pulled reflexivity and a critical lens into the study’s design. The district’s adopted mindful
approaches are already embedded in our current practice, so I took the next step of pairing
critical reflection and TIP further to support data analysis about one’s practice. It could
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potentially lead to intelligent action that addresses the entrenched inequity stated in this project. I
still hold that hope.
Conclusion
At the start of this study, I contended that special education administrators who engaged
mindfully and critically with a trauma-informed lens could work on unpacking critical incidents
as a CoP. Through this unpacking, we could identify assumptions or biases before enacting them
harmfully toward the students and families we serve. Through critical reflection and deep
dialogue informed by TIP, we as a CoP could examine and change our practices to better serve
families seeking our services. By aligning critical reflection with the district’s adopted
framework of TIP and informing the dialogue of each personal and (guided) group reflective
cycle, we could use this framework as an opportunity to put our subjectivity into check. We
could reflexively engage in authentic dialogue and ultimately practices to counteract systemic
oppression (Brookfield, 2017; Hooks, 1994). Looking back on this study, I now know to see that
if I were to revisit this research, my conceptual framework would need to be updated or changed.
I would need to center the Latinx, Asian, Indigenous, and Black students and families we serve
and their voices. The skill set and value of learning to be present prior to engaging in reflection
would also need to be accounted for and has since become more a part of my current practice and
theory of change going forward. This new awareness only came outside of my study long after
analyses and only when I could take a longitudinal view of where I started and where I ended.
Research Methods
To accomplish the goals of this study as set out in my conceptual framework, I engaged
in an action research project that examined my own leadership and andragogical actions when
working to cultivate a critically conscious CoP. A qualitative approach was appropriate because
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qualitative research is best when examining processes (Maxwell, 2013). An action research
approach was appropriate because this study was designed to improve my practice and focused
on facilitating change to address the defined problem of practice within the setting where I
worked. Professionally, I am committed to adopting and enacting TIP and engaging in critical
reflection to interrogate my own assumptions and biases. In addition, I am committed to working
within a CoP where I can support my colleagues in engaging in this work. The research question
for this action research project asked: How do I cultivate a CoP that engages participants in
critical reflection and utilizes a trauma-informed lens to then inform and improve equitable
interactions with the Latinx, Asian, Indigenous, and Black students and families we serve?
The goals of self-study action research involve examining and making changes to one’s
practice in one’s local context (Herr & Anderson, 2005). My goals as the practitioner-researcher
were to examine my own leadership and andragogical behaviors to support my participants
(colleagues) as we worked together to build a CoP that was critically reflective. Additionally, my
goal was to engage with colleagues in a shared domain of knowledge informed by TIP to be
present to and ultimately address implicit biases about the families we serve. Anecdotally, I had
observed that some education program supervisors further harm the Latinx, Asian, Indigenous,
and Black students and families we serve when we do not identify and own our assumptions and
implicit bias before engagement. Many of our families have experienced trauma, but supervisors
were not always interacting with them in ways that accounted for that trauma. For this reason, it
was crucial that as a CoP, we chose to act in ways that alleviated or mitigated the effects of
trauma on our students and families and thereby provided access, not barriers, to students and
families that sought services from our office of special education. As such, this work of
examining my own practices in my local context necessitated qualitative approaches that seek to
54

understand process and context in in-depth ways. In order to improve my own leadership and
andragogy, I needed to examine my practices intentionally and systematically to see how I might
improve dialogue amongst colleagues looking for ways to address their problems of practices
through a trauma-informed lens.
Participants and Settings
This study utilized a purposeful sampling approach that included a particular population
inclusive of special education district administrators in my school district. At the time of this
study, these participants were lateral peers, and I did not hold any positional authority over them.
Special Education Program Supervisors recruited for this study directly supported Latinx, Asian,
Indigenous, and Black students and families seeking services from the Office of Special
Education (OSE). Given that my research question was to determine how I could cultivate a CoP
so that my colleagues and I adopted and enacted trauma-informed practices and approaches to
working with the students and families we serve, this purposeful sample was appropriate.
Participants
Drawing on this study’s conceptual framework and research question, I chose to work
with special education program supervisors who held lateral positions to me. As supervisors in
the district, we interact with families when they do not get their needs met at their respective
school sites. As such, it is particularly important for people in our position to interact with
families equitably. A total of 11 special education administrators worked in lateral positions in
my district during the time of this study. I purposefully recruited participants who had expressed
interest in this research study and who had, in informal conversations and observations,
demonstrated an interest and/or commitment to TIP and critical reflection.
55

This purposeful recruitment was connected to the CoP principle of a shared commitment.
I did not want to build buy-in, urgency, and value from scratch, given the short timeframe of the
study. Participants were recruited through email. I recruited three White, cisgendered, women
who held the same title of a special education program supervisor and who selected their own
pseudonyms to be utilized in place of their names. For the purposes of this study, my participants
chose to be identified only under the pseudonyms of Astrid, Ann Elizabeth, and Susie-Q.
Settings of Actions
The action cycles of this study took place at the end of the contractual workday, during
an agreed-upon time (7:30 PM–8:30 PM), utilizing the online video conferencing platform,
Zoom. The participants mutually agreed to this time due to Astrid and Ann Elizabeth having
more minor children at home at the time of this study. They preferred participating when they
could be fully present in the CoP meeting and minimize competing commitments. Susie-Q had
no children and the most flexibility in her schedule, so she agreed to whatever time would work
best for other CoP participants. As program supervisors for the district, our job duties entailed
staff supervision, facilitating multiple IEPs daily, and responding to requests in person and
digitally. There was no affordance within the workday to meet. The Zoom digital meeting
platform allowed for flexibility of meeting time and space while affording me, as the researcher,
a digital recording and transcription of the meeting for data collection and analysis purposes. The
consensus of CoP participants determined the specific day of the week and timeframe to
convene. It was based on the availability of their schedules. Due to the study being situated
outside the professional workday, I was not required to submit a proposal through the district’s
request form to the district’s Office of Research and Assessment. After consulting with the
Office of Research and Assessment, the district saw this as an independent adult learning
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opportunity that did not include enrolled students and, thereby, did not require the district’s
permission to proceed. For transparency purposes, I informally submitted the title and scope of
my study to the current Director of the district’s research department in an email.
Actions
Participants in this study engaged in a total of six CoP group discussions, namely, two
CoP meetings across three overarching cycles. Cycle 1 included CoP Meetings 1 and 2. Cycle 1
focused on cultivating a CoP and unpacking positionality and identity. Cycle 2 focused on
developing a shared domain of knowledge informed by TIP and critical reflection through
unpacking the first critical incident. Cycle 2 included CoP Meetings 3 and 4. Cycle 3 was
focused on applying critical reflection to experiential knowledge where CoP participants initially
shared and then revised critical incidents they brought into the CoP. Cycle 3 included CoP
Meetings 5 and 6. Each CoP meeting within each cycle consisted of a ninety-minute recorded
Zoom session over 14 weeks. The meetings were recorded with all participants’ permission, and
I engaged in my own jottings during these sessions. I utilized an embedded web-based
transcription application called Otter-Ai that transcribed each recording once each recorded
Zoom meeting was uploaded to the application. All participants agreed to be recorded, and
general participation was mandated.
During the action research cycles, I engaged in in-the-field analysis to further inform my
actions. Analytic memos were used to deepen my own understanding of my learners, my actions,
and meeting outcomes in an effort to guide future practice, namely my andragogical moves and
adaptive leadership behaviors. See Table 1 for a detailed overview of the planned action cycles
even though mid-course corrections driven by my analytic memos prompted changes to the
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specific actions. Finalized lesson plans for each of the individual CoP meetings are included in
Appendix A.

Table 1
Planned Actions Cycles
Cycle 1
(Cultivation of a CoP / unpacking
positionality & identity)
Cycle 2
(Development of a shared domain of
knowledge: CR & TIP)
Cycle 3
Applying CR to experiential
knowledge
Actions Data collection Actions Data collection Actions Data collection
Week
1
Overview of
the three
elements
that make
up a CoP

Define a brave
space

CoP
construction
of
community
agreements

Introduction
to mindful
practice—5
min
Comprehensive field
notes: Zoom
recording
transcriptions,
jottings,
descriptive field
notes of informal
conversations and
observations

White board PDF of
initial agreements

CoP Critical
Reflection 1—
started during the
CoP meeting and
submitted prior to
the next meeting
(See Lesson Plan
in the Appendix for
Mindful
practice—5
min

Name and
connect the
components
of TIP that
lead to
equitably
supporting
Latinx,
Asian,
Indigenous,
and Black
students and
families

Define each
TIP term:
mindfulness,
Comprehensive field
notes: Zoom
recording
transcriptions,
jottings, descriptive
field notes of
informal
conversations and
observations

CoP critical
reflection 3—
Started during the
CoP meeting and
submitted prior to
the next meeting
(see lesson plan in
the Appendix for
this sessions
reflection
prompt)—provided
Mindful
practice—5
min

Review of
typology of
reflection

Review and
unpack
participants
critical
incidents—
draft 1

Critical
conversations
protocol to
review and
revise critical
Comprehensive field
notes: Zoom
recording
transcriptions,
jottings,
descriptive field
notes of informal
conversations and
observations

CoP critical
incident
reflection—
revised and
started during the
CoP meeting and
submitted prior to
the next meeting

Critical self
reflection: See
58

CoP critical
reflection
prompt 1
this session’s
reflection prompt)

mindful
practice.

Define bias
and
assumption

Counter
narrative—
digital
storytelling

CoP critical
reflection
prompt 3
in a document and
dropped in the chat

incidents
from Week 5

lesson plan in the
Appendix for
reflection
prompts.

Week
2
Mindful
practice—5
min

Continuation
of
maintaining
a brave
space and
revisiting
agreements
for the
learning
conditions

Comprehensive field
notes: Zoom
recording
transcriptions,
jottings,
descriptive field
notes of informal
conversations and
observations

CoP critical
reflection 2 –
started during the
CoP meeting and
submitted prior to
the next meeting

Mindful
practice—5
min
Discussion—
the need for
unpacking
critical
incidents

Scaffold /
modeling
critical
incident

Comprehensive field
notes: Zoom
recording
transcriptions,
jottings, descriptive
field notes of
informal
conversations and
observations

CoP critical reflection
4—CoP participants
will draft a critical
incident and be
prepared to share at
Mindful
practice—5
min

Review
typology—
levels of
reflection
Sharing of any
yet shared
critical
incidents
Circle of
response
with their
Comprehensive field
notes: Zoom
recording
transcriptions,
jottings,
descriptive field
notes of informal
conversations and
observations

Jam board feedback
for me as the
researcher
generated by the
focus group. See
59

Unpack
positionality

Model/name
positionality
by thinking
aloud and
drawing
connections
to one’s
actions

CoP critical
reflection
prompt 2
(see lesson plan in
the Appendix for
this sessions
reflection
prompt)—
provided in a
document and
dropped in the chat

Researcher
reflection: end of
Cycle 1 memo

Week 4
reflection—
critical
incident
reflection
the next CoP
meeting

Researcher reflection:
end of Cycle 2
memo

critical
incident now
revised.

Round 1—how
does your
positionality
form a lens
through
which you
viewed your
critical
incident and
your role in
it?

Round 2—what
changes or
revisions did
you make to
push towards
deepening
your critical
reflection?

Focus group on
CoP process
and
leadership—
(10 min) Jam
board
focus group
questions in the
Appendix for this
sessions reflection
prompt.

Researcher
reflection: end of
Cycle 3 memo

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reflective
questions

Literature informing each cycle
Cycle 1—literature
Arao & Clemens, 2013; Boostrom, 1998;
Brookfield, 2017; Douglas & Nganga, 2015;
Drago-Severson, 2004; Khalifa, 2018; Milner,
2007; Tharp & Gallimore, 1997; Wenger,
2000; Wenger et al., 2002
Cycle 2—literature
Brookfield, 2017; CDC, 2020; Dewey,
2020; Jay & Johnson, 2002; Lipsky &
Burk, 2009; Mezirow, 1990, 2000;
Raelin, 2001; Rodgers, 2002; Tharp &
Gallimore, 1997; Wenger et al., 2002
Cycle 3—literature
Brookfield, 2017; Jay & Johnson,
2002; Lipsky & Burk, 2009; Rodgers,
2002; Wenger et al., 2002
61
62

Data Collection and Instruments/Protocols
To examine my process and progress in developing a CoP, I used observations, jottings,
recordings, and transcriptions of CoP meetings which were then combined into comprehensive
field notes. My colleagues and I engaged in six 90-minute Zoom sessions over 14 weeks. A total
of six comprehensive field notes were generated, one for each meeting. In addition, participants’
reflections and end of cycle memos were also part of the data corpus of this study. While these
were the two primary sources of data to inform how I was cultivating a CoP, I also used some of
the activity work samples and a focus group discussion at the very end of the study to obtain
feedback from my participants. Thus, I was collecting data that included the following:
comprehensive field notes, critical reflections, activity work samples, and focus group responses
that further informed me as the researcher about participants’ movement towards becoming more
critically reflective and engaging in dialogue informed by TIP. In my findings section, I discuss
specific shifts in my awareness and study enactments from what was gleaned from the data.
Observational Field Notes
During recorded Zoom sessions, I wrote jottings on a printed agenda, which were brief
notes during the meeting. Jottings allowed me to capture observations by creating mental hooks
that I could later revisit to deepen my practice of seeing within each meeting (Rodgers, 2002).
These jottings included elements of the observation not captured by the Zoom transcript, such as
nonverbal behavior and my reflections, called observer comments. I am a very slow keyboarder
and a much faster, more efficient handwritten note-taker when I can utilize shorthand. These
jottings also included any specific questions or topics that arose and might need to be circled
back to or further explored, and a timestamp to capture the exact time I start and end an item.
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Noting specific topics, questions, or ideas allowed me to reflect later on and revisit that
moment of seeing (Rodgers, 2002). They provided me, as the researcher, the opportunity to
uncover any biases, assumptions, power dynamics, hegemonic thinking, or new awareness about
my learners. By noting the time, I started each item, I allowed for the opportunity to calculate the
pace of the agenda to inform future practice and pacing. Analytically, analyzing how much time
I was engaged in talking was vital. The transcription web-based application kept tallies of the
total percentage of time each CoP member spoke. Later in the analysis phase, this helped
reinforce the awareness that I was enacting a teacher-centered approach during CoP Meeting 1
through CoP Meeting 2. I have presented the specific percentages and talked more about this
shift in my thinking in the first finding of the findings section.
The mental hooks I created through jottings informed the descriptive field notes in the
form of a stream of consciousness that I engaged in directly following each meeting. I utilized
the voice transcription option provided through the Otter-Ai web-based application after creating
a voice memo utilizing a voice memo application on my i-phone. Utilizing voice memos allowed
me to author content in memos that further informed in-the-field analysis and ultimately led to
mid-course corrections in my actions. I have addressed these changes in my findings and
included sections of specific memos as data. It was an efficient way to capture my observations,
internal dialogue, and my reflections in great detail.
I engaged in memoing throughout my study and specifically after each cycle. Jottings,
comprehensive descriptive field notes, and the Zoom transcripts were vital data that led to a new
awareness of my relation to my learners. They served to help me examine my behaviors and
actions to effectively make mid-course corrections when needed. Zoom transcripts freed me up
as the researcher. Having the video and audio transcripts to review later provided me with a
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wealth of observational data, and I still attended to all the rich data mentioned previously. A
Zoom recording allowed me to revisit our conversations as often as needed until destroyed.
Documents and Artifacts
Memoing was a primary data source that reflexively informed each action research
cycle’s leadership and andragogical moves. It provided me, as the researcher, the opportunity to
uncover missed opportunities to decenter and interrogate our Whiteness and power dynamics
within the group and a new awareness about whether the CoP was headed in the right direction.
At one point in the study, it caused me to realize we were not headed in the right direction at all,
and I thereby shifted away from a teacher-centered approach. This specific mid-course correction
is further discussed in the findings. I wrote a total of five memos across the scope of my
fieldwork.
It has been argued that engaging in critical reflection helps support leaders’ growth and
unearth their biases and assumptions stemming from their cultural values (Khalifa et al., 2016).
Knowing this, I asked participants to engage in the act of writing critical reflections in order to
examine how I have supported them in examining their assumptions and their practices.
Participants had three reflections and two critical incidents, including a first draft and a revised
draft. Critical reflection prompts from CoP Meetings 1, 2, and 3 were embedded in the
corresponding CoP’s agendas.
I collected five written submissions from each participant, equaling a total of 15
submissions by the completion of the study. Three of these were guided by critically reflective
prompts and two critical incidents, including a first draft and a second revised draft. In addition
to my participants’ and my own memoing, other documents and artifacts were collected during
each CoP meeting and are as follows: Whiteboard PDF of initial agreements, participant-
65

generated “I Am From” poems, and Jamboard responses. The CoP’s agreements were used as
data because they documented the formation of the CoP. They are evidence of the steps that built
the conditions needed for the beginnings of a brave space.
Focus Group Questions
The individual-drafted focus group questions were provided at the end of the final CoP
session for this study through the Jamboard interactive web-based platform. Each question was
provided on its own slide, and the focus group questions have been included in Appendix E.
These specific questions were crafted to provide feedback on my andragogy and leadership for
my self-study and continued growth. The purpose was also to inform how participants
experienced the process, including my leadership practice and choices. According to Brookfield
(2016), this type of instrumentation helped me, as the researcher, judge the accuracy of my
assumptions about what best helps participants of this study learn and which assumptions about
learning were affirmed or challenged. This approach worked well in a community setting
(Brookfield, 2016). I did not choose to include a critical incident questionnaire, as there was no
time to include everything I initially wanted.
Data Analysis
Data were analyzed in the field and after completing the data collection phase. As
Coghlan (2013) suggested, by designing action research in cycles, I allowed myself, as the
researcher, to analyze and reflect on data while in the field to adjust my actions between cycles.
Analyzing the field notes, memos, and critical reflections that participants wrote enabled me to
facilitate the validity of the data through the triangulation of these multiple data sources
(Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). I reflected on how well my actions facilitated movement toward
critical reflection and engaging in dialogue with a TIP lens. Preliminary analyses were conducted
66

through analytic memos to inform my future leadership and andragogical actions after each cycle
of the action research process. I collected data as part of an iterative process in the form of
comprehensive field notes, memoing, and participants’ critical reflections. The data collected
from the study was organized during analysis so that a pattern could be examined.
Once the action research was completed, data were coded using thematic analysis
(Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). I utilized both a priori codes drawn from the conceptual framework
and emergent codes found inductively (Maxwell, 2013). Analyzing trends allowed me to see
patterns or themes in the data. A systematic analytic process showed evidence of the formation
of a CoP, a shift in my actions from a teacher-centered approach to a learner-centered approach,
the engagement level of participants, and evidence of where Whiteness was decentered as well as
the missed opportunities, among other trends.
Limitations and Delimitations
One limitation was time, inclusive of the following factors: the time of day the CoP could
meet (7:30–8:30 p.m.), the length of time the CoP had to meet for each meeting (1 hour), and the
number of total times it met (six meetings). The action cycles of this study took place at the end
of the contractual workday, during an agreed-to time, and utilized an online video conferencing
platform called Zoom. As special education district-level administrators, we had supervisory,
coaching, and professional development duties that did not allow time to be allocated within the
contractual workday. It would not have been ethical for me to schedule CoP meetings during a
lunch break, nor were lunch breaks long enough to accommodate such meetings. Therefore,
meetings were scheduled at the end of a workday, at a mutually agreed-to time. The meeting
time was determined by the consensus of this study’s participants. All efforts were made to
accommodate as many of the critical reflections and activities within the time frame of each CoP
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to mitigate the level of overall task demand. Each of the six total CoP meetings was ninety
minutes to mitigate the task demand level to the least amount possible and decrease the cognitive
load. Participants of this study already participated in multiple digital meeting formats
throughout their workday. This study added to that excessive mental effort, potentially impacting
each participant’s learning performance (Schunk, 2016; Wang et al., 2020). As a graduate
student, the length of time to complete the research and the number of times the CoP could meet
were also constrained by my personal goal to graduate on time and the timeframe set by my
doctoral program. As such, I was limited to a 14-week action and data collection timeframe. The
constraints on the time mentioned here limited my ability to accomplish all I had planned and
limited the quality of the data and, subsequently, that of my findings.
As I was a graduate student still embedded in coursework, I was myself a limitation to
this study. As a novice researcher, I found I was not always aware of everything that my study
participants needed, nor was I sufficiently proficient at making the correct andragogical moves. I
made human errors and novice mistakes in the field and in the data analysis process. In the field,
I had to course correct mid study after coming to the awareness that my enactment of my
planned actions was too teacher-centered. In the analysis phase I had to revisit the literature
around what conditions necessitate the need for a brave space Thus, my actions as an
inexperienced action researcher did not always align with what my participants needed. These
errors are presented in this study’s findings section. These stumbles along the way deepened my
learning and ways of knowing and were a part of what drew me to a qualitative action research
study, but serves as a limitation, nonetheless.
In addition to the limitations listed, there were also a few delimitations of this study. By
intentionally bounding the study by the concepts in my conceptual framework that tied to my
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answering my research question, I also limited the scope of my actions and study. My context is
specific and unique, so results in this study are bound to my specific and, therefore, not intended
to be generalizable (Coghlan, 2013; Herr & Anderson, 2005; Macintosh et al., 2007; Merriam &
Tisdell, 2016). Having a small group of willing participants was another delimitation. A small
group did not allow me to see how successful my leadership practice might have been with a
group of more resistant peers.
Credibility and Trustworthiness
Building trust was crucial to facilitate a CoP that engaged in a brave space, and I behaved
in trustworthy ways while acting in the roles of both leader and researcher (Merriam & Tisdell,
2016; Wenger, 2000; Wenger et al., 2002). By intentionally being transparent, authentic
(Merriam & Tisdell, 2016), allowing for various relational dispositions such as trustworthiness
(Brown, 2018; Herr & Anderson, 2005; Milner, 2003), empathy, emotional intelligence
(Brackett, 2021; Brown, 2017; Goleman, 1995; Goleman & Boyatzis, 2017), and care (Aguilar,
2016, 2018; Lipsky & Burk, 2009), I facilitated trustworthiness (Brown, 2018).
I acted as the primary research instrument during the scope of this study. When
something did not fit with my preferred understanding, I accounted for it and took action, even if
it was to account for it. I sought to account for my own subjectivity, biases, and assumptions that
I brought to the study (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). For example, the assumption that I would not
have allies in “the work” among my participants turned out to be false. Not only were the
participants of this study passionate about the perceived value in bettering their professional
practice, but they were also committed to engaging as a CoP beyond the constraints of this study.
Therefore, I needed to reflect critically on how my subjectivities, biases, and relationship to the
study impacted how I viewed the data. Unchecked, the findings could be skewed and inaccurate
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(Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). Modeling critically reflective practice and engaging in my critical
reflection were essential to ensure that I acted and proceeded credibly and accounted for my
subjectivity (Atkins & Duckworth, 2019).
I was consistent in meticulously cross-checking my comprehensive field notes to ensure
the credibility of my data. As such, reflexivity was essential when engaging in critical research
because of the power relations inherent in the research act (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). This study
was a dialectical process that affected and changed both the participants of my study and me as
the researcher, at least to some extent. Therefore, I needed to be reflexive and consider issues
such as positionality, inside and outside lenses, and to be aware of and own my influence and
effect on the process as much as possible (Coghlan, 2003; Herr & Anderson, 2005).
Two other strategies I used to increase the credibility of my study were the inclusion of
rich data through comprehensive field notes and triangulation from more than one method. Rich
data was gathered thanks partly to the Zoom recordings and a transcription web-based
application, which captured verbatim discussions between my participants and me. As for
triangulation, comprehensive fieldnotes, critical reflections, other artifacts, and responses to
focus group questions enabled me to increase the study’s credibility because I cross-checked my
findings across multiple data sources (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016).
Ethics
Given that I worked within the district that I was studying, the participants in the study
were also my colleagues and friends. One ethical dilemma was that they might have felt
pressured to participate so as to help me. As such, research participants were provided with the
freedom to choose to participate without feeling coerced (Gillborn, 2013). Throughout the
process, I reminded my colleagues that they were free to choose whether to participate in this
70

study and that not participating would not affect their relationship with me. Some content might
have been triggering to colleagues, and during recruitment, I let them know of this possibility. A
colleague’s decision to participate or complete the study was ultimately their own.
Often, ethical dilemmas arise once the findings are disseminated. I ensured that when
writing the final products, it was designed to mitigate any harm by using confidentiality
measures to protect the identity of the study participants. I maintained confidentiality by using
pseudonyms and de-identified characteristics that would reveal the identity of the participants in
the group discussion transcripts. Participants chose their own pseudonyms. However,
confidentiality could not be guaranteed. Participants were asked to keep information shared
during the sessions private and talked about only within the confines of the CoP sessions. In the
findings, I discuss where this point of confidentiality needed to be re-addressed halfway through
the study. Pseudonyms can only protect participants to a certain extent, especially in a small,
tight-knit organization. I was conscious of my actions during the study and how I protected my
participants’ confidentiality and rights.
Additionally, to avoid blind siding my participants about what I ultimately wrote, my
participants had the opportunity to read the findings and provide feedback before I published
them to a broader audience. This action was vital as I am arguing that as a district, we needed to
do a better job, but with transparency comes accountability to the voice of my participants. By
offering my participants an opportunity to review their contributions, their input holds me
accountable to ethically representing them authentically.
Findings
In this section, I present my findings to the research question: How do I cultivate a CoP
that engages participants in critical reflection and utilizes a trauma-informed lens to then inform
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and improve equitable interactions with the Latinx, Asian, Indigenous, and Black students and
families we serve? The Finding section has been divided into two parts: Part 1 discusses my
actions and the reactions of my adult learners, and Part 2 discusses areas of growth and
reflection. In my first finding under Part 1, I discuss (a) Finding 1: the actions I took and the shift
I made from a teacher-centered approach to a learner-centered approach; (b) Finding 2: the
benefit of shifting my actions to include reflection earlier in my cycles with a sub finding of
where there was evidence of an authentic CoP.
In Part 2, I discuss my reflections on my growth. Part 2 presents finding three: where
Whiteness was decentered and interrogated and missed opportunities evidence or lack thereof of
decentering and interrogating Whiteness within a community of White special education school
administrators. The data used to inform my findings included my own action research memos
and critical reflections, CoP meeting transcriptions and field notes, participants’ reflections,
focus group question responses and descriptive field notes of conversations outside the CoP.
Part 1: Actions and Reactions
In this study, my participants and I scheduled six mutually agreed-on CoP meetings
across three cycles. The work of the community was centered on engaging in critical reflection to
unpack critical incidents through a trauma-informed lens. The CoP’s common goal was to inform
our practice to improve equitable interactions with the Latinx, Asian, Indigenous, and Black
students and families we serve. I would plan a meeting, facilitate the discussion, and reflect on
the meeting, transcripts, and participant reflections. After reflecting, I would write a memo. At
times, I would meet with my dissertation chair and review my memos and any newly developed
assumptions, and takeaways would then inform how I approached designing the next CoP
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meeting. I used the informal in-the-field analysis, conversations with my advisor, and reflections
to inform my planning, design, and facilitation of the next meeting.
At the start, my in-the-field lesson plans were drafted with the full intention of being
learner-centered. This necessitated authentic dialogue. I began the journey with the full intention
to engage and facilitate open dialogue with my adult learners. Dialogue is critical to
strengthening community members’ sense of belonging and connection by building
relationships. Dialogue allowed CoP participants to listen, share, and discover—all in the name
of community evolution (Marsh, 2014). Nevertheless, I instead reverted to a teacher-centered
approach as soon as I got to enactment. This new awareness created a shift in approach from
“knowledge for practice” towards fostering “knowledge of practice” (Cochran-Smith & Lytle,
2001; Darling-Hammond & Bransford, 2005). Although these were not concepts I had initially
reviewed and included in the conceptual framework, they became important distinctions during
analysis. Knowledge for practice refers to the theoretical knowledge to be used for practice
(Darling-Hammond & Bransford, 2005). As I took courses geared toward learning new ideas,
models, theories, programs, or applications, I developed knowledge that I could then rely upon in
developing my own practice. In the knowledge of practice, the learner’s role is constructing
knowledge and learning and growing through that process. Analyzing the first cycle of sessions,
it became clear I was focused more on providing knowledge for practice and not engaging my
learners to develop knowledge of practice. I realized that unless I modeled the act of critically
reflecting and shifted my actions from teacher-centered towards a learner-centered approach in
my andragogy, the CoP participants would never get to authentically unpack critical incidents
early enough to engage in examining their practice. Only by getting to active reflection of critical
incidents could I help us improve our practice by developing knowledge of practice and
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ultimately engaging in equitable interactions with the Latinx, Asian, Indigenous, and Black
students and families we serve.
Finding 1: Moving From a Teacher-Centered Approach to a Learner-Centered Approach
I was still taking coursework in my graduate program when I entered the field. I was
excited to share and apply the knowledge I had gained on effectively teaching adults and
facilitating critical reflection. I wanted to share this newfound research with other special
education administrators who had agreed to be a part of this smaller, bounded group or CoP.
Heifetz et al. (2009) stated that the capacity to create an environment that embraces the diversity
of views and takes advantage of collective knowledge benefits the organization and is critical to
and facing adaptive challenges. Social interaction can help facilitate how learners experience
disorientating dilemmas and in turn help propel constructive disorientation that facilitates deep
learning (Wergin, 2020). I had learned both of these research premises in my graduate studies.
Research also warns that there are inherent barriers to sustained emotionally charged dialogue in
small, bounded groups, such as failing to acknowledge power dynamics and differences, “group
think,” and lack of diversity in the group (Mezirow, 1990; Wergin, 2020). I was also armed with
the knowledge that research states the best way to facilitate adult learners to become critically
reflective and meet these challenges is to model the kinds of reflection I was asking them to
engage in. In this study, and given my conceptual framework, I planned to facilitate learning
through explicitly unpacking critical incidents experienced by my adult learners (Brookfield,
2017; Mezirow, 1990).
Yet, this knowledge of high-quality learning environments and approaches evaporated
like mist at the onset of my first fieldwork cycle. The data from my action research shows that
instead of fostering a learner-centered environment, I instead engaged in a teacher-centered
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approach that created a power differential in the room and situating me as the holder of the
expertise. The knowledge for practice I received from my graduate courses was what I was
giving to them, and thereby approaching them as vessels to be filled, instead of fostering
knowledge of practice that is collectively constructed as a community or CoP (Cochran-Smith &
Lytle, 2001).
There are four areas within this finding that help to support the claim that I was teacher-
centered throughout Cycle 1 and half of Cycle 2. First, I will demonstrate how my lesson plans
were prepared such that they would be learner-centered, as I had full intention of engaging in
dialogue and active learning with my adult learners. Second, I will provide transcripts to show
how, as soon as I got to enactment, I instead reverted to a teacher-centered approach that lacked
opportunities for authentic dialogue among my participants. The third sub-section describes the
shift in mindset and approach after in-the-field analysis of the first three meetings of our CoP.
Finally, I will give specific details of how I came to realize that I had not fostered knowledge of
practice and needed to instead model, not directly teach, the steps of critical reflection so that we
as a community of “reflective beginners” could then collectively grow and learn deeply.
Learner-Centered Lesson Plans. I came into the study with full intention of being
learner-centered and engaging my learners actively in dialogue. The examples I have included
are the actions I included in my lesson plan from Meetings 1 and 2 (Table 2: CoP Meeting 1
Lesson Plan Actions and Table 3: CoP Meeting 2 Lesson Plan Actions, respectively). As
demonstrated, I had drafted actions that focused on utilizing a great deal of time during the first
three CoP meetings on facilitating an open dialogue centered on co-constructing
norms/guidelines, watching, and responding to digital media, defining terms (specifically,
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assumptions and bias), and engaging in the “I Am From” poem activity. I also allotted time for
mindfulness as well as for participants to begin to complete their individual critical reflection.

Table 2
CoP Meeting 1 Lesson Plan Actions

CoP Meeting 1 Actions with guiding questions/scaffolds
1. Review the three pillars that make up a community of practice.

2. Engage in a group to discuss and determine what encompasses a
brave space.
a. What makes a space safe?
b. What makes a space brave?
c. What is the difference in overlap between brave and safe?

3. Engage in dialogue that encompasses safe versus brave space
and co-construct agreements to guide interactions and
conversations as a CoP—what will our structure/guidelines be
for participating in this space?

4. Participate in a trauma-informed approach of mindful practice/
“Returning to the Here and Now.”

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Table 2 displays the planned actions pulled directly from the first meeting’s lesson plan.
As demonstrated in the table, only the first bullet included a teacher-centered approach of
utilizing direct instruction to “review the three pillars that make up a community of practice.”
That the table included some inclusion of some direct instruction did not remove me from my
path of intended to be learner-centered. As noted in my conceptual framework in my discussion
on andragogy, Weimer (2013) stated that learner-centered teaching includes explicit skill
instruction as one component of the five elements of a learner-centered approach.
Research states that the primary goal of direct instruction is to impart essential
background knowledge, explicitly apply it systematically, and link it to new knowledge (Schunk,
2016; Stein et al., 1998). I included direct instruction at the start of this meeting because it
allowed me to review the essential background knowledge of the three pillars and seven
principles of a CoP with my participants. I intended in this first action step to get on the same
page with my participants on what it means to develop a CoP. This was important because as my
research question and conceptual framework note, I was hoping to cultivate a CoP with my
colleagues. Reviewing the pillars built upon their background knowledge of our district’s
professional learning community model and tied it to the formation of a newly defined space.
Everything else I had planned for Meeting 1 was intended to engage my participants in a
participatory, learner-centered approach. For example, after reviewing the three pillars that make
up a CoP, the second planned action was to “engage in a group to discuss and determine what
encompasses a brave space.” The sub-bullets and open-ended questions further demonstrate this
intended approach. I had planned to ask the following open-ended questions: What makes a space
safe? What makes a space brave? What is the difference in overlap between brave and safe? These
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questions were intentionally drafted to elicit my participants’ definitions of safe and brave space
so that together, we could co-construct the definitions.
The third planned action was also intentionally drafted to engage us as a community in a
dialogue that encompasses unpacking what a safe versus brave space is. In the plan in Table 2, I
included “engage in dialogue that encompasses safe versus brave space and co-construct
agreements to guide interactions and conversations as a CoP.” By stating “engage in dialogue”
and “co-construct” in my plans, I was demonstrating a desire to actively engage my participants.
My intent to engage in a learner-centered approach is further demonstrated by the proposed
open-ended question, “What will be our structure/guidelines for participating in this space?” My
final planned action was for us as a community to collectively participate in mindful practice.
Overall, the listed actions demonstrated that my intended actions in my lesson plans were
predominantly learner-centered.
In the second lesson plan, too, the intention was to be learner-centered. Table 3 presents
the selection from the Meeting 2 lesson plan that shows my intentions to engage my learners
actively, thus being learner-centered.

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Table 3
CoP Meeting 2 Lesson Plan Actions
CoP Meeting 2 Actions with guiding questions/scaffolds

1. Chalk Talk—revisit agreements and invite feedback based on
answers to reflection prompt from the prior CoP meeting
one. Invite feedback based on answers to the reflection
prompts’ final question. Revise and update agreements based
on input from any new agreements or revisions.
2. TIP-Mindful Practice—5 min (body scan).

3. Examine identity through the activity of “I Am From”—
model/share my own personal “I Am From” poem.
4. Circle of response: what is your why?
5. Discussion of hierarchies of power.

Table 3 is an additional example of my intentions to engage my participants in a
participatory, learner-centered approach. This table displays the planned actions pulled directly
from Meeting 2’s lesson plan. The first action was a Chalk Talk activity. A Chalk Talk activity is
a quick visual and graphic representation of where a given group may be on a given issue
(Brookfield, 2019, & Brookfield & Preskill, 2016). I chose this discussion model because I
intended to provide a way to unearth the concerns of each drafted agreement and also a way to
discover how well learners understood a particular issue or topic, such as the difference between
a brave versus a safe space. The feedback would then inform any further revisions or updates to
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our co-constructed agreements. Given that the Chalk Talk activity focuses on participants’
additions, this is an active learning approach that centers learners’ perspectives.
The second planned action listed was for all participants to collectively participate in a
mindful practice in the form of a body scan in an act of centering ourselves and becoming as
fully present in the moment as possible. This action was moved up to the start of the meeting in
response to feedback I had received in one of my participant’s reflections the week prior. The
reflective prompt (RP) from the previous meeting was “what do you think will support you in
engaging in this work?” Astrid responded, “I appreciated the mindfulness (part of the) meeting.
Is there a reason we ended with it? I can see mindfulness at the beginning of the meeting helping
to refocus and engage in ‘the work’ of the moment.” This adjustment of moving mindful practice
up in the order of actions for Meeting 2 as reflected in the revised lesson plan further
demonstrates my intent to engage in a learner-centered approach by being responsive to my CoP
participants’ advice and making mid-course corrections to my lesson plans. Co-construction and
input on the agenda are directly tied to the third foundational pillar of a shared CoP: A shared
practice that the community develops to be effective in their domain. Astrid’s input informed my
revision of the lesson plan for the second meeting and exemplified an intention to maintain a
learner-centered approach.
The third action was also intentionally drafted to engage us as a community to “examine
identity through the activity of ‘I Am From.’” I planned to “model/share my own personal ‘I Am
From’ poem” as a scaffold. Stephen Brookfield (2019) stated that the “I Am From” activity is a
tool for analyzing the social construction of intersectional identity. Consistent with my
conceptual framework, I intended to use it as a discussion tool to center and interrogate our
Whiteness and power as White special education school administrators in relation to the Latinx,
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Asian, Indigenous, and Black students and families we serve. The “I Am From” activity is potent
because it invites those who participate first to examine themselves, cross boundaries of identity
and power, and encounter others with respect while avoiding harm (Klein, 2018). Self-
knowledge and self-examination help us to understand how our worldviews may differ from
others and can spur recognition of bias or blind spots.
The “I Am From” activity was also intended to lead us into further and deeper dialogue
around race and identity formation during activity four. The fourth activity was designed as a
“Circle of Response” activity. A Circle of Response activity is structured in the following way:
Individuals reflect on a topic for discussion and form into a circle (Brookfield, 2016, 2019). For
the purposes of this study, we were already in a bounded small group on Zoom, so each
participant in the group would be randomly assigned a number. The first person starts by giving
their reflections on the topic and is provided up to 1 minute to talk without interruptions by other
group members. The person to left of first speaker (or the next person in the number line) goes
next—whatever they say MUST somehow refer to or build on the previous speaker’s comments.
What is shared next can be a disagreement or express confusion. This next contributor is also
provided up to 1 minute to add their response without interruptions. The process continues
around the circle with people speaking in order until all have participated. Once completed, the
group moves into open conversation with no particular ground rules. This structure was
intentionally chosen as a vehicle to engage us as a community in a dialogue that would help drill
into a deeper exploration as a community into the following themes noted as sub-bullets that
were pulled from Table 3:
● What is your why?
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● How does creating a brave space demonstrate that our community is never a safe
space due to the power and privilege that we import from the outside?
● As leaders, we must be aware of our role in maintaining hierarchies of power and the
status quo of systemic barriers.
● In what way are we aware of how hierarchies of power maintain power dynamics that
are harmful to our students and families?
As demonstrated, I initially drafted lesson plans intending to be learner-centered. The
Circle of Response activity’s intention was to encourage careful active listening and allow
participants to drill down and focus their attention on three specific questions (Brookfield, 2019).
The first question (What is your why?) was an icebreaker and low-risk question drafted to
provoke introspection on what motivated them to be in their current professional role. It also
provided an opportunity for participants to get comfortable with the format of the activity. The
three questions were explicitly drafted to direct participants towards paying careful attention to
where we hold power and privilege as White administrators in an effort to move participants to
recognize issues and perspectives that may have kept resurfacing.
Defaulting to a Teacher-Centered Approach. Despite my best intentions and drafting
actions that were intended to be learner-centered, I worried so much about what I wanted my
learners to know and do by the end of the learning period that I defaulted to approaching my
learners as vessels to be filled. Freire (2020) saw this as a transactional mode of education and
likened it to a banking analogy. The teacher deposits information into the student, who is
otherwise an empty vessel. I essentially fell back into a teacher-centered approach when it came
time to facilitate the CoP meetings. The percentage of time I talked during the 90-minute
allotment of meeting time during CoP Meetings 1, 2, and 3 versus the time my participants
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verbally engaged is presented in Table 4, and shows that I talked most of the time, not leaving
much room for my learners.

Table 4
Verbal Participation Percentages
Participants Meeting 1 Meeting 2 Meeting 3
Action researcher 66% 59% 61%
Ann-Elizabeth 7% 14% 13%
Astrid 8% 13% 6%
Susie-Q 17% 10% 16%
Mindfulness narrator 2% 3% 3%

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As demonstrated in Table 2 in the previous section, only the first bulleted item in the first
meeting’s lesson plan included an intentional teacher-centered approach of utilizing direct
instruction. As stated previously, all other actions for the meeting were designed to engage my
learners in discussions and group dialogue scaffolded by open-ended questions. However, as
shown in Table 4, the percent of time I spoke compared to my participants across the first three
meetings demonstrates that I still dominated over two-thirds of the total verbal participation time.
The following excerpt was pulled from the moment when my intended action was to facilitate
the CoP in a group discussion on what encompasses a brave space. The excerpt served as further
evidence from the Zoom transcriptions of meeting to capture the length of time I spoke and how
I my approach to the discussion overshadowed the time provided to my learners.
AR [I had been speaking for a full 10 minutes prior to when this excerpt began] Is this
something that interests you to create the space? A third thing (to remember) is
that we seek to develop a practice for engaging unpacking challenging
conversations, and the practice we’re going to look at over these six meetings are
engaging in mindful practice, centering ourselves, and engaging in critical
reflection and utilizing a critical lens. A critically reflective lens allows us to then
piece apart those pieces and then work with each other on deepening critical
reflection and what that means and what that looks like in pushing back. So, if
that still interests you, and nobody’s jumped off the Zoom; I’m glad you’re here,
and that that’s something you want to do. The goal is that this is something that
becomes valuable. And if we like it, and it serves a purpose, and it feels like it
deepens my practice, then how we did this over the weeks and created this to be
useful, then the plan is that we continue it in a way that makes sense.
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Then can we use this in place of some of that PS (Program Supervisor)
meeting time to set the contingency for small group problem-solving CoP in
place, a PS time where we can do case study review, in safe ways. We don’t know
unless we try. So, this is the ugly try. And does that make sense? What questions
do you have? What? Is there anything about this that doesn’t make sense? You’re
quiet, have you had your coffee?
SQ [cleared throat and hinted visibly that she wanted to interject] No, no, I don’t, I
don’t want to speak if you know like you must like to tell us like you know,
certain things. But um … I think that we do need to create that safe space because
of me being a new PS. It’s not comfortable. I’m open. And so, for me, I don’t
really mind saying like, hey, I messed up or like, oh, shoot, like, probably
shouldn’t have done that. But, um, but I know that that’s not and I don’t feel
comfortable in the big group.
AR [I continued being primary speaker for another 5 minutes and ended with] But
you brought up a good point … you mentioned the safe space. There are two
definitions: there’s a safe space and there’s a brave space. So, my intention, and
part of what I wrote my literature review on was developing a brave space. And
that’s different than what I’m defining as a safe space. Arao and Clemens states
that a safe space is a place where you have common values, common experience,
and nobody feels challenged, you’re safe. And a brave space. You know, in those
spaces in safe spaces, you don’t necessarily have to defend yourself. You’re free
from critique … I’d kind of like to hear your definition. What does safe mean to
you? And … anybody? Jump in!
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SQ So we need, Sorry, Kristi! [Interjected and then quickly apologized]
AR No, go for it.
The transcript demonstrated that I did not engage in an open dialogue, but instead
enacted direct instruction by telling my participants how we could utilize a brave space instead
of engaging in dialogue about what encompasses a brave space. I stated, “Then can we use this
in place of some of that PS (Program Supervisor) meeting time to set the contingency for small
group problem-solving CoP in place, a PS time where we can do case study review, in safe
ways.” This demonstrates that I was not facilitating a co-construction of “what” a brave space
could encompass and when and how my colleagues thought we could use it, but instead bypassed
them to state how I envisioned us already utilizing a space that was not even formed as of yet. I
was acting as if I was the keeper of the knowledge, so much so that I framed how a brave space
could serve us without even going through the steps or process of including them in its definition
first.
I then followed this statement up with multiple leading questions: “And does that make
sense? What questions do you have? What? Is there anything about this that does not make
sense? You are quiet. Have you had your coffee?” These questions were asked one after another
in rapid-fire approach with no think time provided or an opportunity to respond. Learners need
adequate time to process their thoughts if they are being expected to contribute to a conversation
(Schunk, 2016). My rapid-fire questions did not give my learners the needed time to develop and
master the processing skills to deepen their thinking during reflection and collaborative
communication. As such, I sent the message that I was not interested in their in-depth responses
to these questions.
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Another example that I was presenting myself as the keeper of the knowledge can be
noted when Susy-Q apologized for interrupting me the first time. This apology clearly
demonstrates a hierarchy of the power dynamic present in the space. It spoke to an apparent
positional authority where Susie-Q wanted to defer to me if I, the teacher or leader, had more to
say. I immediately went into defining a brave space for my learners. This differing position of
power can have a concrete consequence on the dynamics of our community (Brookfield, 2019).
It can lead to participants remaining silent for fear of saying the wrong thing. After 15 minutes of
just me talking, and then the series of rapid fire, leading questions, Susie-Q appeared to want to
join the conversation and possibly even attempted to answer a question. I recognize that this is
true because I had noted in my observer comments that she “cleared throat and hinted visibly that
she wanted to interject.” When I stopped speaking, she quickly said “No, no, I don’t, I don’t
want to speak if you know like you must like to tell us like you know, certain things.” By saying
“I don’t want to speak if you … must … tell us … certain things,” Susie-Q might have been
hinting at acknowledging that as learners, they as participants were lacking in knowledge and
needed to learn the knowledge I was imparting. She wanted to acquiesce the floor for as long as I
needed. However, by never addressing the power dynamic in the room and ignoring this
exchange, I also have to consider that it is evidence that my domination of the space prior to this
interjection set me up as a holder of the knowledge, not to be interrupted.
I continued in a teacher-centered manner immediately after Susie-Q apologized. I
continued to be the giver of the knowledge after Susie-Q explained why she saw value in
cultivating a safe space. Susie-Q specifically used the word “safe” and not the word “brave.” She
stated, “I think that we do need to create that safe space because of me being a new PS. It is not
comfortable … I know that … I do not feel comfortable in the big group.” Instead of moving
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back and facilitating a dialogue where the group could discuss why Susie-Q chose the word
“safe” instead of “brave” and discussing how we each are defining the two terms, I interjected
with more knowledge for practice (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2001). I provided the definitions
from the research when I said, “Arao and Clemens (2013) stated that a safe space is a place
where you have common values, common experience, and nobody feels challenged.” By
providing the definition to the group, using a published article, I presented myself as the keeper
of the knowledge again, and left little room for them to think through their own definitions of a
safe space.
Even though I did not provide a formal definition of a brave space, I attempted to engage
in a more learner-centered approach immediately following this statement by saying, “I’m
pushing a little bit past (safe) to a brave space … I’d kind of like to hear your definition. What
does safe mean to you? Moreover, anybody jump in?” Despite catching myself and opening the
conversation with a question, the outcome still resulted in Susie-Q apologizing for a second time
by saying, “So we need … sorry, Kristi!” As such, I seemed to have already created an
environment that suggested I was less interested in hearing from them and more interested in
providing information. Susie-Q’s apology signals her assumption that she was speaking out of
line by entering into the conversation.
In the interaction, I did not set the conditions for sustained dialogue but instead
reinforced the power deferential of expert versus novice, all-knowing teacher versus blank slate
learner. Susie-Q’s apologies demonstrated that she believed she needed permission to engage in
the discussion and therefore was acquiescing to my expertise. Wergin (2020) stated that to help
those with less expertise develop their own voice and identity and mitigate power dynamics
between experts and novice, I should have facilitated my learner’s growth by providing
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scaffolding and opportunities to grapple with the concepts through constructive disorientation
and dialogue. The combination of the right supports and motivation and an adaptive problem,
such as co-constructing a shared definition of a brave space, can create such a constructive
disorientation if the power relationships are addressed (Wergin, 2020). In short, I reinforced the
power dynamics by not creating the conditions for constructive disorientation or facilitating open
dialogue.
Another vignette from Meeting 2 further demonstrates how I maintained a teacher-
centered approach and did not course correct in Cycle 1. In the second meeting, I drafted a lesson
plan to be learner-centered in my approach. I intended to engage my learners in a Chalk Talk
activity to discuss everyone’s understanding of the differences between a safe and brave space. I
intended to further collaborate on refining our co-constructed community agreements. In this
interaction, I suggested to the group that we consider adding in our shared agreements a new one
where we engage in an “understanding check” should a term or concept be unclear. I introduced
this new rule into the meeting because, after reviewing the transcripts from our first CoP
meeting, I observed that terms came up multiple times in our discussion and we did not take the
time to stop and develop any shared meaning or understanding. Three such words were
controversy, disorientation, and disequilibrium. Participants acknowledged that there was
confusion surrounding the terms’ definitions, but we never pushed through to a fully shared and
fleshed out definition of each word. The following transcript data captures one such discussion:
A Ann Elizabeth, you were saying something about the word “controversy.” Right?
AE Yeah … I don’t even really know if that is what it is. I think it’s more than that.
To me language is really important. And I think already when you say
“controversy,” it already implies something could be negative.
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A I just know … we got stuck on the word “controversy.” I think I heard you
(Kristi) say the word “disequilibrium” … and disequilibrium and disorientation
are new to me.
AE Not to move us on, but I think for me “disequilibrium” connects to that second
rule. Yeah, of not opting out of the uncomfortable because it doesn’t allow you to
grow.
AR Going back to talking about (agreement) one, I’m going to put in a prompt for one
and rewrite it.
In the presented interaction, participants suggested there were terms that needed further
defining, but we did not stay engaged long enough on the terms themselves to truly unpack them
and come to a shared understanding. By saying, “Going back to talking about agreement one,
I’m going to put in a prompt for one and rewrite it,” I moved us away from the terms and spoke
generally about the discussion agreement. Because I noticed this lack of time coming to a shared
definition of key words, I decided to come to my learners in Session 2 with an agreement to
ensure circling us back around and more clearly defining these terms. I instead imposed a rule or
an idea and presented it as a solution for the group. The new agreement I was proposing to the
group was defined by Brookfield (2016) as a tool to ensure that the listener accurately
understood what was conveyed or said by another group member. The agreement and action aim
to teach people to check that their understanding is accurate. It is helpful because an
understanding check can demonstrate how easy it can be to misinterpret someone’s original
meaning. An agreement about this can prevent people from attributing words and ideas that
speakers did not express (Brookfield, 2016). However, while it is a helpful agreement, the way I
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brought the idea to the group left little room for CoP members to engage with it and ultimately to
make a decision about its inclusion.
AR [I had been speaking for five minutes prior to when this excerpt begins] Some
words came up (during our last CoP meeting), such as controversy,
disequilibrium, and disorientation … people had different understandings. So, I’m
just putting this in as a suggestion that has been helpful in the past, which is a rule
for checking for understanding. It is important in a CoP that shared dialogue, and
shared meaning is communicated. And if we are not sharing the same meaning …
then we may not be all under the same understanding and miscommunicating. So,
this is a rule that Stephen Brookfield puts out as part of his coaching activities. (I
typed “Understanding Check” into the agreements on the drafted agreements
document that was being screen shared.) I then went on to provide the formal
definition and ended with), What are your questions about it?
AE I guess the first thing that comes to mind for me is … I don’t know if it’s always
that complex, though. What if I really didn’t understand what was said? Like at
all? … Is it okay to just be like, I don’t understand? … Can you share it again? Or
can you share it in a different way? … I guess what I’m trying to say is I’m not ...
I don’t know if there’s always going to be a summary.
AR There may not be. I’m, I’m thinking about the idea of adding this specific rule or
agreement in a way to come back to the conversation we had about opting out. …
I’m offering the idea that we don’t disengage or agree to stay committed to
developing understanding. That we’re not going to say, “I don’t want to ask for
clarification and interrupt” when someone doesn’t understand a term. And I can
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speak from an “I statement;” I might come at it and say, “I don’t want to admit I
don’t know, or I want, or I don’t want to derail a conversation by asking for
clarification.” And I want us to be able to have an agreement that we give grace to
each other to stop and explain so that we’re speaking clearly.
A I think I liked the way you explained that a little bit better that time … I liked how
you explained that if we don’t understand something, then we should be checking
in that way.
The vignette demonstrates how I defaulted to a teacher-centered approach despite my
intentions to be otherwise. A learner-centered approach would have included facilitating a
conversation to discuss and co-construct a way to come to a shared definition of words such as
controversy, disequilibrium, and disorientation. Instead, I imposed a rule I deemed necessary,
further reinforcing that I was the expert and keeper of the knowledge. I started by stating,
Some words came up (during our last CoP meeting), such as controversy, disequilibrium,
and disorientation. … People had different understandings. So, I’m just putting this in as
a suggestion that has been helpful in the past, which is a rule for checking for
understanding. It is important in a CoP that shared dialogue, and shared meaning is
communicated.
Even though I intended to facilitate an open dialogue about the proposed new agreement, I
reverted to a teacher-centered approach by bringing a solution into the CoP. While this idea
could have been great, it was coming from an outside source and demonstrated knowledge for
practice instead of developing knowledge of practice together. I cited Brookfield (2016) to bring
credibility to the newly proposed agreement. While I started by saying I was “putting this in as a
suggestion,” I qualified it as one that has “been helpful,” leaving less room for participants to
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push back against it. I failed to center my learners and facilitate a conversation that authentically
unpacked and co-constructed a way to handle misunderstandings of key terms. I instead provided
the exact rule, as defined by Brookfield (2019), and by naming the author to signal the idea’s
credibility and writing it on the slide, I solidified its importance.
Ann Elizabeth did, at first, attempt to push against the proposed agreement when she
stated, “I don’t know if it’s always that complex, though … I guess what I’m trying to say is I’m
not ... I don’t know if there’s always going to be a summary.” Instead of recognizing this as a
push back against the imposed agreement and facilitating a genuinely open discussion, I further
justified my reasoning by immediately stating,
There may not be (but) … I’m thinking about the idea of adding this specific rule or
agreement in a way to come back to the conversation we had about opting out … I’m
offering, the idea that we don’t disengage or agree to stay committed to developing
understanding.
My statement demonstrates that I was reinforcing the power differential in the room, framing
myself as the keeper of the knowledge, and ultimate decision maker. Cochran-Smith and Lytle
(2001) argued knowledge that is brought in from outside, usually by “experts,” is called
knowledge for practice. I could have used the opportunity to foster knowledge of practice
(Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2001) by asking them what has worked for them in their own practice
and experience in other group settings so as to collectively construct an agreement.
The knowledge for practice I unloaded on my learners was a demonstration of me telling
my participants what the new rule should be and how I saw us using it. My learners acquiesced
in the end given the power deferential. Their acquiescence is demonstrated when Astrid states, “I
think I liked the way you explained that a little bit better that time. … I liked how you explained
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that if we do not understand something, then we should be checking in that way.” After Astrid
raised the white flag, she demonstrated that they would be OK to move on. That is just what we
did. We agreed to add the rule and move to the next topic of discussion. Only after reviewing the
transcripts, reviewing my own memos, and speaking with my chair did I eventually become
aware that I needed to shift my approach from teacher-centered to learner-centered. In the next
section, I will share evidence of that shift in mindset and how it affected my practice as a leader
in the CoP.
Finding 2: Shifting to a Learner-Centered Approach
I will now provide evidence of my shift toward a learner-centered approach in the second
finding. This shift in awareness came after careful analysis of CoP meeting Zoom transcriptions
data, analysis of my participants and my own critical reflections, and reflections on my
discussions with my dissertation chair. This data showed the steps taken to shift those actions
then. The data further demonstrated an enactment of a learner-centered approach which resulted
in moving up the timeline for engaging in unpacking critical incidents. The data also shows the
necessity of setting the conditions to be vulnerable, ultimately leading to the beginnings of
developing a brave space. Throughout the findings, the data indicated the existence of a fully
formed CoP. This section culminated with a summary of the data that demonstrated the existence
of each of the three foundational pillars that make up a CoP.
Awareness of the Need to Shift My Actions. After the third CoP meeting, I became
concerned that, although the CoP was steadily moving through the lesson plans agenda items, we
were also running out of time to delve deeply into the work of the community. Earlier I defined
the work of the community as unpacking critical incidents by engaging in reflective dialogue that
utilizes a trauma-informed lens scaffolded by open-ended questions to inform future practice.
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This realization came from reflecting on my conversation with my dissertation chair between
CoP Meetings 2 and 3. Following this debriefing meeting with my dissertation chair, I wrote a
reflective memo. I have pulled evidence from the transcript of the meeting with my dissertation
chair and the reflective memo I wrote after the meeting as evidence of a new awareness of the
need to shift to a learner-centered approach.

AR We are not getting to bringing in critical incidents and the work fast enough. I am
bringing in too much information, so there is no opportunity for deeper
conversations or dialogue. … I feel like I am spending valuable chunks of time
during the first half of my study (meetings one-three) rehashing the agreements,
lecturing, and talking more than my participants. How do I not do all the talking
and get out of the way?
C So, that would be looking at your lesson plan and asking yourself, “How do I pull
back?”
AR Getting away from being so teacher-centered?
C It is disentangling your actions from your outcomes, looking at your lesson plans,
and asking, “Where do we want to go?”
AR So, it goes back to our last class and what we learned about facilitating learning.
C You are leaning into the questions and setting the conditions for their learning. Do
not tell … do not keep coming back to the agreements but instead abide by them
and, through your actions, model how “we” hold true through our actions as a
community. You bring those agreements and research into play through your
actions and your facilitation. … Maybe start this session by modeling a low
inference critical incident of your own.
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AR: I could do that. I could bring in my own critical incident, model a reflective cycle.
C Yes! Your actions and your facilitation are where you then navigate conversations.
Maybe you send a quick email and say, “I am going to do this change in direction
tomorrow,” … and frontload them.
AR: Then we would get to the work earlier and might actually have time to practice.
C Exactly right. Then the expectation becomes that, in the next CoP session, they
would bring in an incident of their own.
My dissertation chair and I had scheduled to meet halfway through my fieldwork. As
demonstrated in the exchange, I shared with my chair my fear of failing to make meaningful
progress with my participants. I opened the meeting by stating,
I feel as if I am spending valuable chunks of time during the first half of my study
(meetings one-three) rehashing the agreements, lecturing, and talking more than my
participants. I am bringing in too much information, and so there is no opportunity to
have deeper conversations or dialogue.
I asked in frustration, “How do I not do all the talking and get out of the way?” This question
exemplifies my beginning internal awareness that I was headed in the wrong direction and
dominated the space with a teacher-centered approach. “Rehashing the agreements, lecturing,
and talking more than my participants” were behaviors I could point to that were teacher-
centered and that took the place of “deeper conversations or dialogue.”
My dissertation chair responded to this question and frustration challenging me to revisit
my lesson plans and ask myself, “How do I pull back?” This pushed me to think about how I
might accomplish my goals while simultaneously decentering myself, because I then asked “So,
getting away from being so teacher-centered?” She then validated my response by responding to
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my question with, “It is disentangling your actions from your outcomes, looking at your lesson
plans, and asking, ‘Where do we want to go?’” My mind then made an instant connection to
recent coursework we had completed in our graduate program on andragogy and the importance
of setting the conditions for learning when I mentioned going back to what I had learned about
“facilitating learning” rather than simply telling. My chair helped me focus on the desired
outcomes I had set out to accomplish and reminded me that good andragogy always has the end
goal in mind.
I came to realize in this moment that it was possible to work towards the desired
outcomes even if (or perhaps especially if) I moved out of the way. Research states that engaging
learners in learning and educating them to be reflective thinkers requires a shift in pedagogy
from the teacher being the holder of the knowledge to the learner being at the center, and thereby
encourages learners to deeply engage with the material being learned, develop a dialogue, and
reflect on their progress (Weimer, 2013). It is a shift away from me being the “holder of the
knowledge” and puts the emphasis instead on the learner (King, 1993). This connection to
research and prior knowledge from coursework is evident when I stated, “So, it goes back to our
last class and what we learned about facilitating learning.” My use of the words “facilitating
learning” was an indication of my recognition that teaching in a learner-centered way requires
facilitation, not telling.
Through this coaching conversation, I began to come to an awareness of how I could shift
the direction and focus of the final three CoP sessions to a learner-centered focus while still
accomplishing my desired outcomes. My chair provided the following example to help me see
how I might do that: “Through your actions and your facilitation is where you bring those
agreements and research into play … maybe, start this session by modeling a low inference
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critical incident of your own.” This suggestion made me understand not just that I needed to shift
to a learner-centered approach, but how I might start enacting this shift. This awareness is
evident in my response when I stated, “So, I could do that. I could bring in my own critical
incident, model a reflective cycle.”
Research states that engaging in a teacher-centered approach that situated me as the
holder of the expertise was not conducive to fostering knowledge of practice (Cochran-Smith &
Lytle, 2001), which is constructed collectively by a CoP (Wenger et al., 2002). This awareness
that I needed to shift was now paired with a clear pathway to enact this change in direction. My
commitment to do this was formalized when my chair provided the next step, demonstrated
when she shared,
Maybe you send a quick email and say, ‘I am going to do this change in direction
tomorrow,’ … and frontload them … then the expectation becomes that, in the next CoP
session, they would bring in an incident of their own.
By modeling for me how to communicate the shift to my learners and then to model the shift, my
chair showed how it could position them to “bring in an incident of their own,” thus giving them
the opportunity to actively engage in the work. After meeting with my dissertation chair, I
reflected on this new awareness in a reflective memo. I have included an excerpt from that
memo.
I talk more than 60 percent of the time in the first three sessions. Too much time is spent
on me talking and telling my participants why we should be engaging in this work, and
not enough time engaging in this work. … After talking with Artineh, I now realize that I
do not necessarily have to do all the direct instruction I have been doing to get where we
need to go … I still want to guide and facilitate. If we are engaging in unpacking critical
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incidents, I do not want us as a community to jump into them. However, if, as Artineh
suggested, I model Carol Rodgers’s cycles of reflection instead of directly teaching them;
I can then facilitate the pace and learning opportunities through open-ended questioning
and refer them back to the norms as a framework.
This memo demonstrates a shift in my thinking. My statement, “I am talking more than
60 percent of the time in the first three sessions,” exemplified an emerging awareness, using in-
the-field analysis of transcript data, that I was being too teacher-centered. I then said, “Too much
time is spent on me talking and telling … I now realize that I do not necessarily have to do all the
direct instruction I have been doing to get where we need to go.” This statement is evidence of
the shift in my thinking and what I needed to avoid doing in my future actions (direct
instruction). It also showed a new understanding that I could still get to where we needed to go
(the desired outcome of engaging in “the work”), and perhaps more expeditiously, if I facilitated
rather than did “the work.” In particular, I wrote my intention to “model Carol Rodgers’s cycles
of reflection instead of directly teaching them.” In the following sub-finding, I will provide
evidence of how this shift in mindset led to a shift in my actions and thereby demonstrated a
movement towards a more learner-centered approach.
Evidence of a Learner-Centered Approach. In Finding 1, I presented a table that
demonstrated the percentage of time I talked during the 90-minute allotment of meeting time
during CoP Meetings 1, 2, and 3 versus the time my participants verbally engaged. Tables 5 and
Figure 4 demonstrate evidence of a movement towards a more learner-centered approach by
displaying a notable decrease in the overall percentage of time I spoke compared to the overall
percentage of time my learners spoke.
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Table 5
Verbal Participation Percentages
Participants Mtg. 1 Mtg. 2 Mtg. 3 Mtg. 4 Mtg. 5 Mtg. 6
Action researcher 66% 59% 61% 43% 30% 21%
Ann-Elizabeth 7% 14% 13% 16% 43% 8%
Astrid 8% 13% 7% 18% 10% 37%
Susie-Q 17% 10% 16% 17% 12% 28%
Mindfulness narrator 2% 4% 3% 6% 5% 6%

Figure 4
Participation Graph

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Table 5 and Figure 4 demonstrate a significant decrease in the overall percentage of time
I spoke compared to my participants across the final three meetings. Table 5 demonstrates a clear
change in the percentages while Figure 4 provides a visual of how each specific participant’s
percentages increased or decreased. Together they represent a complete picture of the
demonstrated decrease in my participation that occurred after recognizing the need to shift to a
learner-centered approach. Before this shift in approach, I dominated over 66 % of the total
verbal participation time on average. By the final CoP meeting, as demonstrated in Table 5 and
Figure 4, I was speaking less than 31 % of the total time on average. The percentage of time I
spoke and how I approached the discussion was no longer overshadowing the engagement time
provided to my learners. Figure 4 shows that my learners’ participation increased slightly, with a
bigger jump in percentage specifically for Ann-Elizabeth during CoP Meeting 5. The jump in
Ann Elizabeth’s participation was directly tied to her deciding to be the first to share her critical
incident at the start of meeting 5. Astrid and Susie-Q also had significant jumps in time spent
talking during CoP Meeting 6 as I decreased in my participation across the last three CoP
meetings overall.
In the next section I will provide evidence of this shift from three sources: my revised
lesson plans, a self-reflective memo I wrote after a conversation with Ann Elizabeth, and an
excerpt from CoP meetings 4 and 5. The combined data are evidence of a shift in my approach
from a teacher-centered approach to a learner-centered approach, which ultimately opened more
space for my learners to engage in dialogue and engage in the work.
Shifting My Actions Towards a Learner-Centered Approach. The first clear evidence
of the shift in thinking I encountered after meeting with my dissertation chair can be found in my
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revised lesson plans that reflected my new awareness that we as a community needed to be
engaging in the work of unpacking critical incidents much earlier. Even though my original plans
were drafted with the intention of being learner-centered, my enactment of those plans did not
align with my attentions. Further in this sub-finding I will demonstrate evidence of where I did
match my actions to the intentions preceding a new shift in my awareness. I first provide my
original proposed actions for CoP Meeting 4 and then contrast this with my revised actions. My
initial meeting four drafted lesson plan included the following actions and were listed as:
• TIP-Mindful practice—5 min “Pulling Out of Auto Pilot”
• introduce the ladder of inference (Aguilar, 2020) (10 min)
• Description versus interpretation—engage in a Circle of Response activity—picture
of a boy with basketball.
• as a group review Rodgers (2002)
• Review as a whole group Jay and Johnson’s (2002) typology of reflection.
• Critical incident (CI) Handout (AR’s provided CI for use as a model to then have
each participant draft critical incident as their CoP Meeting 4 reflection prompt).
The first five bullet points focused on knowledge for practice, the knowledge I provided
for my learners to rely upon in developing their practice. A learner-centered approach
emphasizes my role in facilitating knowledge, learning, and group growth through that process
(Darling-Hammond & Bransford, 2005). I had initially included a critical incident to introduce to
the group at the end of Session 4. However, it was intended to provide a model for them to read
on their own and provide context for writing their own. I did not plan on unpacking this critical
incident until CoP Meeting 5, which would have left my learners the opportunity to share and
engage in trauma-informed dialogue in the final CoP meeting, Meeting 6. I now saw the need to
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model a critical incident sooner, thus giving them more time to bring their incidents and, in turn,
critical reflection in earlier to the CoP meeting rotation.
As such, I decided to revise Meeting 4’s lesson plan and move up the action of sharing
critical incidents to facilitate engaging as a group in trauma-informed dialogue instead of
spending the entire meeting reviewing the first five bullet points. My Meeting 4’s lesson plan
shifted and was revised to include the following action steps and were listed as:
• TIP–Mindful practice–5 min “Pulling Out of Auto Pilot”
• discussion–the need for unpacking critical incidents
• scaffold/modeling critical incident
• group dialogue
• Questions to guide the group: What are the trauma triggers, if any? What are the
multiple perspectives at play? What are the alternative ways I could have seen it?
How do I know? What is the evidence in the room? Whose voice is being heard?
Whose voice is not being heard? Who holds power?
The revised lesson plan actions for CoP Meeting 4 demonstrate how I adjusted my lesson
plans to switch from teaching the content to allowing the content to drive the dialogue and
directly address our adaptive challenges through our shared practices as a community. In my
conceptual framework, I had stated that I intended to utilize unpacking critical incidents as a
consciousness-raising activity to deepen our capacity to observe skillfully and think critically
about ourselves concerning the Latinx, Asian, Indigenous, and Black students and families we
serve (Freire, 2020; Rodgers, 2002). My conceptual framework did not change throughout this
study, but how I activated the concepts did change. The first item on the agenda still provided
space for a mindful practice, one that focused on centering oneself in the present and observing
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when our minds wander to bring it back to the present to be more intentional in the space one
currently occupies. Mindful practice (to center ourselves and genuinely be present), trauma-
informed principles, and critical reflection were no longer the content I taught; instead, they
became the tools we used to deepen our practice of unpacking critical incidents.
Historically and systemically marginalized students and families deserve equitable
support from us as district administrators. That can only happen if we drop our defenses and
openly confront where we may hold biases and assumptions (Northouse, 2016). Maintaining
disciplined attention, an adaptive leadership behavior, in this study meant that I needed to
provide the opportunity for the group to practice engaging in trauma-informed dialogue through
a trauma-informed lens and confront the issue of race and racism (Northouse, 2016). By
intentionally unpacking critical incidents through a trauma-informed lens, we set out to
disentangle ourselves from automatic and unexamined biases and consciously choose to step
away from overtly disregarding and othering those we serve (Lipsky & Burk, 2009; Magee,
2021). Maintaining disciplined attention is about the leader helping people address change and
not avoid it (Heifetz et al., 2009). In order to maintain disciplined attention, the leader needs to
encourage people to focus on the challenging work they need to do. This disciplined attention
was demonstrated in the preceding action steps when I presented the need for the group to start
unpacking critical incidents earlier and then by providing open-ended questions to the group that
could guide the dialogue in a trauma-informed way. Trauma-informed open-ended questions
were drafted to focus our community on decentering our Whiteness. We needed to center those
we serve and stay within the task at hand instead of getting blinded by assumptions and biases
that could lead to further barriers. The open-ended questions were provided to guide the dialogue
once a critical incident was shared to unpack the incident through a trauma-informed lens. I
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intended to model an exemplar critical incident and demonstrate, through low inference notes, a
critical incident of my own.
The following excerpt from the beginning of CoP Meeting 4 took place directly
following our opening mindful practice as documented in the revised CoP Session 4 lesson
plans. It demonstrates the enactment of my shift towards enacting a learner-centered approach
and the beginning of our journey as a CoP of engaging in a practice to inform and deepen our
overall capacity and practice.
AR So here it is. I will share a challenging interaction that I had. There will be people
I refer to that you may recognize … so I risk being open [in] this brave space. I
hope we can unpack this situation through a trauma-informed lens … by walking
through my situation and my critical incident, we can also walk through the stages
of reflection. … I am going to ask you to push me at the end of this critical
incident to challenge where I might have contributed to barriers, held bias, or
overlooked where trauma may have been at play with the student and family
represented in this critical incident. … I want to have a dialogue as a group guided
by questions, such as what are the trauma triggers, if any? What are the multiple
perspectives at play? What are the alternative ways I could have seen it? How do I
know? What is the evidence in the room? Whose voice is being heard? Whose
voice is not being heard? Who holds power? … I will read, and screen share it,
and then we can unpack it as a group.
Brookfield (2019) stated that more than just engaging in dialogue and facilitating a space
to talk is needed for respectful dialogue when discussing issues of race, power, and identity
formation. As a leader, I needed to model the kind of open-minded readiness to consider
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alternative viewpoints and perspectives I wished to encourage my participants to engage in
(Brookfield, 2019). In addition, there have to be established agreements. Our community
agreements have been included in the appendices. I opened the discussion with the statement, “I
am going to share a challenging interaction. There will be people I refer to that you may
recognize.” In doing so, I set the expectation that our work together would involve taking risks
and trusting each other. Stating that, “I want to have a dialogue as a group guided by questions,
such as, what are the trauma triggers, if any?” was an effort to encourage us as a CoP to begin to
take risks, describe and analyze, and learn to acknowledge that I was asking for their feedback. It
demonstrates that I was also learning and holding a reflective mirror up to this experience to
inform my own practice. I was modeling the open-minded readiness I wanted to then elicit from
the other participants and moving towards diving into the difficult work ahead of engaging in
unpacking critical incidents.
Rodgers (2002) argued that in the context of supportive and disciplined communities of
reflection, learners can formulate explanations of what they see—that comes from their
knowledge of their own practice, learning, each other, and from research. By stating,
What I am going to ask you to do is to push me at the end of this critical incident to
challenge where I might have contributed to barriers, held bias, or overlooked where
trauma may have been at play with the student and family represented in this critical
incident.
I further called attention to the fact that I was not the expert with the answers. I reminded them
that I was also the learner who trusted them to be honest in their feedback and hold me
accountable to where I both consciously and unconsciously contributed to historical and social
structures that impact the Black, Brown Latinx, and Indigenous students and families we serve.
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Setting the Conditions to Be Vulnerable. In order to engage in the work of unpacking
critical incidents and hold each other accountable to decenter and interrogate or Whiteness with
any success, we first must be willing to engage vulnerably. By choosing to be vulnerable, we
engage in uncertainty and risk emotional exposure (Brown, 2015). Sharing critical incidents and
examining one's own practice with others in the group leaves the participant sharing exposed.
Therefore, setting the conditions for the vulnerability was crucial as we needed to develop both
collective responsibility and accountability (Brookfield, 2019).
The critical incident I shared during CoP Meeting 4 was a vignette of a challenging
conversation between myself, a parent, and a district translator. Although not explicitly stated in
the actual interaction with my learners, due to our shared context within our department, the
reason the interaction was deemed challenging was inferred. In other words, parents seldom
come directly to the district office to speak with a program supervisor. Instead, parents typically
share concerns at the site level, and the site then reaches out to us to be a mediator. For context
purposes, I will add here for the reader, that during the preceding interaction that was used for
the critical incident I shared with the group, I observed the parent as being very upset and heavily
relying on the district translator to be understood. This added layers of complexity to the scenario
that were not explicitly described or included in the critical incident. I screen-shared my critical
incident while reading it aloud in the CoP meeting.
The excerpt presented is a condensed version of the reading of the entire critical incident
that took a total of 10 minutes and 47 seconds to read. The other CoP participants listened and
read along silently without interruption. I asked my learners to listen all the way through while
contemplating the open-ended questions I had provided when introducing the activity. I also
copied and pasted the open-ended questions in the chat box in Zoom as a resource.
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AR My colleague poked her head into my office without knocking ... “You have a
live one in the waiting room. … One of those crazy parents.” I do not say
anything to correct her or address the label; I just say thanks and move towards
standing up…this colleague is often curt and defensive.
I stopped at this point in the reading, paused and made the following statement:
I am testing this space. You have most likely recognized the specific people. I am holding
myself accountable to the agreements we have made and asking the same of you. If we
can be brave and share and unpack incidents like the one I am sharing, it can help us to
reflect on our own practice to challenge us as to where we need to face how better to
serve students and families in a trauma-informed way. I believe this truth. However, only
if we both challenge and trust each other; challenge involved in the conversation we were
about to engage in.
This was the beginning of setting the conditions for being vulnerable and developing the
beginnings of a brave space. Unpacking critical incidents takes vulnerability in a brave space
where we can commit to intervening in problematic views (Brookfield, 2019). The statement
shows where I called attention to the heightened level of cultivating a brave space. Going
forward, the work we did as a CoP of engaging in trauma-informed dialogue to challenge current
practices would require us to mindfully consider and confront harmful and colorblind thought
patterns that may be presenting, which was uncomfortable, challenging work (Magee, 2021).
Mezirow (1997) articulated the importance of critical reflection over simply reflecting, saying
that reflecting on our biases and assumptions is not enough to consider how or why one has
experienced, thought, felt, or acted. Considering and unpacking how or why one has
experienced, thought, or acted can unearth hegemonic thinking, assumptions, and biases. Biases,
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assumptions, and disregard for those we serve are often invisible to those who benefit most from
the status quo (Hooks, 1994; Magee, 2021). The guiding questions I provided as a scaffold were
intended to take us the extra step towards critically unpacking the incident. I stopped and called
attention to the desire to step into the uncomfortable and asked my learners to challenge where I
was demonstrating overt or implicit bias openly in further effort to set the conditions to be
vulnerable. Moreover, it means putting ourselves out in the open to be criticized, and risk feeling
hurt (Lipsky & Burk, 2009). The guiding questions were tools intended to guide our dialogue
when interrogating our practices. Without vulnerability and the cultivation of a brave space, we
would not have the conditions to find the courage to step into the arena (Brown, 2015; Lipsky &
Burk, 2009).
To challenge my learners to consciously consider how my actions and beliefs may have
impacted the given situation, I then stated that I believed unpacking incidents “can help us to
reflect on our own practice to challenge us as to where we need to face how to better serve
students and families in a trauma-informed way.” Unpacking critical incidents necessitates a
trauma-informed dialogue between myself and others. It would, I theorized, facilitate growth in
each of us as our boundaries were discovered, challenged, and excluded. I then picked up where
I had left off reading previously and shared the rest of the critical incident reflection:
AR I headed towards the lobby and as I walked out to the front lobby, I saw one of
our veteran district Vietnamese translators was already standing between the
parent, the front desk and the entrance to the wing that opens to the program
supervisor’s row of offices. The parent was Vietnamese. … She was requesting
three hours a week of speech and language services to be provided by the school
site SLP for her preschool age son and did not want to accept the answer that she
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was provided by the IEP team. The answer that was provided was that it would
not be developmentally appropriate to provide that level of service or place that
demand on the three-year-old. I had the translator state that I understand her
concern is that she would like more speech services. I asked her if she could tell
me more about why she is requesting more services specifically. The mother
began yelling in Vietnamese and half English and the district translator was
translating it sporadically for me. “More is better. Yes?” … Thoughts I was
thinking in that moment were: What is my face saying right now? What is in my
head? I struggled with my inside voice speaking through my facial expressions. I
also noticed I’m thinking of solutions and thinking of next steps already and
actions and two or three steps beyond this moment. I’m not present in balancing
my breath, my facial expressions, my heart rate and I am trying to emanate calm
in my voice. I offered for her to sit with me at a table in an open office (room 305)
I asked questions to try and better understand the larger picture … she starts to
talk more quickly. And she began directing all of her questions and eye contact
towards the translator. The mother explains that she had a hard time
communicating with the school. She uses a prepaid phone that she switches often;
she does not have an email and she is living in a shelter, and she wants a better
life for her son. She is worried that his behavior and his outbursts are due to him
not being able to speak as he is nonverbal. She’s afraid this will affect her and her
ability to stay at the shelter. She said she wants “many hours” of speech and
language services so she can “fix him, make him talk.” She asks if we can replace
all of his classroom time with speech services. She is sure this will help. I listen.
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And I write and I nod, and I fear I sound more sympathetic than empathetic, and I
try to soften my glances … I thought to myself ... “What are the questions I
should be asking? I don’t know!”... The thoughts in my head then and still now
are, “How is she going to trust me? Are speech and language services the biggest
issue in the room? What kind of trauma has she known? What kind of traumas has
her son known?”
When the encounter ends, I walk back into my office … I review my
summary notes and write down everything I can remember that was said or
happened or how I think and feel. I asked myself, “Did I listen long enough to
what the mother was not saying?”
Sharing the excerpt in our CoP demonstrates that I set the expectation that we must abide
by our agreements and engage honestly and bravely. I demonstrated being willing to risk being
vulnerable, the same risk I asked them to take. I stepped out and shared a critical incident,
something I had never done previously. In addition, I was not sure it was an accurate model. Was
I even providing a reasonable explanation? In my final sub-finding, I have shared the reasons
that I came later to understand that it had been a poor exemplar. Before I could ask my CoP
members to be vulnerable and build toward a shared brave space, I needed to be vulnerable
myself. Brookfield (2019) stated that when the instructor steps into the space of engaging
vulnerably, honestly, and transparently, they can then establish an affective space that deepens
how learners have previously analyzed their worlds, social locations, and White racist forms of
oppression.
My critical incident reflection not only included the details of the challenging interaction
with the parent, following Rodgers’s suggestion of really seeing and describing what happened
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but also my internal dialogue at the time. As I modeled the practice of sharing a critical incident
that was disorienting for me and exposed where I struggled in supporting a parent in distress (“I
do not know!”), I demonstrated my vulnerability and trust in this newly created CoP. My internal
struggle of feeling like I had failed in this interaction was further demonstrated when I revealed
my inner dialogue during the incident. I was not the confident leader of the group who provided
a self-assured stance. I was questioning my understanding and lens throughout the incident. I
shared this openly with the other members of the CoP and demonstrated that I did not have all
the answers. I am on a journey and questioning my perspective, and by sharing the questions, I
was asking myself internally, for example, “What are the questions I should be asking? I do not
know! ... What kind of traumas has her son known?” I hoped to model how my colleagues in the
CoP might examine their practice. Research states that to facilitate and cultivate a brave space, it
is crucial to model vulnerability and engage openly, reflexively, and bravely as the facilitator
(Brookfield, 2019).
The dialogue in the meetings after I shared my critical incident with the group
demonstrated a shift in how we began to work together and allowed an opportunity for open-
ended questioning. As an andrological move, I introduced the following open-ended questions
into the Zoom chat for the group’s reference during our debriefing: What are the multiple
perspectives? What are the alternative ways I could have seen it? How do I know? What is the
evidence in the room? Whose voice is being heard? Whose voice is not being heard? Who holds
power? Who does not? Are there trauma indicators present? The transcript data presented next
was pulled from the conversation that directly followed the sharing of my critical incident during
CoP Meeting 4. It represents a small part of a 32-minute dialogue as a group.
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AR That was my critical incident. Utilizing the open-ended questions, I have written
in the chat, I would like to ask us to unpack what I have just shared. … I am open
to any questions to see how to own where I may need to be more reflective about
what I shared.
A I guess I’ll start … were there trauma indicators present? I guess if we are
considering trauma and if the parent ever felt safe or not, did she walk away still
as upset as she came in?
AR She never really looked at me in the eyes again … the truth is I don’t know. … If
she couldn’t meet my gaze after sharing all that though, is that a shame response
that I created in her? Did I trigger more trauma? These are the questions I am still
asking myself.
A I don’t know that it should have or could have been handled differently … there’s
a lot of layers to this scenario.
AR I want to refer back to the agreements—we are not seeking to solve just asking
the questions … What are we missing here? What important questions are not
being raised? Whose voices are not being heard? What perspectives are being
ignored or overlooked? What TIP principles are at play? Is there trauma to be
accounted for?
A I feel like that probably took a lot for her to share all that information. I’d be
running away instead of dumping all my life story.
AR The longer she talked the more uncomfortable her body language got, the more
she shared. I felt like I had her on trial.
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AE Who holds the power in that situation? I’m just thinking about power dynamic
where she felt she had to justify what she had to say and throw herself out there to
make her case heard. … I can empathize with an out of control three-year-old,
that feeling causing you to feel like you’re failing as a parent. … But are you
really responsible what people choose to share or not to share?
A Was there something in that conversation that prompted her to tell you all her
backstories? It is a pet peeve of mine when we label parents as aggressive or
“crazy” because they advocate for their child. It is a vibe at the district office that
we are powerful in some way when we are actually just a resource.
AR I went home that night and felt awful that I didn’t follow up with the person who
labeled her that way.
SQ Why do you think you didn’t?
AR I chickened out. I should have. After I was done writing and re-reading my
reflection, I should have walked down the hall at some point that day, that week,
this month, and said, “Here is the other side. Are we listening? Do we care?”
SQ It is hard to see it sometimes; you know from your coursework that you are taking
the larger picture of what impacts families of color. So, maybe you should have
talked to that PS and challenged what she said. Know better; then you do better?
A I’m going to try to be real, I think, I think in trying to apply some of what we’re
trying to practice here, you are centering yourself in the conversation rather than
her. And I think you mentioned power dynamics and asked, where their power
dynamics present? But I do not think the power dynamics were in the room …
because I mean, frequently we get the parents that have had X, Y, & Z. Things
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happen already at the site, and they’ve reached their limit … so, I think the
dynamics are back at the site … she wasn’t heard and so she came to you.
AR How do you know that? What would be your evidence for that?
A I do not know ... but she was upset enough by whatever happened at the meeting
with the team that it was worth the effort of the trip to come physically talk to
someone at the district office? ... Support is one of the principles of TIP. Is it
right? I need to look at it again. Yes, it is.
I started the meeting by stating, “Utilizing the open-ended questions I have written into
the chat, I would like to ask us to unpack what I have just shared.” My goal in offering the open-
ended questions was to facilitate a trauma-informed dialogue and ultimately deepen the
conversation. One example of how participants utilized open-ended questions to facilitate a
deeper dialogue was when Astrid asked, “Were there trauma indicators present? I guess if we are
considering trauma and if the parent ever felt safe … did she walk away still as upset as she
came in?” Astrid pulled directly from the questions I had placed in the chat to ask an additional
question about whether my meeting with the parent addressed or exacerbated trauma experienced
by the parent. By using the guiding question, I had offered, it allowed the conversation to center
on TIP and guided the group into a trauma-informed dialogue.
Without Astrid’s initial push to consider where I might have contributed to the harm, I
may not have previously noticed that the parent avoided my gaze after a certain point in the
meeting. While I included in my reflection “she starts to talk more quickly. And she began
directing all of her questions and eye contact towards the translator,” I did not analyze this or
give it much thought until the CoP discussion and Astrid’s question. It prompted me to
acknowledge that the parent never looked me again in the eyes after the initial exchange. I
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acknowledged this realization when I stated, “I do not know if I contributed to further harm. If
she could not meet my gaze after sharing all that, is that a shameful response I created in her?
Did I trigger more trauma? These are the questions I am still asking myself.” In this interaction,
Astrid, using the guiding questions I provided, helped me reflect on why the parent might have
stopped making eye contact with me, and what my role was in further harming her. Astrid, in
that moment utilized a trauma-informed lens by starting with one of the provided open-ended
questions as demonstrated. She furthered the conversation and added to her response as well
which demonstrated she was comfortable to move beyond the provided questions. This
demonstrated that there were conditions present to promote dialogue and stay engaged in task.
A second example of how the open-ended questions deepened the dialogue was when
Ann Elizabeth asked, “So who holds power in that situation? I am just thinking about power
dynamics where she felt she had to justify what she had to say and throw herself out there to
make her case heard.” Astrid then responded with,
It is a vibe at the district office that we are powerful in some way when we are actually
just a resource. It is a pet peeve of mine when we label parents as aggressive or “crazy”
because they are engaging in advocating for their child.
This exchange prompted me to then examine my own actions in the encounter and acknowledge
that I had missed an opportunity to address my other colleague’s deficit framing of the parent. I
said, “I went home that night and felt awful that I didn’t follow up with the person who labeled
her that way.” Susie-Q then asked, “Why do you think you didn’t?” to which I responded,
I chickened out. I should have. After I was done writing and re-reading my reflection, I
should have walked down the hall at some point that day, that week, this month, and said,
‘Here is the other side. Are we listening? Do we care?’
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Susie-Q’s courage to question my missed opportunity demonstrates that I had created the
conditions for brave dialogue in the CoP, despite the rocky start. Her question helped me realize
that by not following up with my co-worker, I was complicit in maintaining the status quo rather
than being an ally to the students and families we serve.
The purpose of setting the conditions for a brave space within the meeting, was to
establish an atmosphere where my participants could feel safe as they began to engage in the
trauma-informed dialogue both of my own critical incident and then subsequently their own.
Sharing critical incidents publicly and self-reflecting honestly on one’s own practice can be
challenging. The person sharing with the group takes the risk of exposing potential personal
biases and assumptions they might not have ever confronted before. This is risky work and,
when endeavored, can cause resistance or moving away from “the work” when it gets
complicated. I, as a leader of the CoP, had to work towards cultivating a space where we, as a
community of learners, could navigate the emotions involved in these challenging interactions.
As an adaptive leader, I ensured that my learners did not engage in avoidance behavior, but kept
the focus on the incident. I needed to cultivate a brave space where the learners were mobilized
to drop defenses and openly confront how to get the work done (Northouse, 2016). Maintaining
disciplined attention in this study meant holding the group accountable to the agreements we
created while also holding each other accountable to dialogue that focused on TIP and critically
reflecting on current practices (Northouse, 2016). I modeled this by asking my learners to “push
me at the end of this critical incident to challenge where I might have contributed to barriers,
held bias, or overlooked where trauma may have been at play with the student and family
represented in this critical incident.” I also did this by not backing away from the conversation,
for example, when Susie-Q asked me about the missed opportunity to confront my colleague.
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I also did not run away from the discussion when Astrid said, “I’m going to try to be real,
I think, I think in trying to apply some of what we’re trying to practice here, you are centering
yourself in the conversation rather than her.” Astrid had the courage to hold me accountable to
not centering the parent in my critical incident reflection pointing out that I was not engaging in
true critical reflection, but rather just reflecting on how the incident was affecting me. While we
didn’t dig as deeply as we could have on this issue of how I centered myself in the reflection,
Astrid’s comment demonstrates the beginning stages of a brave space being created where there
was conflict (tension) expressed with civility (Arao & Clemens, 2013). Astrid also pointed to
where my modeling was problematic because I was not decentering and interrogating my
Whiteness, so I was not modeling what I hoped to accomplish (critical reflection). I provided a
faulty exemplar. I address this point and Astrid’s observation when I address the missed
opportunities to decenter and interrogate Whiteness when I address my growth and learning
through this study.
Retrospectively, I realized that the way I introduced the open-ended questions was not as
effective as it could have been due to the number of questions, I provided to the group all at
once. In the data provided I stated,
I want to refer back to the agreements ... we are not seeking to solve just asking the
questions. … What are we missing here? What important questions are not being raised?
Whose voices are not being heard? What perspectives are being ignored or overlooked?
What TIP principles are at play? Is there trauma to be accounted for?
Research states that open-ended questions elicit deeper thinking, facilitate deeper thinking, and
engage, reasoning ability, curiosity, and independence (MacDonald & Sánchez, 2010). These
questions serve to encourage students to open their minds and they offer the opportunity to
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facilitate deeper dialogue (Chan, 2010; Cochran & Brown, 2016; MacDonald & Sánchez, 2010;
Wergin, 2020). However, by flooding the chat with so many open-ended questions to digest all at
once, I set the conditions to potentially overwhelm and shut down my learners’ executive
function, ultimately, inhibiting sustained trauma-informed dialogue that was intended. Learners’
working memory, cognitive flexibility that works to facilitate creatively thinking “outside the
box,” and seeing issues from different perspectives, could all be impacted by cognitive overload
(Diamond, 2013; Schunk, 2016). While open-ended questions encourage learners to open their
minds and facilitate deeper dialogue (Chan, 2010; Cochran & Brown, 2016; MacDonald &
Sánchez, 2010; Wergin, 2020), asking them one at a time in an authentically facilitated
discussion would have been more effective. In other words, while the open-ended guiding
questions served as an important andragogical strategy and resource to organize and focus our
dialogue in the CoP, we could have gone deeper had we discussed each of the questions
separately.
The Beginnings of a Brave Space. In order to facilitate a brave space where authentic
dialogue can be sustained, we must first make a conscious effort to create space for deeper
engagement both with ourselves and with each other (Brown, 2015). In a CoP this space is
embedded in the shared practices that are informed by the shared domain of knowledge.
Engaging in such a space necessitates vulnerability, risk, and emotional exposure (Brown, 2015;
Wenger et al., 2002). Modeling my own vulnerability in sharing a critical incident set the stage
for my learners to do the same. Other evidence from subsequent interactions demonstrated how I
set the conditions for vulnerability and observed the beginnings of a brave space. The following
data was pulled from a reflective memo I wrote after a verbal conversation with Ann Elizabeth.
Directly following when I shared my critical incident reflection, between Meetings 4 and 5, Ann
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Elizabeth called me to express her distress about having to share a critical incident at the next
CoP meeting. After actively listening to understand the complexity of her concern, I was better
able to support her, but also to hold her accountable for the work in which we were engaged. I
did this by giving her agency in her level of participation as will be demonstrated in the
transcript data that follows:
Between Sessions 4 and 5, Ann Elizabeth reached out. She shared that she did not want to
share her critical incident for fear that other CoP members would recognize pieces of it
and participants in it. She shared that she did not trust the dynamic of the group enough
and feared that her incident would not stay within the context of the CoP. During this
conversation, I asked her what conditions would need to be present for her to feel that the
space was conducive to sharing and for her to feel brave? She shared she did not know
that conditions needed to be created. It was more about her internal thoughts than
anything the group had or hadn’t done. I then asked her what I could do as a leader to
mitigate her feeling of being unsafe to share. She shared that she appreciated the
agreements we had created and didn’t feel like they needed to have anything added. She
thought that her hesitancy stemmed from insecurity in not controlling other people’s
actions or responses, and this awareness was scary. She was still struggling with trusting
that everyone in the group was as committed to the agreements as she was. I thanked her
for being so open with me. I provided an option for her to share last with the caveat that
we might not have time to get to her critical incident. If she was the last to share, there
was a high probability we would not get to her. She could just revise her incident (a task I
wanted them to complete after sharing) based on the experience of walking through
others sharing their critical incidents.
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In the memo I noted that when Ann Elizabeth called, she shared her fear of being
vulnerable, not wanting to openly share with the group, and not trusting that we had yet fully
arrived at creating a brave space as a CoP. This fear was evident when she stated she did not trust
the dynamic of the group and feared that her incident would not stay within the context of the
CoP. This conversation with Ann Elizabeth made me realize that we had never specifically
included confidentiality as a specific agreement. When she shared that “she did not trust the
dynamic of the group enough and feared that her incident would not stay within the context of
the CoP,” I noticed an omission in the agreements. I had shared with my participants that as an
ethical researcher, I would be protecting their identity by using pseudonyms. Yet, we had not
agreed that what was shared in the meetings would be held in confidence by all members of the
CoP. This was something I realized I had to address with the group, even though Ann Elizabeth
said, “She appreciated the agreements we had created and didn’t feel like they needed to be
anything added.” Later in this section, I will share data that demonstrates how we addressed the
issue of confidentiality as a group, and thereby further set the conditions to be vulnerable and
facilitate the beginnings of a brave space.
When someone is placed in the position of being vulnerable and simultaneously held
accountable for their own assumptions and biases, it can be easy to fall into defensiveness and a
sense of powerlessness (Weimer, 2013). When presented with the opportunity to engage in a
vulnerable act, Ann Elizabeth conveyed that she wanted to retreat from the challenge instead.
This choice to retreat was demonstrated by her sharing with me that she did not want to share her
critical incident for fear that other CoP members would recognize pieces of it and participants in
it. However, engagement in a brave space often requires the learner to engage in risk,
controversy, and difficulty defined as incompatible with feeling safe (Arao & Clemens, 2013).
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To maintain the space for vulnerability, I, as an adaptive leader, had to be ready to
regulate Ann Elizabeth’s (and others’) distress. Otherwise, the participants could shut down
emotionally as the distress could be counterproductive or even debilitating (Northouse, 2016).
Without letting her off the hook, I signaled that I was willing to do what it took to create a space
in which she would not be scared to share by asking “what conditions would need to be present
for you to feel that the space was conducive to sharing and for you to feel brave?” I also later
asked, “What could I do as a leader to mitigate her feelings of being unsafe to share?” These
questions are examples of my attempt to both demonstrate my empathy and my commitment to
facilitate her learning by exploring ways to help her engage productively while still honoring her
sense of discomfort. I was intentionally exploring how to facilitate her ability to sit with her
discomfort rather than run from it. Rather than saying “you don’t need to share,” I asked what
would allow her to share.
As stated in my memo, “I provided an option for her to share last with the caveat that we
might not have time to get to her critical incident.” I further reflected in my memo, that “If she
was the last to share, there was a high probability we would not get to her.” This option still held
her accountable to the work we had agreed to do in the CoP but provided her autonomy in her
level of engagement. As a leader I must create a safe environment where people can spend time
exploring the new learning while maintaining disciplined attention on regulating their distress
(Northouse, 2016). When the challenge of potentially having to share became overwhelming, it
led Ann Elizabeth to want to step back. It was up to me as the leader to regulate her distress
while simultaneously holding her in the space of discomfort. The cultivation of a brave space
empowered the Ann Elizabeth to step out into a challenging conversation while keeping the
challenge from being paralyzing (Heifetz et al., 2009; Northouse, 2016).
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To maintain a productive level of tension and motivate participants to engage vulnerably
and participate without disabling them, I had to first cultivate a brave space by setting the
conditions for the CoP to engage in dialogue about the challenges facing them. As mentioned,
my side conversation with Ann Elizabeth made me realize the omission of “confidentiality” as a
shared agreement. The following is an excerpt from the transcript of the CoP meeting held right
after my conversation with Ann Elizabeth at the start of CoP Meeting 5 in which I introduced
this agreement. This conversation happened before asking participants to share their critical
incidents with the group. In this conversation, I address the need to protect what is shared within
the group to facilitate the creation of a brave space where Ann Elizabeth, and others, could feel
mobilized to drop her defenses and openly share.
AR I believe this is a good segue into remembering the agreements we have made …
in our agreements, we did not specifically state that what we share in this group is
protected. … I challenge that if we’re trying to build something different than
what exists and in a protected space, we need to probably add this as an
agreement. I am choosing to honor that agreement of this being a space where we
do not share.
AE That goes back to a point I was making earlier in the meeting, which is that those
conditions don’t exist yet … it doesn’t exist where we work for sure. I can’t
control those conditions. I can control how much I share or what I’m willing to
share. I would feel better agreeing to that.
A I would say that my experience is similar. … I feel like I find myself tailoring the
type of conversation I have to the group I am with rather than what I actually need
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from the group. This is Vegas, right? I have to ask because it isn’t always
necessarily true safe outside of this group, we are in.
SQ I can agree to that.
AR I’m going to be asking for a volunteer who’s ready to share a critical incident with
the group … I’m not going to do “voluntold.” It’s your choice who goes first, and
if you screenshare or just read from what you have written.
AE I don’t mind going first.
I started the conversation by revisiting the CoP’s agreements by stating, “I believe this is
a good segue into remembering the agreements we have made … in our agreements, we did not
specifically state that what we share in this group is protected.” This is an example of identifying
the organization’s adaptive challenge and framing the key questions and issues (Heifetz et al.,
2009). As an adaptive leader, it was my ongoing responsibility to maintain those norms that must
endure and challenge those that need to change. This opened the door for Ann Elizabeth to then
state, “Those conditions don’t exist yet … it doesn’t exist where we work for sure. I can’t control
those conditions. I can control how much I share or what I’m willing to share. I would feel better
agreeing to that.” She was no longer just sharing that concern in isolation with me, but openly
and bravely sharing that concern with the group.
Astrid followed up with the statement, “This is Vegas, right? I have to ask because it is
not always truly safe outside this group.” By asking “This is Vegas?” Astrid was referring to the
saying, “what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.” To this statement, Susie-Q then added, “I can
agree to that.” The lack of a specific agreement that addresses confidentiality was an adaptive
challenge we needed to address as a group. Although I was a leader guiding my participants in
this study, I did not want them to feel as if I had used my power to pressure participation or
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agreement at any time in the process. This need to revisit the agreements and address the need
for confidentiality in the group further set the conditions for the beginnings of a brave space, and
this data demonstrates the steps I took to address Ann Elizabeth’s discomfort and my recognition
of the omission in agreements. Ann Elizabeth was first to chime in about my suggestion by
saying “I would feel better agreeing to that.” Astrid also agreed and echoed Ann Elizabeth’s
point that confidentiality can’t always be expected or promised in other work contexts. They
desired something different in our CoP. Shifting to a learner-centered approach after the first
cycle of this action research project and setting the conditions for vulnerably sharing our critical
incidents, I communicated a change in the expectations for my learners. In doing so, I created
uncertainty and distress for my colleagues, as demonstrated by Ann Elizabeth’s initial concerns,
especially because they were not used to speaking openly and bravely in other work contexts.
This leadership challenge, represented in the memo, and the transcript excerpt I shared
demonstrate my actions to ultimately set the condition for Ann Elizabeth to decide to take a risk,
choose to be vulnerable and share, despite her initial reticence. The last vignette presented is
from the transcript of CoP Meeting 5. Contrary to her initial hesitation to share, during Session 5
of our CoP, Ann Elizabeth was first to volunteer to share her critical incident even though I
planned to allow her to go last. In hindsight, I realized that the side conversation we had on the
phone and revisiting the agreements at the start of the fifth CoP meeting regulated Ann
Elizabeth’s distress and set the conditions for her to eventually come to trust in the agreements
and feel that it was safe to share. Prior to the meeting, she was leaning away from unpacking a
critical incident, yet immediately following the discussion about the importance of
confidentiality in the group she stepped into the vulnerable space of being first to share. The
prompt to open the stage for the first participant to share was an open “all call” where I stated,
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“I’m not going to do ‘voluntold.’ It’s your choice who goes first, and if you screenshare or just
read from what you have written.” Ann Elizabeth then immediately volunteered by stating, “I
don’t mind going first.”
I was so surprised that she ended up being the first one to share after she communicated
not wanting to, it made me curious as to what caused her to shift her thinking. So, I reached out
to Ann Elizabeth after the meeting to inquire why she had chosen to go first. She shared that
processing her feelings with me about sharing within the group prior to the meeting and the
questions I asked her helped her feel supported. The two questions I had asked her, pulled from
my memo were, “What conditions would need to be present for her to feel that the space was
conducive to sharing and for her to feel brave?” and, “What conditions needed to be created, and
what I could do as a leader to mitigate her feeling of being unsafe to share?”
When she had originally reached out to me to address her concern, I had come away from
our conversation upset with myself as a leader of the group, having not clearly set the conditions
for her to feel safe initially. As such, I attempted to address my leadership failure by cycling
back to the agreements at the start of CoP Meeting 5 and establishing that confidentiality was
important. I did not expect it to result in Ann Elizabeth sharing, and sharing first, at that. Ann
Elizabeth told me that by addressing the need for revising the agreements and holding the group
accountable to the specific area in which she felt most vulnerable, caused her to ultimately trust
the process. Even if she didn’t fully trust the response of other participants, she trusted that I
would hold everyone accountable to the agreements made. She said,
I felt supported after we talked, and I realized that I was not the only one sharing by
myself but that you were there to help guide the conversation and that we did have
agreements and that you would back those up and hold everyone accountable. I felt less
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alone. Maybe if I am feeling this way, other people are feeling this way too, and we have
to start somewhere.
At that moment, in that meeting when she decided to share, I realized that we had
momentarily set the conditions for developing a brave space. Ann Elizabeth had the option of
stepping out of a challenging conversation by opting to share last and possibly run out of time,
yet she chose to step into it. She took a risk and was willing to do so despite verbally admitting
previously how scared she was to do it.
The five elements of a brave space cited in my conceptual framework and outlined by
Arao and Clemens (2013) were present; thus, we were at the start of cultivating such a space:
“controversy with civility,” each CoP participant varying opinions were accepted; “owning
intentions and impacts,” the trauma-informed lens acknowledged and facilitated a dialogue that
had the potential to affect the emotional well-being of another person in the group; “challenge by
choice,” there was always the option to step in and out of challenging conversations, per our
norms that stated: Move up and move back, but not out; “Respect,” where the CoP participants
showed respect for one another’s personhood; and, “No attacks,” where we held to our shared
agreement of Giving grace and approach with curiosity. However, the event also made me
realize the significance of setting learning conditions and the idea that a brave space can be
tenuous, like an ebb and flow. Do we ever arrive? At any time, Ann Elizabeth could have made a
different decision. This could have played out very differently if she had decided not to reach out
and share her feelings. Without that conversation as a catalyst, I might have never realized that
we needed to revisit the agreements and establish an environment conducive to cultivating a
brave space. Reflecting on this interaction helped me see how complex it is to build, cultivate
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and maintain a brave space, and to realize that the leader must intentionally and continually work
to do so.
Cultivating a Community of Practice: Establishment of the Three Pillars. I argued in
my conceptual framework that I would work towards cultivating a CoP, one that engaged
participants in critical reflection and ultimately enabled us to adopt TIP to better our practices of
engaging in more equitable interactions with the Latinx, Asian, Indigenous, and Black students
and families we serve. In this process, I sought to form a CoP that was inclusive of three
foundational pillars of a CoP. The three foundational pillars are (a) the development of a shared
domain of knowledge, (b) the development of a community of people who care about the given
domain, and (c) the cultivation of shared practice that the community develops to be effective in
their domain (Wenger et al., 2002). The evidence of the existence of all three pillars could be
seen in multiple CoP meetings across action cycles one through three in the form of transcript
data, critical reflection prompts, and responses.
As a community, we developed a shared knowledge domain informed by trauma-
informed principles. Building a repertoire in this newly cultivated domain and engaging in
dialogue with a trauma-informed lens was perceived as valuable to the community. The data that
demonstrated the repertoire was pulled from an excerpt from a 36-minutes timeframe during CoP
Meeting 2, where we formed shared definitions of the terminology utilized in our dialogue which
contributed to developing our community shared domain. The vignette was an example of a
conversation in which we as a community defined the terms “assumption” and “biases” to build
our shared domain of knowledge (CoP pillar one) and repertoire.
AR One of the foundational principles of CoP is that we develop a shared domain of
knowledge. In order to start developing this we must develop common definitions
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so that there’s not miscommunication. … Before we go into formal definitions,
what does it mean for you when you think about making an assumption? What is
an assumption?
A Can I steal from our agenda? I feel like when we make an assumption, we’re
telling a story of someone else without their input.
SQ I could be totally off. But for me, an assumption tends to be a little less harsh than
a bias. I feel a bias is something you disagree with or have a particular stance on.
Where an assumption is filling in your own information based on your view to
compensate for your lack of information.
AE I guess I think about a bias to be based more on prejudice. Whereas if I think
about an assumption ... I might be taking certain things about that person for
granted; and I don’t have evidence to support my assumption: not that you
necessarily have evidence to support a prejudice, but that’s kind of where my
brain first goes.
A I feel like I have a harder time separating the two … for me, I think that biases
rely on assumptions.
AR I wrote everyone’s personal definition on the shared whiteboard, and under it I
have placed a formal definition.
The transcript demonstrates how we as a community engaged in an authentic
conversation to work towards developing shared definitions of the term assumption. A CoP is
more than a club of friends or a network of connections between people (Wenger et al., 2002). It
has an identity defined by a shared domain of interest and knowledge. By engaging as a group to
work towards the development of a shared definition, we were, in turn, developing a shared
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domain of knowledge. When I said, “Before we go into formal definitions, what does it mean for
you when you think about making an assumption? What is an assumption?” I prompted each
participant to start and then contribute toward the definition. Astrid first shared, “I feel like when
we make an assumption, we tell a story of someone else without their input.” Susie-Q. added,
But for me, an assumption tends to be a little less harsh than a bias. I feel a bias is
something you disagree with or have a particular stance on. Where an assumption is
filling in your own information based on your view to compensate for your lack of
information.
Susie-Q’s addition evoked Astrid to reflect on Susie-Q.’s statement and added, “I feel like I have
a harder time separating the two … for me, I think that biases rely on assumption.” This
exchange demonstrated how the community worked towards developing shared definitions of the
term assumption and ultimately building and deepening the community’s shared knowledge
domain. This dialogue revealed slightly different ideas about the words assumption and bias and
this vignette demonstrates our efforts in getting on the same page.
An additional demonstration of building a shared domain of knowledge and repertoire
comes from the use of videos that we watched during our sessions. These videos are tied into
pillar one (building a shared domain of knowledge) and pillar three (cultivating a shared practice
that the community develops to be effective in their domain). The third requirement for a CoP is
that the members are practitioners. They develop a shared repertoire of resources, including but
not limited to stories, media, helpful tools, experiences, reflections, and ways of handling typical
problems (Lave & Wenger, 2004; Vaughan & Dornan, 2014). One of the videos we added to our
repertoire in Meeting 2 was the New York Times video entitled “A Conversation with Asian
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Americans.” The following transcript data was a vignette of the conversation within CoP
meeting three immediately after watching the video.
R In our district when I pull up our demographics, we are more than 50% Hispanic,
but next largest population is Asian, believe it or not … what surprised you about
what you saw and what you were hearing? Did anything resonate?
A The last quote resonated with me ... when the tide rises, all boats rise. Or I’m
getting it wrong, but I really liked how that ended. We must remember … trauma
history and minority do not have to equal a deficit framing of a population. It was
a flourishing perspective. I appreciated that resiliency was highlighted.
AR Yes! I appreciated that as well, the idea that all counter narratives are not negative
and I appreciated that they focused on assets and strengths. … Any other
takeaways? I am priming your thought process for the reflection.
A I thought too it was important that they had a wide variety of Asian American
people represented in that video. So, we could see a variety of experiences as
well.
SQ One of the questions is using the acronym TIP?
AR Ah, Trauma-Informed Principles.
SQ Thank you. I just want to make sure I understand what it’s asking and that the
trauma principles are what we reference.
AR So, I’m screen sharing the six TIP guiding principles we covered in Meetings 1
and 2 that we cover as a district and agree to through our social emotional
learning and through our commitment with what we’ll be doing with professional
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development as a department. This included how we use those to interact with
students and families.
The vignette demonstrates the development of critical reflection as a shared practice and
tool for effectiveness in the community’s domain. Astrid applied the content of the video directly
to how we as a community should be utilizing a trauma-informed lens when she stated, “We
must remember … trauma history and minority do not have to equal a deficit framing of a
population. It was a flourishing perspective.” TIP is a crucial component of our shared
knowledge domain, which aligns with the first pillar of a CoP. In addition, bettering our practice
to serve more equitably the Latinx, Asian, Indigenous, and Black students and families of our
district was the shared value and purpose of our community. When Astrid utilized a trauma
informed lens, it demonstrated the second and third pillars of a CoP, the second pillar being a
community that cares about the domain and holds perceived value. The third pillar is cultivating
a shared practice to be effective in the community domain and context. Astrid further stated,
“Trauma history and minority does not have to equal a deficit framing of a population.” This
statement additionally ties to our CoP’s shared commitment to bettering our future practices
towards more equitable interactions with Asian, Black, Latinx, Indigenous students, and families
of color we serve.
In order to be effective in our domain, and promote dialogue, while specifically drawing
out biases to point out why and how these biases may be harmful to the students and families we
serve, we carried into our practice a trauma-informed lens. The tools I used to maintain a trauma-
informed lens in the data showed up in multiple forms, such as Trauma-Informed dialogue and
open-ended questions drafted through a trauma-informed lens (both demonstrated and reviewed
in the previous finding, Finding 2). In the vignette, there was evidence of scaffolding of the
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content to facilitate further clarity to the definition of what constituted TIP. Specifically, the
evidence of the CoP utilizing a shared repertoire of resources with such scaffolding was
demonstrated when Susie-Q asked to have the acronym (TIP) clarified. I then said, “I am screen
sharing the six TIP guiding principles we covered in Meetings 1 and 2.” Wenger (2002) stated
that members of a CoP develop a shared repertoire of resources: experiences, stories, tools, and
ways of addressing recurring problems—in short, a shared practice. The videos, definitions, and
dialogue we engaged in were all examples of us building that repertoire.
Overall, the data demonstrated that we were engaging in each foundational pillar and
developing as a community that cared about the given domain and developing shared practices.
Did everyone initially care when originally agreeing to participate in the study? Maybe not. The
other CoP members may have initially agreed to be part of this study for their own reasons.
Previously established friendships and goodwill toward helping me achieve a career goal may
have influenced their choice to participate.
Nevertheless, more than participation was required for us to qualify as an actual CoP. Us
having the same job title as Special Education Administrator did not make us a CoP unless we
intentionally interacted and learned together (Wenger et al., 2002). As demonstrated in the data,
the cultivation of shared practice and the demonstration of building a shared domain of
knowledge demonstrate that we were indeed invested in developing our collective competence.
We were beginning to learn from each other.
Data that further demonstrates evidence of perceived value and caring about the CoP’s
domain came from the participant reflections turned in after CoP meeting three. The data
included are two small excerpts of Ann Elizabeth’s responses to the critical reflection writing
prompts provided after CoP meeting three. Ann Elizabeth’s responses demonstrated that, as a
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community, we were developing the formation of a shared repertoire of tools or ways of
addressing where we hold power and privilege concerning those we serve.
Prompt: What was something that challenged you during our last meeting?
AE I am challenged to take a closer look at where I stand in relationship to systems of
privilege and oppression. My inner work requires ongoing reflection and
conversations that acknowledges and names my White privilege both inside and
outside of my district. I am challenged to reflect more critically on the language I
use in describing individuals, cultures, or groups of people.
Prompt: How might this deeper consideration of other’s identities inform the way you engage
with the students and families we serve utilizing TIP?
AE When I am engaging with students and families, I have the responsibility to show
up ready to listen while being aware of any assumptions or bias I may be bringing
to the table. I have the responsibility to also be more curious about our families. I
need to become even more thoughtful about the language I use about the students
and families that I support.
When Ann Elizabeth stated, “I will … take a closer look at where I stand in relation to
systems of privilege and oppression … acknowledge and name my White privilege both inside
and outside of my district.” She first reflexively contributed toward developing a knowledge
repertoire. She further acknowledged that she held White privilege and applied this to future
practice by stating, “I am challenged to reflect more critically on the language I use in describing
individuals, cultures, or groups of people.” This statement demonstrates the development of a
shared practice of critical reflection, or rather the desire to engage in critical reflection. She was
connecting the challenge of acknowledging where she stood in relation to those she served.
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The second prompt asked Ann Elizabeth to consider, “How might this deeper
consideration of others’ identities inform how you engage with the students and families we
serve to utilize TIP?” Ann Elizabeth’s developing knowledge in practice is further demonstrated
in her response, “When I am engaging with students and families, I have the responsibility to
show up ready to listen while being aware of any assumptions or bias I may be bringing to the
table.” Showing up “ready to listen while being aware of any assumptions or biases” had entered
her repertoire or practice. This further demonstrates the existence of CoP pillar three, the
cultivation of shared practice that the community develops to be effective in their domain. Ann
Elizabeth demonstrated working towards a shared goal of learning how to better her practices
toward engaging with students and families more equitably. Moreover, in doing so, she would be
furthering her knowledge in her practices. Ann Elizabeth applied her new awareness of the need
to, “take a closer look at where (she) stands in relationship to systems of privilege and
oppression,” and applied it to future practices. She stated,
When I am engaging with students and families, I have the responsibility to show up
ready to listen while being aware of any assumptions or bias I may be bringing to the
table. … I need to become even more thoughtful about the language I use about the
students and families that I support.
This response demonstrated her perceived value in how the learning she engaged in
within the CoP can directly tie to bettering her practice. Ann Elizabeth’s responses demonstrated
that as a CoP, we engaged in joint activities and discussions to better our practices. Analyzing
media and definitions and engaging in dialogue with a trauma-informed lens built a repertoire
that could further inform the development of our shared practices (Wenger et al., 2002).
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The data show that we were a community of practitioners who cared about and valued the
given domain. The transcripts and reflection responses revealed the existence of all three pillars.
Wenger et al. (2002) defined a CoP as “groups of people who share a concern or a passion for
something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly” (p. 4). The transcripts
provided clear evidence of the first pillar: a domain. The CoP developed an identity defined by a
shared domain of interest where we engaged in an authentic conversation to work towards
developing shared definitions of terms. The reflection responses further demonstrated the
presence of Pillars 2 and 3: a community comprised of practitioners developing shared practices.
As a CoP, we had begun to develop a shared repertoire to develop knowledge in and of practice.
The presence of all three Pillars constituted us as a CoP (Vaughan & Dornan, 2014; Wenger et
al., 2002).
Given that one goal of this study was for me to develop a CoP, the evidence that shows
the CoP pillars in practice demonstrate how I grew as a leader. While I had never before
developed a CoP, this study allowed me the opportunity to practice my leadership in new and
exciting ways. While the study didn’t work towards all CoP principles, I demonstrated growth in
being able to establish the pillars and principles I had set out to.
Part 2: Areas of Growth and Reflection
Part 2 will provide evidence of my growth as a leader, specifically in how I became
awareness of missed opportunities to decenter my Whiteness. In this section, I will use meeting
Zoom transcriptions, in-the-field analysis of both my participants and my own critical
reflections, and reflections on my discussion with my dissertation chair to demonstrate how I
came to the awareness of both where I was able to decenter Whiteness and where I missed the
mark. This data will show the action steps taken to decenter Whiteness and their effectiveness or
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lack thereof, as well as show where I allowed my Whiteness to remain unexamined and
unchallenged. The takeaways from this data, and what I hope to do as a result of this awareness,
are further discussed in my Afterword. In that section, I discuss my commitment to both
continued professional growth and to holding myself accountable to decentering Whiteness.
There were planned actions within my study and in the drafted critical reflection prompts
that focused on guiding learners to interrogate their own Whiteness in relation to the Latinx,
Asian, Indigenous, and Black students and families we serve. One planned activity was centered
on identity and its relation to others in an activity called “I Am From,” which is based on the
poem “Where I Am From” written by George Ella Lyon in 1993 (Klein, 2018). The essential
purpose of the activity was to call into awareness and purposely examine our Whiteness as a
group of all White special education administrators. The participants followed the activity by
responding to the following critically reflective prompts:
• What surprised you about your responses to the phrase, “I am from?”
• How does your identity influence your work as a special education administrator
supporting Latinx, Asian, Indigenous, and Black students and families?
• What assumptions, if any, did the “I Am From” activity unearth for you about your
fellow CoP members and or yourself?
• How might this deeper consideration of other’s identities inform the way you are
accountable to and contribute towards a brave space?
Although the questions were drafted to challenge participants to consider how their
identity presents itself and how their identity impacts how they directly interact with the students
and families they serve who identify differently, only the second question was presented in the
data that I have provided next. The reason for this is as follows. The first question, what
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surprised you about your responses to the phrase, “I am from?”, was a low-level question that did
not probe into critically reflecting on identity and race and was designed as an initial question to
start the writing process. The third and fourth questions prompted participants to consider their
own identity and interrogate where they might be unearthing their assumptions and biases, how
they might bring themselves authentically into the CoP, and how that might contribute towards
the cultivation of a brave space. These questions should or could have focused on where power
might be held and participants’ identity concerning those they serve. In hindsight, this was a
missed opportunity, and I should have crafted the third and fourth questions to ask the reader to
interrogate their own Whiteness specifically.
The second prompt is where I pulled my data from and specifically directed participants
to consider their own identity and race in relation to the families they serve by asking, “How
does your identity influence your work as a special education administrator supporting Latinx,
Asian, Indigenous, and Black students and families?” I specifically pointed to the race of the
students we serve, which does not match my participants’ race as White women in a position of
power. This question and the activity, in general, were intended to support my participants in
their development of identification and understanding of their hidden values, biases,
assumptions, and beliefs about race that might not have ever been at the forefront of their
thinking (Milner, 2010). The following data was pulled from each respondent’s critical
reflections directly answering this second question and was answered by each participant directly
following participation in the “I Am From” activity.
A My identity influences my work as a special education administrator because I do
my best not to assume I know where a student is coming from. I come from
experiences and have many aspects of my identity that represent privilege. … I
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recognize that I had several points in my favor (White, Christian, upper middle
class, private school experience) which helped me move beyond some of the traps
of my own trauma.
AE As a liberal, feminist, Christian, White, heterosexual female, I recognize the
privileges I hold which have brought me to this place where I have to consider
how my positionality influences my work as a special education administrator. I
am acutely aware that growing up in Orange County while attending private and
public schools with predominantly White student populations in middle-class
suburban neighborhoods significantly limits my understanding and perspective of
urban education and the families I currently serve. … I am trying to become more
aware of how my gender, race, ethnicity, and religious beliefs have impacted how
I taught my students as a teacher and how I currently lead teams and communicate
with families as a special education administrator within my district. Many of the
beliefs and values instilled in me while growing up fit the majority’s narrative.
Knowing this, I have to recognize that I am responsible for ensuring my support is
not centered in Whiteness. I have to take risks to ensure equity and put my
privilege on the line for someone else.
SQ The biggest thing to take away is to remember that my experiences differ from
those I serve. I have realized that my experiences are vastly different from those I
serve. I have to take a step back and look through the lenses of those I serve to be
the best I can be at my job.
The data exemplify an opportunity to specifically center and interrogate our Whiteness as
participants in this study and how this led to participants reflecting on just that. Astrid shared,
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My identity influences my work as a special education administrator because I do my
best not to assume I know where a student is coming from. I come from experiences and
have many aspects of my identity that represent privilege.
She then said, “I recognize that I had several points in my favor (White, Christian, upper middle
class, private school experience), which helped me move beyond some of the traps of my
trauma.” She named where she specifically held privileges (White, Christian, upper middle class,
private school experience). In this list of privileges, White was the first identity she claimed. This
data demonstrates that Astrid interrogated her Whiteness as a barrier to knowing “where a
student is coming from.” Astrid further went on to identify the importance of not framing the
students and families she serves in deficit ways, and not assuming she knows/understands their
stories.
In contrast to Astrid’s answer, Susie-Q did not point out where she potentially held
power, nor did she directly interrogate her Whiteness. However, she pointed out that her
“experiences are vastly different from those I serve.” Although she cited the importance of
considering the student’s lens, the rest of Susie-Q’s responses did not center on Whiteness.
Instead, they focused on how her identity and her takeaways from the “I Am From” activity
deepened her understanding of herself concerning others in the group rather than her identity
concerning the students and families she serves.
Ann Elizabeth’s answer to the first prompt more directly decentered and interrogated
Whiteness. She began her prompt by immediately identifying herself as a “liberal, feminist,
Christian, White, heterosexual female.” In comparison to Susie-Q, Ann Elizabeth recognized her
privileges. She cited that “these privileges have brought me to this place where I have to consider
how my positionality influences my work as a special education administrator.” Ann Elizabeth
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tied these identities to where she held power and privilege. This assertion is evident when she
stated that she was “acutely aware that growing up in Orange County while attending private and
public schools with predominantly White student populations in middle-class suburban
neighborhoods significantly limits my understanding and perspective of urban education and the
families I currently serve.”
Ann Elizabeth now could see she needed to decenter her Whiteness as she acknowledged
where she held privileges to engage with students and families more equitably. This awareness
was evident when she stated, “Many of the beliefs and values instilled in me while growing up fit
the majority’s narrative. Knowing this, I have to recognize that I am responsible for ensuring my
support is not centered in Whiteness.” Dewey (2020) stated that reflection referred to assessing
the grounds or justifications of one’s beliefs. Reflection is a process of rationally examining the
assumptions by which we have been justifying one’s convictions and a higher-order mental
process (Dewey, 2020; Mezirow et al., 1990). Ann Elizabeth’s awareness was additionally
demonstrated by her first acknowledging her positionality by stating that she is trying to become
more aware of how her gender, race, ethnicity, and religious beliefs have impacted how she
communicated with families as a special education administrator within her district. Ann
Elizabeth then tied that awareness to the next steps in the journey and her convictions of
intentionally acknowledging Whiteness to decenter and interrogate it when engaging with the
students and families she serves. She wrote that “many of the beliefs and values instilled in me
while growing up fit the majority’s narrative. Knowing this, I must recognize that I am
responsible for ensuring my support is not centered in Whiteness.” Ann Elizabeth was critically
reflecting on her own identity and where she held power in relation to those she serves.
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The question, “How does your identity influence your work as a special education
administrator supporting Latinx, Asian, Indigenous, and Black students and families?” facilitated
most participants’ critical reflection, even though some engaged more deeply than others. Astrid
and Ann Elizabeth identified specifically where their identity and positionality sat concerning
those they served. They also mentioned how that impacts their engagement with the Latinx,
Asian, Indigenous, and Black students and families they serve. As stated previously in my
review of the literature, I combined Brookfield’s (2017) and Milner’s (2003) definitions of what
critical reflection means and borrowed Huitt’s (1998) definition of critical thinking. As such, I
defined critical reflection as a sustained, disciplined, and intentional mental activity of
identifying and placing into question the validity of assumptions and hidden values, biases, and
beliefs about equity and privilege that were not at the forefront of a practitioner’s thinking, but
that can guide future actions (Brookfield, 2017; Huitt, 1998; Lyons, 2010; Milner, 2003). Ann
Elizabeth was the only one of the three participants who truly critically reflected if held to the
definition of critical reflection applied to this study. Ann Elizabeth wrote that she needed to
“consider how (her) positionality influences (her) work as a special education administrator” She
went on further to then “recognize that (she is) responsible for ensuring (her) support is not
centered in Whiteness.” She finished by tying her new awareness to future actions and stated, “I
have to take risks to ensure equity and put my privilege on the line for someone else.”
Reflecting critically is a crucial component in my conceptual framework as I theorized it
would allow me and my colleagues to unearth assumptions and power dynamics that shape our
work. The data shows how participants used reflection to explicitly name where they held power
in their identities and challenge themselves to be aware and accountable for that
acknowledgment. Ann Elizabeth pointed out, “Many of the beliefs and values instilled in me
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while growing up fit the majority’s narrative. Knowing this, I have to recognize that I am
responsible for ensuring my support is not centered in Whiteness.” The next step of critical
reflection would be to pair that with exploring the assumptions that frame our perceptions of
those we serve and then actually act on the new awareness. We fell short of this work, and we
hoped to address it in our CoP meetings beyond this study. As such, that is “the work” ahead of
us.
For our CoP to work toward more equitably serving our families, we had to highlight
White privilege and White culture internally and externally. There were other missed
opportunities in this study to do just that beyond what I have mentioned previously. The
following memos reflect my acknowledgment during the reflective voice memo, where I missed
the opportunity to interrogate my own Whiteness or the Whiteness of my participants. The first
memo was a voice recording I recorded after CoP Meeting 2 and the completion of Cycle 1. In
the memo, I reflected after reviewing the transcripts from CoP Meetings 1 and 2. I noticed that
we are not decentering and interrogating our Whiteness and considering our identities in relation
to the Latinx, Asian, Indigenous, and Black students and families we serve.
I, the researcher, am a White, middle-class, cisgender woman. How do I make space and
bring in the perspectives, not in the room? I will need to revisit the materials/resources I
am using so that the student’s and families’ voices/identities are centered and not our own
… it’s alarming that I only use the words for my conceptual framework a few times. The
specific word “family” only appears three times in my transcript. Trauma-informed
principles two times period, assumptions nine times period, and reflection four times
period, in 90 minutes. What are we talking about? I understand that cycle one was mostly
about building a brave space and developing norms. Even though the CoP meeting was
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supposed to include critically reflecting and analyzing our identities as White women and
where we hold power, we did not get there. When I met with my dissertation chair this
week, she pointed out that I should consider that I am seeing we have not yet directly
engaged in dialogue that focuses on the elephant in the room … we are White women
talking “about” the students and families we serve, who are not White.
In the memo, I started by stating that I am a White and middle-class, cisgender woman.
All participants in this study shared these identities with me. I wondered “how do I make space
and bring in the perspectives, not in the room?” I realized I could not make this space until we
unpacked our Whiteness and considered how our privileges affected the ways we viewed and
interacted with our participants. It was already late to be asking this question. By this time, I was
a third of the way through my fieldwork. In subsequent analyses, I realized I minimally
succeeded in decentering and interrogating Whiteness by engaging my participants with
critically reflective prompts, but ultimately failed in more significant ways. For example, we did
not engage in as much dialogue about how our Whiteness shaped the critical incidents, we each
brought to the table. I pointed out in my memo that my transcripts do not reflect that our
dialogue during CoP meetings was calling out our Whiteness and areas of privilege. The
following realization acknowledges that I was not focusing on what mattered and needed to
course correct. I stated:
Even though the CoP meeting was supposed to include engaging in critical reflection and
analyzing our identities as White women and where we hold power, we just didn’t get
there. … We have not yet directly engaged in dialogue that focuses on the elephant in the
room. … We are White women talking “about” the student’s and families we serve, who
are not White.
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I had to work hard to consciously remind myself through this process that if we are not
addressing and decentering and interrogating our Whiteness as a CoP, Whiteness becomes the
“norm” and sustains social privilege beyond that which is accorded marginalized others
(Brookfield, 2003). Race is a critical positionality around which relationship and power
dynamics are contested (Hooks, 1994). When educators interact with those they serve, they bring
their positionalities, such as race, gender, class, sexual orientation, and disability (Brookfield,
2003). If we are not actively aware of this, we will more often than not reproduce the power
structures that privilege some and create and sustain racist constructs for others (Tisdell, 1993;
1995). While I asked my participants to consider generally how their identities shaped their
interactions, we could have delved deeper into these issues in our discussions about concrete
problems of practice.
The CoP meeting immediately following this memo was when we participated in an “I
Am From” activity. “I Am From” is a tool for analyzing the social construction of intersectional
identity that addresses racism and other inequities in the classroom (Brookfield, 2019). I should
mention that this activity allowed us to momentarily center and interrogate our Whiteness and
recognize our own critical analysis of where we held power and privilege. However, the
following data from my final reflective memo written after CoP Meeting 6 at the end of Cycle 3
demonstrated my missed opportunity to continually decenter and interrogate Whiteness in our
work.
It was vital for my learners to realize or become aware of how their/our identity shapes
their choices when interacting with families and how it is essential to decenter Whiteness
in relation to those we serve, students and families. One example of this was
demonstrated in their “I Am From” poems. This understanding led to another finding:
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We could have brought community voices into our conversation to help us be more
analytical, mindful, and critical of our practices. Their voice was missing, and their lens
was not part of our conversations. We were still talking about them.
When Whiteness was centered during our conversations as we unpacked critical incidents
or in my participant’s final reflections, it was shallow at best and just the start of genuinely
getting to the heart of it. It was shallow because, even though we utilized the “I Am From”
activity to recognize our own constructed identities, we failed to dive deeper into any more
critical analysis of power and privilege and complicate those identities concerning where we held
power and privilege. I shared my realization;
We could have brought community voices into our conversation to help us be more
analytical, mindful, and critical of our practices. Their voice was missing, and their lens
was not part of our conversations. We were still not centering the students and families
we serve, and by saying we were talking about them.
I further reflected that we missed the opportunity to talk with them. In Finding 2, I shared a
vignette where I modeled a critical incident for my learners. I presented transcript data to
demonstrate how a trauma-informed dialogue was facilitated through open-ended questions and
ultimately deepened the conversation. Embedded in the transcript data presented directly after
the vignette, Astrid stated:
A I’m going to try to be real, I think, I think in trying to apply some of what we’re
trying to practice here, you are centering yourself in the conversation rather than
her. And I think you mentioned power dynamics and asked, “Were there power
dynamics present?” But I do not think the power dynamics were in the room …
because I mean, frequently we get the parents that have had X, Y, and Z. Things
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happen already at the site, and they’ve reached their limit … so, I think the
dynamics are back at the site. … She wasn’t heard and so she came to you.
In this part of the dialogue, Astrid was calling me out. I centered my own feelings
without considering the parent. Astrid pointed this out by stating, “You are centering yourself in
the conversation rather than her.” This demonstrates where my modeling was problematic
because I was not decentering and interrogating my Whiteness, so I was not modeling what I
hoped to. As the reader might recall, the critical incident I used was mostly about how I was
feeling when interacting with the parent rather than seeing and describing in detail what the
parent was doing so as to allow me to analyze how they were feeling (Rodgers, 2002). I provided
a faulty exemplar to begin with, so it is no wonder that we never really pushed into deeply
critically reflecting and failed to interrogate Whiteness consistently. It is essential to be aware of
where I missed the mark and modeled behaviors that did not set the conditions for racial dialogue
and instead allowed my Whiteness to remain unexamined and unchallenged. After analysis,
overall, I learned far more from my failings than I did from my successes. I can now see where I
was not wise enough, or yet skilled enough to create the conditions that would help us as a CoP
engage in more effective racial dialogue. I hope that going forward, we will.
Afterword
Throughout this study, I saw evidence of my own growth as an educational leader, which
has implications for my professional life and context, as well as implications for my personal
life. In some ways, I will be forever changed for the better. For example, as I will discuss in this
section, I have learned to be more present in my everyday practice, and reflective practice will
always be a tool in my repertoire. I will also point out that this study deepened my resolve to be
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even more intentional about decentering Whiteness and bringing in more community voices to
our ongoing CoP, something I learned I did not do as well as I had hoped.
Growth as an Educational Leader
Engaging in action research was incredibly self-fulfilling but messy. It is an emergent
process evolving over time, and as inquiry develops, it opens up a wide range of choices. It is not
a linear approach at all. The quality of an action research approach rests on the choices made
along the way and the consciousness of and transparency about the choices made at each stage of
the inquiry process (Reason, 2006). In my memos, voice reflections along the journey, and
debriefings between cycles with my dissertation chair, I grappled with where I was drifting off
course and needed to shift both my thinking and my approach. Every new awareness led to
changes in my thinking about bringing myself into interactions with my participants and
actionable changes to my methods. For example, the deepening of my knowledge through in-the-
field analysis after enactment created an awareness that I needed to shift my actions towards a
learner-centered approach. I needed to let go of the reins and create the conditions for dialogue,
bringing critical incidents into the study rotation much earlier. Ultimately, I needed to change my
expectations for how much we could accomplish in six 1-hour meetings, and recognize that
change can be slow.
As I reflected more deeply on my identity as a leader, researcher, and peer in this study,
my beliefs shifted about my approach and actions and my effectiveness in my study. I would
think that I was done with the literature, then when analyzing my data, I would find out that I
needed to return to the literature and take a deeper dive to support my data analysis. I had to
become open to multiple possibilities or ways to think about approaching upcoming CoP
meetings after reflecting on previous meeting outcomes and data. This even resulted in ditching
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my pre-drafted plans for a new approach once I realized I needed to move from a teacher-
centered to learner-centered approach. I have learned that I am prone to defaulting to old ways,
relying on only intellectual fluency in the concepts we have read about, without recognizing that
I needed more in the way of application fluency. In hindsight, the knowledge I have after
analysis causes me to want to go back to the beginning to address my failures to decenter and
interrogate Whiteness and facilitate deeper dialogue after creating the right conditions for my
learners. While I initially thought I had enough fluency in the concepts in my conceptual
framework, I learned I had only partial understanding when I was enacting the leadership and
andragogical actions. Unfortunately, I came to this awareness late in my action research journey.
Realizations such as these have often left me feeling frustrated and less effective during this
journey, but also hopeful as this new knowledge has informed future practices going forward.
I also pictured myself wiser and fully formed as a leader at the end of this process. Wrong
again. I emerged not at the pinnacle of wisdom but at the valley floor, just beginning to make
better sense of my personal and professional life. I am not even close to being a “fully formed
leader.” Instead I became someone who has learned that there is a clear benefit in slowing down,
being intentionally present in the moment, and thinking critically to seek a deeper understanding
of my own power and practices. I have found it not only a powerful tool to pause before
engaging in conversations, but also tremendously helpful to sit, reflect, and write out everything
that comes up for me after conversations. By slowing down to make connections or identify
patterns, I can better call into question those same patterns. I learned this through the process of
in-the-field analysis, which forced me to examine my actions before moving on. It is often hard
to see my blind spots at a given moment. It takes stepping back in order to gain some mental
clarity. At times, clarity came from debriefing my takeaways from my reflections with a trusted
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advisor, such as my dissertation chair. My dissertation chair was a kind, empathetic seasoned
researcher. She could illuminate what I was not acknowledging or seeing due to my blind spots
and challenge me to think differently, such as where I needed to step back as the keeper of the
knowledge. Through this process, I have grown professionally and gained insight into my
practice as a valuable tool to deal with issues I face.
University of Southern California (USC) coursework and the process of conducting this
study caused me to come away with a better understanding of where I hold power and privilege.
I have learned to interrogate this power and privilege in situations I may not have considered
before. My racial identity profoundly affects how I perceive the world. The new awareness of
where I hold power and privilege, and the assumptions and biases I bring into engaging with
others, have allowed me to feel a sense of relief that I can take steps towards mitigating harm
against others and bringing clarity to those interactions. Exploring my own identity was a worthy
journey. It provided clarity into how my identity affects others around me.
I now have a better understanding of the imperative to move from learning about the
critically reflective practice to engaging in critically reflective practice. My learning is ongoing,
and even though I have learned a great deal through the course of this research study, it wasn’t
enough to see evidence of critical reflection in my colleagues. I know we are at the beginning,
not the end, of our journey as a CoP. Critical reflection is a tool that I now have to guide future
investigations of my own identity and our progress as a CoP and to inform bettering future
practice because the journey never ends. I will commit to grappling with and engaging in this
throughout my career and life. There were days during this journey that I felt less effective.
Through memoing, reflecting, and debriefing with my dissertation chair, I recognized situations
where my own actions or assumptions had manifested in unproductive ways. For example, this
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was true when I came to the realization, with Astrid’s help, that the critical incident I shared was
actually centering myself and not the student or parent and, thereby, was a failed example. It was
not a good model for how to center and equitably serve the families in our care.
Ultimately, I learned through engaging in this action research project that research is not
just about seeking an answer to a question. It is also about pursuing life goals and meaningful
experiences. It has also taught me several things I did not expect to discover. Halfway through
the study, I realized that the decisions I made at the start of my study would not lead me to
unpack critical incidents early enough to provide any benefit to my colleagues or me. To be
effective as a CoP, we had to engage in “shared” dialogue. That necessitated the need to facilitate
community in engaging in the exchange of discussions centered around interrogating race and
power. Putting views out there for all in the community to examine required vulnerability and the
existence of a brave space. Shared dialogue necessitated dialogue that promoted the free flow of
ideas needed in mutuality (Wenger et al., 2002), inclusive of interrogating problematic views
(Brookfield, 2019). By engaging in in-the-field analysis of my actions, I was able to see the fault
in my ways, thus positioning me for mid-course corrections. I was not just a researcher but also a
learner, and it is a journey I am committed to going on for the rest of my life.
Going forward, I will focus on being present, intentional, and aware of what thoughts I
am bringing into a given position and interrogate those thoughts through a trauma-informed lens
that purposefully decenters my Whiteness. Nevertheless, this research journey illuminated that I
might fail at times—such as failing to get to full critical reflection or consistently interrogating
Whiteness by the end of CoP meeting six due to moves and decisions I made and have discussed
in my findings.
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No matter how painful it was to recognize at times, I fell short of accomplishing my
professional goals set out in this study. This fact caused me to realize that learning also builds
resilience. Through reflective practice and mindfulness, I have found a way to metabolize
setbacks and failures into new learning and practices. One specific way I fell short of fully
reaching my research goals was that I had the unrealistic expectation of us, as a CoP deeply
unpacking critical incidents through a trauma-informed lens before the end of the study. This did
not happen. We should have dived deeper into a critical analysis of power and privilege and
complicated those identities concerning where we held power and privilege. There was no time
to do so within six CoP meetings. The length of the study did not permit opportunities for these
practices to become ingrained. As such, I learned that this work is slow and requires time.
Also, I shared in my findings my realization that we could have brought community
voices into our conversation to help us be more analytical, mindful, and critical of our practices.
Their voices were missing. This lack of community voices led us to unpack critical incidents in a
shallow way. While the conditions were set enough for Astrid to call me out on only reflecting
on my own feelings without considering the parent with whom I interacted, we could have
deepened that discussion. As shared in my findings, we had yet to arrive at genuinely getting to
critical reflection. Critical reflection would include a reflection of multiple perspectives,
including those of the families we serve.
When the study ends, the journey does not end. I now see myself as a reflective
practitioner committed to deepening my colleagues’ practices and my own. The CoP was
sustained and continued after the study officially ended. My colleagues and I found the work we
engaged in valuable to improving our practice and chose as a community to keep it going. I can
confidently say that we formed a CoP that worked together to unpack challenges intentionally
152

through a trauma-informed lens. Even though the study has concluded, we are still finding time
to meet informally and debrief challenges while holding to our agreements.
Of course, there are still areas we need to improve on. For example, it has taken me time
to shift into being a fellow participant in the group and away from being the group’s leader or
teacher. That shift began halfway through my study, but I struggled with decentering myself as
just the “leader.” Reflecting on my findings, I have seen the power in facilitating knowledge of
practice. This facilitation is leadership in its own right. So, while I became more of a peer and
fellow learner, the CoP needed me to lead, too, even if that looks different from what I had
initially seen as my role (facilitating, not telling). It is not my job to decide what to do and then
tell the group. Instead, the group should consider the problem, decide what to do, and count on
me as the leader to help them focus their effort (Wenger et al., 2002). Going forward, I will still
facilitate as a leader and contributor participating within the greater community rather than as the
keeper of the knowledge.
This doctoral program and this research journey have provided me with a whole new skill
set with which to approach my professional life and all the challenges that come with it. Being
reflective and present in the moment, identifying and interrogating my biases and assumptions,
engaging vulnerably, and working through disequilibrium to truly grow is not easy. Even though
I believe I possess this skill set, I am only sometimes effective in creating change. There are
limits to my abilities; sometimes, I must remember to use my learned skills and fail to do so.
Once I reflect on those incidents and get over the feeling of failure, I can find a way to break
down and unearth where I need to shift in my thinking, thereby exposing what assumptions,
biases, and emotions surface to create new practices. Overall, this action research journey has
transformed how I know, think, and respond professionally.
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Implications for My Professional Life and Context
The ultimate takeaway is that I learned that action research is a valuable and appropriate
research approach for educators concerned with making better sense of their professional lives
and improving their practice. You do not need to engage in quantitative, traditional research for
your study to be deemed credible. Action research is rigorous and meaningful and caused both
me and my participants to become aware of how we bring ourselves, our positionalities, and our
assumptions and biases into interactions with the Latinx, Asian. Indigenous, and Black students
and families we serve.
Examining our practices and sharing what we have learned with others in our context has
led to discussions in my department regarding what we have learned from this journey. One of
the implications of sharing these findings within my context was that we began to break down
into smaller groups within our larger department meetings to collaborate and address challenges
and problems of practice. Unlike the mandated, off-site professional development, we started
something more authentic. A structural change came about after participants shared how
valuable the process of forming the CoP was to other colleagues.
My direct administrator of the department has since reached out and is collaborating with
me to facilitate assigning the 11 administrators into two smaller groups of three and one group of
four. Forming these groups has provided an opportunity to engage in reflective practices and a
trauma-informed dialogue to better understand each other’s perspectives and better our practices
to engage with those we serve more equitably. The formations of our CoP and the skillsets the
participants of this study and I learned impacted change for the betterment of practices within my
context. That is a win.
154

Additionally, I realized the importance of holding myself accountable for decentering my
Whiteness and centering in place the students and families we serve. If I am not holding myself
accountable through some external measure, I risk remaining colorblind. I have since developed
strategies to hold myself accountable and am committing to other colleagues focused on
interrogating where they may hold power and privileges. One such colleague is my research
partner, Amy. Also, I am responsible for explaining White privilege and institutional racism to
the fellow White women I work with, who have a history of upholding White supremacy.
Furthermore, it is not the responsibility of my fellow black colleges and colleagues of
color to educate White people when they are being racist. It also is not up to me as a White
woman to decide what is and is not racist. My job as a White woman is to listen to black
colleagues and colleagues of color when they say something is inherently racist instead of
making excuses and upholding the systems, words, and actions harming them. Even as much as
we are working as a CoP to reflect on our own identities critically, it does not erase the fact that
we were and are all White women in administrative roles. Therefore, I have a greater resolve and
accountability to actively seek ways to encourage district leadership to recruit and hire more
diverse candidates of color and to ensure that we are cultivating a welcoming environment where
they can develop a sense of belonging. Coinciding with the conclusion of this study, there has
been a change in the racial demographic of special education administrators, particularly in
hiring four Black administrators and one Latinx administrator. To facilitate a welcoming
environment, I consciously step back in professional settings to facilitate their voices being heard
and valued. I also consciously step forward when hierarchies of power need to be interrogated
and do not put the labor on them to break down barriers impeding their access to the floor.
Implications for My Personal Life
155

At the orientation meeting for our doctoral program, we were told that the best way to
ensure that we completed the program successfully and “on time” was to avoid any significant
life-changing decisions or distractions. Critical reflection and mindful practice have taught me
that I cannot control external events. However, I can control my reactions to them, even when
my external circumstances mirrored all the cautionary circumstances the orientation presenter
told us to avoid if we wanted to be successful. Reflection became the powerful antidote to my
helplessness when I realized my perceived failures in my study design and the events that
happened outside my control.
In the end, it took an entire extended semester for me to complete this process due to
external personal stressors, which would have overwhelmed and paralyzed me prior to this
program. I lost my father to COVID-19 at the start of the doctoral journey. Two months later,
during my first year at USC, I had a partial hysterectomy that included 6 weeks of bed rest and
recovery. We downsized and moved to a smaller home as I moved into my literature review.
Throughout my fieldwork, my mother declined in health to the point of requiring hospice care
and my 27-year-old niece died of leukemia 2 weeks prior to my son’s wedding. They were 3
weeks apart in age, and it was a disorienting time for our family. A time of continuous tears and
gatherings layered with both immense grief and joy overlapping across a span of 2 months.
My son’s wedding was a positive and bright moment of time in the timeline. My son was
married during the timespan I was drafting my findings. The wedding was joyous, yet it also
required me to step away from the writing process to be fully present in this life event and
therefore added to the length of time it took to complete my journey. Amid these external trials
and distractions, prior to coming to an awareness of what it means to be critically reflective and
mindful, it would have been easy to lose sight of why I was engaging in this process and become
156

paralyzed and overwhelmed. However, reflective practice and becoming mindful have taught me
to stop and be present in the moment, intentionally see and observe what is happening around
me, and contemplate my intentions. Through reflective practice, at each step of the way, I have
been able to renew my connection to this research and my intended outcomes, simultaneously
shaping my personal life for the better. It has provided me with a skill set to take action to
continue in the journey, despite the many things outside my control.
157

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Appendix A: Revised Lesson Plans
This section details the three action research cycles.
Action Research Cycle 1: Community of Practice Meeting 1 Objectives
Length: 90 minutes.
CoP participants will be able to:
● Come to a shared definition of a “brave space.”
● Co-construct community agreements.
● Define mindfulness and how they enact mindful practice.
Action researcher will be able to:
● Lead a productive discussion.
● Present opportunities for participants to reflect on and share what was learned.
Setting: Zoom online meeting platform at an agreed upon time
Actions With Guiding Questions/Scaffolds
● Review the three pillars that make up a community of practice.
● Engage in a group to discuss and determine what encompasses a brave space.
o What makes a space safe?
o What makes a space brave?
o What is the difference in overlap between brave and safe?
● Engage in dialogue that encompasses safe versus brave space and co-construct
agreements to guide interactions and conversations as a CoP—what will our
structure/guidelines be for participating in this space?
● Participate in a trauma-informed approach of Mindful Practice 5, “Returning to the
Here and Now.”

170

Participants Reflection Questions/Prompt(s)
● Tell me more about your experience in creating the space for discussion:
o What do you think will support you in engaging in this work?
o What do you think will impede you in engaging in this work?
o Who might not feel safe in this space? Why?
o What, if anything, needs to be added to our agreements, or further defined in
order to facilitate a brave space?
Action Researcher Critical Reflection
● How am I facilitating the creation of a brave space?
● How am I cultivating the development of the CoP?
● How am I supporting my learners to attend to TIP attributes and practices?
● Who are my knowers and what should I be doing, adjusting, or scaffolding in order to
meet my knowers where they are?
Action Research Cycle 1: Cop Meeting 2 Objectives
Length: 90 minutes
CoP participants will be able to:
● Develop a shared understanding and definition of identity and positionality and define
identity in relation to others.
● Engage in a discussion of hierarchies of power and how:
o Each of the identities we bring into a given space can contribute to less access
to the floor in discussions.
o On the other hand, these same identities can lead to someone being tokenized,
by being asked to speak for an entire group.
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● Identify their “why” and move from who they are to why they are engaged in this
work and then examine how those two are related.
o Action researcher will be able to lead productive discussions and present
opportunities for participants to reflect and share on learnings.
Setting: Zoom online meeting platform at an agreed upon time.
Actions With Guiding Questions/Scaffolds
● Chalk Talk: revisit agreements and invite feedback based on answers to reflection
prompt from CoP Meeting 1.
o Invite feedback based on answers to the reflection prompts’ final question.
o Revise and update agreements based on input from any new agreements or
revisions.
● TIP-Mindful Practice—5-min (body scan).
● Examine identity through the activity of “I am From”—model/share my own personal
“I Am From” poem.
● Circle of response—what is your why? Discuss hierarchies of power.
o How does creating a brave space demonstrate that our community is never a
safe space due to the power and privilege we import from the outside?
o As leaders, we must be aware of our role in maintaining hierarchies of power
and the status quo of systemic barriers. In what way are we aware of how
hierarchies of power maintain power dynamics that are harmful to our
students and families?
Participants Critical Reflection Questions/Prompt(s)
● What surprised you about your responses to the phrase, “I am from?”
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● How does your identity influence your work as a special education administrator
supporting Latinx, Asian, Indigenous, and Black students and families?
● What assumptions, if any, did this activity unearth for you about your fellow CoP
members? How might this deeper consideration of others’ identities inform the way
you are accountable to and contribute towards a brave space?
Critical Reflection/Self Check-In As Researcher
● How am I facilitating the cultivation of brave space?
● How am I cultivating the development of the CoP’s stages and principles?
● How am I scaffolding my learners to help them to define identity in relation to
others?
● Who are my knowers? What should I be doing, adjusting, or scaffolding in order to
meet my knowers where they are?
Action Research Cycle 2: CoP Meeting 3 Objectives
Length: 90 minutes
CoP participants will be able to:
● Connect and begin to name and explain the components of TIP that lead to equitably
supporting the Latinx, Asian, Indigenous, and Black students and families seeking
their services.
● Develop a clear definition of the following terms: mindfulness, bias, and
assumptions.
● Identify counter narratives: systemic barriers and trauma affecting the students and
families we serve, and how this awareness may inform how they view and interact
with the families they serve.
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Action researcher will redirect conversations about students and families in non-
colorblind terms.
Setting: Zoom online meeting platform at an agreed upon time.
Actions With Guiding Questions/Scaffolds
● TIP- Mindful practice—10 min “Paying Attention.” Scripts: beliefs change when:
o We encounter new information.
o We recognize alternative beliefs or narratives.
● Discuss the six guiding principles of a TIP (CDC, 2020) (10 min).
● Define bias and assumptions (Mezirow, 1990) (5–10 min)—Check our Bias to Wreck
our Bias (3 min).
o Digital storytelling (10 min).
o What moments in the clip stood out to you and why? Were there any
surprises? What questions do you still have?
● As a group, watch the counter narrative documentary: Asian Americans on Race —
digital storytelling/documentary (7 min).
Participants Critical Reflection Questions/Prompt(s)
● What moments in the film stood out to you and why?
● What was surprising to you?
● What was something that challenged you?
● What questions do you still have?
Critical Reflection/Self Check-In As Researcher
● How am I facilitating the continued accountability to and facilitation of a brave
space?
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● How am I cultivating the development of the CoP’s stages and principles?
● How am I supporting my learners to attend to and adopt TIP practices and attributes
in order to more equitably engage with Latinx, Asian, Indigenous, Black students and
families?
● Who are my learners? What should I be doing, adjusting, or scaffolding to meet my
knowers where they are and move them towards the stated objectives?
Action Research Cycle 2: CoP Meeting 4 Objectives
Length: 90 minutes
CoP participants will be able to:
● Begin to define identity in relation to others.
● Build awareness as it relates to their identity and role.
● Draft a critical incident referring to the shared model.
Action researcher will be able to:
● Lead a productive discussion.
● Redirect conversations about students and families in non-colorblind terms.
Setting: Zoom online meeting platform at an agreed upon time.
Actions With Guiding Questions/Scaffolds
● TIP-Mindful Practice—5 min “Pulling Out of Auto Pilot.”
● Discussion—the need for unpacking critical incidents.
● Scaffold / modeling critical incident.
● Week 4 reflection—critical incident reflection.
Participants Critical Incident Reflection Draft 1 (15 min)
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● Please write between now and our next meeting that reflects on a challenging
interaction or conversation that you experienced in your role as a special education
administrator.
● Please make sure your critical incident includes all three elements outlined in Jay and
Johnson’s (2002) typology.
Critical Reflection/Self Check-In As Researcher
● How am I facilitating the accountability to and facilitation of a brave space?
● How am I cultivating the development of this CoP’s stages and principles?
● How am I scaffolding my learners to help them discern between being reflective and
being critically reflective?
● How am I supporting my fellow CoP participants to attend to TIP attributes and
practices in order to more equitably engage with the Latinx, Asian, Black, Brown and
Indigenous students and families who seek our services?
● What should I be doing, adjusting, or scaffolding to meet my learners where they are?
Action Research Cycle 3: CoP Meeting 5 Objectives
Length: 90 minutes
CoP participants will be able to:
● Identify the stages in Rodgers (2002) reflective cycle.
● Deepen their understanding of what it means to be critically reflective versus
descriptive or comparative.
Action researcher will be able to:
• Lead a productive discussion and present opportunities for participants to reflect and
share on learnings.
176

● Maintain a learner-centered approach and model critically reflective thinking.
Setting: Zoom online meeting platform at an agreed upon time.
Actions With Guiding Questions/Scaffolds
● TIP-Mindful Practice—5 min “Patience”
● Review of typology of reflection.
● Review and unpack participants critical incidents—draft 1.
● Critical conversations protocol to review and revise critical incidents from Week 5—
feedback will be inclusive of the following prompts.
o What are we missing here?
o What important questions are not being raised?
o Whose voices are not being heard?
o What perspectives are being ignored or overlooked?
o What TIP principles are at play? Is there trauma to be accounted for?
o How are our declared intentions and actual actions contradicting each other?
Participants Critical Incident: Draft 1
● Once learners receive feedback, they will be asked to reflect during the last 15
minutes at the Zoom session on how they can apply the feedback they’ve received to
revise their original critical incident.
● Between now and the next CoP session they will revise their critical reflection
depending on where it falls in the typology, so as to deepen their descriptions, critical
lens.
Critical Reflection/Self Check-In As Researcher
177

● How am I holding myself and my learners accountable to the facilitation of a brave
space and community norms and agreements?
● How am I cultivating the development of the CoP’s stages and principles?
● How am I scaffolding for my learners to help them be present and see —per Rodgers
(2002)?
● How am I supporting my learners to attend to TIP attributes and practices to support
more equitable engagement with Latinx, Asian, Indigenous, and Black students and
families seeking their support?
● What should I be doing, adjusting, or scaffolding to meet my knowers where they
are?
Action Research Cycle 3: CoP Meeting 6 Objectives
Length: 90 minutes
CoP participants will:
● Through Jamboard—CoP participants will be able to begin to identify the stages in
Rodgers (2002) reflective cycle.
● Further identify where biased thoughts may come into play in order to correct for it
by pairing the mindful pause with identifying thoughts that are biased in nature.
● Provide me, as the researcher, feedback on my leadership practices and andragogical
choices/structures.
Action researcher will:
● Maintain a learner-centered approach and modeling for my adult learners in a way
that fosters their ability to be open and genuine with others.
178

● Be able to lead a productive discussion and present opportunities for participants to
reflect and share on learnings.
Setting: Zoom online meeting platform at an agreed upon time.
Actions With Guiding Questions/Scaffolds
● TIP-Mindful practice—11 min “Awareness.”
● Review typology—levels of reflection.
● Sharing of any yet shared critical incidents.
● Circle of response activity (Brookfield, 2019).
o Round 1—how does your positionality form a lens through which you viewed
your critical incident and your role in it?
o Round 2—what changes or revisions did you make to push towards deepening
your critical incident reflection?
● Critical conversations protocol to review and share a new critical incident within the
CoP (Brookfield, 2017, p.128)—I will bring a critical incident to the group and model
this process, addressing problems of practice as a functioning CoP. Feedback will be
inclusive of the following prompts:
o What are we missing here?
o What important questions are not being raised?
o Whose voices are not being heard?
o What perspectives are being ignored or overlooked?
o What TIP principles are at play? Is there trauma to be accounted for?
o How are our declared intentions and actual actions contradicting each other?
• Focus group on CoP process and leadership (10 min).
179

o To what extent, if any, have I routinely been accountable to our constructed
agreements?
o How, if at all, have I supported you in being critically reflective during the
sessions that we have met?
o What could I have done differently, if anything, to better support you and be
critically reflective?
o In what ways, if any, have I supported you in looking deeply at ways in which
you are able to engage with students and families you directly support
utilizing a trauma-informed approach?

180

Appendix B: Ladder of Inference
The following pre-generated document will be utilized to scaffold participants’
knowledge development of the content: Ladder of Inference (Aguilar, 2020).

Figure B1
Ladder of Inference

Note. Adapted from Coaching for Equity: Conversations that Change Practice, by E. Aguilar,
2020, Jossey-Bass.

181

Appendix C: Reflection Typology
The following pre-generated document will be utilized to scaffold participants’
knowledge development of the content: Reflection Typology (Jay & Johnson, 2002).

Table C1
Reflection Typologies
Dimension Definition Typical questions
Descriptive Describe the matter
for reflection
What is happening? Is this working, and for whom? For
whom is it not working? How do I know? How am I
feeling? What am I pleased and/or concerned about?
What do I not understand? Does this relate to any of
my stated goals, and to what extent are they being
met?
Comparative Reframe the matter
for reflection in
light of alternative
views, others'
perspectives, re-
search, etc.
What are alternative views of what is happening? How
do other people who are directly or indirectly
involved describe and explain whats's happening?
What does the research contribute to an
understanding of this matter? How can I improve
what's not working? If there is a goal, what are some
other ways of accomplishing it? How do other people
accomplish this goal? For each perspective and
alternative, who is served and who is not?
Critical Having considered
the implications of
the matter,
establish a
renewed
perspective
What are the implications of the matter when viewed
from these alternative perspectives? Given these
various alternatives, their implications, and my own
morals and ethics, which is best for this particular
matter? What is the deeper meaning of what is
happening, in terms of democratic purposes of
schooling? What does this matter reveal about the
moral and political dimension of schooling? How
does this reflective process inform and renew my
perspective?

Note. Adapted from “Capturing Complexity: A Typology of Reflective Practice for Teacher
Education,” by J. K. Jay and K. L. Johnson, 2002, Teaching and Teacher Education, 18(1), pp.
73–85. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0742-051X(01)00051-8
182

Appendix D: Cycles of Reflection
The following pre-generated document will be utilized to scaffold participants’
knowledge development of the content: Rodgers’ (2002) cycles of reflection as developed by
Samkian (2021).

Figure D1
Cycles of Reflection

184
185

Appendix E: Final Focus Group Questions
Questionnaire: Adapted from: Khalifa, M. A., Gooden, M. A., and Davis, J. E. (2016).
Culturally responsive school leadership: A synthesis of the literature. Review of Educational
Research, 86(4), 1272–1311.
There will be open-ended questions for participants to answer during the final focus
group interview. Questions are as follows:
1. To what extent, if any, have I routinely been accountable to our co-constructed
norms/guidelines?
2. How, if at all, have I supported you in being critically reflective during the sessions
that we met?
3. What could I have done differently, if anything, to better support you in being
critically reflective?
4. In what ways, if any, have I supported you in looking deeply at ways in which you
are able to engage with the students and families you directly support utilizing a
trauma-informed approach?
5. How, if at all, could I have better supported you in looking deeply at ways in which
you are able to engage with the students and families you directly support utilizing a
trauma-informed approach?

186

Appendix F: Brave Verses Safe Space Agreements
Clarification can be asked—if there is something we do not understand, we can be
checking in.
1. Move up.
a. Grace to revisit something that may need to be circled back to.
b. Critically interrogate why we might want to opt out, and ask:
i. Why am I hesitant to engage? —Wade into the uncomfortable.
ii. How is the engagement (practices of the group) affected?
2. Move back—create space but stay engaged.
a. Resist disengaging.
b. “Move back” not “out.”
c. Be open to sitting in the mess.
d. Allow think time.
3. Approach with curiosity—use questions.
a. Seek to understand and engage.
b. It is dangerous to assume anything, listen with intention, asking questions to
clarify.
4. Give grace—honestly acknowledge that we are on a journey, which that we might not
know or have the experiences or lens.
5. Respect each other.
a. Unpack the common wisdom of whether our concrete expectations of respect
perpetuate social hierarchies in the community.
187

b. Understand that everybody has set skills—utilize other’s strengths (they can
be a lifeline).
c. Be invested in each other’s growth.
d. Keep conversations within the community.

Abstract (if available)

Abstract This qualitative study examined my leadership in cultivating a community of practice (CoP) with special education administrators in one district that engaged in critical reflection and dialogue informed by trauma-informed principles (TIP). This study focused on facilitating change to address the defined problem of practice within the setting where I worked. Professionally I was committed to adopting and enacting TIP and engaging in critical reflection to interrogate my assumptions and biases about the families we supported. In addition, I was committed to working within a CoP where I could support my colleagues engaged in this work. The research question for this action research project asked: How do I cultivate a CoP that engages participants in critical reflection and utilizes a trauma-informed lens to then inform and improve equitable interactions with the Latinx, Asian, Indigenous, and Black students and families we serve? Using a qualitative methodological approach, I examined my andragogical and adaptive leadership actions and observed how I created the learning conditions for White Special Education administrators to unpack critical incidents to develop knowledge of practice. The data sources included observational fieldnotes, participant reflections, documents developed for the study sessions, and transcripts from our meetings. In-the-field analysis of the first cycle of action revealed that I needed to shift from a teacher-centered approach to a learner-centered one in order to facilitate deeper dialogue between me and my colleagues. I also learned that cultivating a “brave space” requires vulnerability and takes continuous effort.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Jacobs, Kristi Lee (author)

Core Title Cultivating a community of practice: an action research study on cultivating a community of practice that engages in trauma-informed dialogue and critical reflection

School Rossier School of Education

Degree Doctor of Education

Degree Program Educational Leadership

Degree Conferral Date 2023-05

Publication Date 02/23/2023

Defense Date 01/17/2023

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag action research,adaptive leadership,andragogy,community of practice,critical reflection,decentering whiteness.,learner centered teaching,OAI-PMH Harvest,reflection,Trauma

Format theses (aat)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Samkian, Artineh (committee chair), Hinga, Briana (committee member), Slayton, Julie (committee member)

Creator Email jacobsk@usc.edu,Kjacobs1@ggusd.us

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-oUC112755718

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