Abstract:
I designed this study to understand the experiences of teachers participating in a community of practice centered around mindfulness in a private middle school. My goal was to understand how they shared a concern around mindfulness and how they developed best practices. I grounded this study in Lave and Wenger's (1991) communities of practice as a theoretical framework, and I used a basic interpretive approach to design the study and gather data. The theory of constructivism guided my methodology. I gathered data through on-site observations and a series of three interviews with each of three participants. Once all interviews were completed and transcribed, I analyzed the data through two-cycle coding. The first cycle I coded by hand, and for the second cycle I used MAXQDA to organize, combine, and collapse codes to construct themes and subthemes. I constructed two themes, each with subthemes. The first theme describes the participants' domain and community: how the faculty shared a concern around mindfulness. Subthemes include 1) training and resources provided teachers with a strong domain, 2) embodied leadership established a unified culture, and 3) tensions arose between consistency and change. The second theme described the community's practice: how faculty learned to do mindfulness better for student-centered practice. In the words of the participants, subthemes include 1) "Student-Led," 2) "Meeting Kids Where They're At," 3) "Invitational," and 4) "Fun." My findings indicate that training and resources provided a solid foundation for developing mindfulness practices with students. Findings also suggest that members of a mindfulness community of practice must work together to navigate the tension between consistency and change which is fundamental to any community of practice.