Exploring Experiences of Meaningful Engagement in Preparation for a Community of Practice

Item

Title

Eng Exploring Experiences of Meaningful Engagement in Preparation for a Community of Practice

Date

2013

Creator

Eng Zimmer, Aaron

Subject

Eng Environmental Studies

extracted text

EXPLORING EXPERIENCES OF MEANINGFUL ENGAGEMENT
IN PREPARATION FOR A COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE

by
Aaron Zimmer

A Thesis
Submitted in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree
Master of Environmental Studies
The Evergreen State College
June 2013


 

©2013 by Aaron Zimmer. All rights reserved.


 

ABSTRACT
Exploring Experiences of Meaningful Engagement
In Preparation for a Community of Practice
Aaron Zimmer
The failure of standard, command-and-control policies to make sustained
headway against increasingly complex environmental problems has prompted
scholars to examine a shift to new ways forward, to a participatory approach in
the way that we learn, teach, conceptualize, and interact with our green and built
environments. There has been growing interest in what are known as
“Communities of Practice” (CoP) as one way to increase the effectiveness of
participatory, collective work for sustainability. CoP theory rests on the
assumption of a predisposition for human beings to desire to be meaningfully
engaged with one another, and that individuals who are socially engaged with
others produce sustained collective output. However, the lack of robust guides for
moving from theory to practice presents a problem to organizations seeking to
successfully employ CoPs. In preparation for facilitating a CoP amongst a
network of environmental and sustainability education (ESE) leaders in
Washington State, this case study asked: “what are the common elements of
meaningful engagement in collective ESE-related activities among potential CoP
members, and can those common elements be focused on during CoP facilitation
to help bridge theory and practice?” Through use of the psychological
phenomenological method, this study identified specific process-based values
attached to a sense of “meaningful engagement” between participants, namely
“sense of success/achievement” and “sense of responsibility/engagement,”
leading to or stemming from a “paradigm shift” and a supported by “sense of
being connected to something bigger than themselves.” These values suggest a
process-based context for supporting CoP facilitation and may be helpful in
providing similar organizations with some conceptual tools to overcome the
theory-to-practice barrier in facilitating participatory engagement in their push to
generate critical community knowledge, co-discover solutions to shared
organizational opportunities, and approach sustained participatory-based solutions
to our shared and ever increasing environmental challenges.

Table of Contents
List of Figures ......................................................................................................... v
 
Acknowledgements ................................................................................................ vi
 
Introduction ............................................................................................................. 1
 
Literature Review - Building Understanding .......................................................... 7
 
Methodology ......................................................................................................... 34
 
Results ................................................................................................................... 57
 
Analysis................................................................................................................. 79
 
Discussion ............................................................................................................. 89
 
Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 96
 
Works Cited .......................................................................................................... 99
 
Appendix ............................................................................................................. 103
 


 

iv
 

List of Figures

1. Phenomenological Research Principles

41

2. Code Excerpts and Applications per Interview

59

3. List of Codes

61

4. List of Significant Codes and Co-Occurrences

70


 

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Dr. Edward Whitesell for his invaluable conceptual support
in approaching and redefining my topic of interest and thesis question, and for
help in choosing an appropriate methodology and refining my research design.
Dr. Whitesell also provided pivotal and targeted guidance throughout the revision
process. Abby Ruskey provided key conceptual support and research design from
E3 Washington’s perspective, as well as helping synergize this thesis’ question
with the needs and operational realities of E3 Washington itself. Dr. Joshua Clegg
graciously provided professional interview assistance by allowing me to adapt the
interview questions used in his 2006 work for the interviews in this thesis. My
thanks also to the participants who volunteered for this study, as they participated
out of a desire to help support this project and its implications for the
environmental and sustainability education field.


 

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Introduction

It is generally accepted that the environment of the earth has been heavily
degraded by human activity, especially over the past century. Moreover,
contemporary science shows that our ability to effect our environment is
increasing faster than we have the ability to understand or mitigate the possible
effects (Senge, 1994). Moreover, while our technical understanding of
environmental problems has increased dramatically over the past decades, the
global response to these problems has so far been slow and insufficient (Solomon
et al., 2007). The failure of singular government bodies or standard commandand-control hierarchies to make cumulative, sustained headway has prompted
scholars to examine new ways forward, and this study is an exploration of one of
those methods. There is a rising cultural belief, especially since the 1970s
(Leadwith and Springett, 2010), that any one scientific discipline, legislative
body, or individual cannot sustainably address or mitigate even local
environmental issues on their own (Gardner, 2007). Multi-person (usually
voluntary) participation is needed in order for local and global cultures to
approach sustained solutions to environmental challenges. As a consequence,
environmental change is increasingly becoming tied to social change, a shift in
the way that we learn, teach, conceptualize, and interact with our green and built
environments.
In response, there has been growing interest from diverse sectors of
society to put into practice what are known as “Communities of Practice” (CoP)
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as one way to increase the effectiveness of participatory collective impact for
sustained environmental change. CoPs are defined a group of individuals
“informally bound together by shared expertise and shared passion for a joint
enterprise” (Wenger, 2000, p. 139). CoP literature defines “community” as a
group of individuals who participate in a shared practice via shared norms and
values, and CoPs are considered “participant-driven” because their norms, values,
goals, and output are co-defined by their members rather than imposed by
management. CoP theory is gathering recent attention because it promises to
produce innovative solutions to complex social and organizational challenges
while engendering a sense of community and social healing among its
participants, with the belief that its successes radiate outward into society at large
(Senge, 1994). CoP theory rests on the assumption that social and organizational
change via participatory practices can be leveraged through the predisposition of
human beings to “form and maintain social bonds” (Walton et al. 2012, p. 513) ,
and that individuals who are socially engaged with others produce sustained
collective output through their CoP.
However, widespread CoP facilitation for sustained collective
environmental impact has been difficult to achieve. While much literature exists
on CoP theory, less literature exists on exactly how to apply the theory in specific
contexts, and the lack of robust guides in moving from theory to practice presents
a problem to organizations who seek to engage them successfully. Yet, supporters
point to isolated successes and argue that such groups are indeed possible, but that
good and targeted facilitation is necessary in order to make the theory align with

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the community, to make it work (Hadar and Brody, 2010; Murrell, 1998; Niesz,
2010; Smith, 2001). Facilitation, or guided development practice, is a powerful
social and organizational too but itself requires investment and energy, and
successful facilitation of CoPs requires knowledge of the context (i.e., the specific
community) as well as robust technical and organization-related skills (Murrell,
1998; Yakhlef, 2010). Therefore, intentionally developing CoPs inside of
organizations can be a difficult, knowledge dependent, and time-intensive task.
With this need for knowledge of context as its point of departure, this
study examines the foundations of CoP theory and possible routes for addressing
the theory-to-practice problem through exploring a case study of environmental
and sustainability education (ESE) leaders (stakeholders such as informal
educators, local non-profit representatives, curriculum developers,
superintendents, etc.) who are networked through an ESE support organization in
Washington State known as “E3 Washington.” E3 Washington functions as a
convener and supporter of the statewide ESE field, to assist diverse stakeholders
in achieving collective impact to “build a system of education for sustainable
communities” (E3 Washington, 2009, para. 1). The organization is interested in
creating a CoP inside of its educator leader network to leverage its scarce
resources in the pursuit of achieving its vision, believing that empowering teacher
educators to meaningfully engage with their colleagues will enhance the their
learning and capacity, which will then cascade down to their students and will
promote innovative solutions to broad challenges in the field itself. Given that
forming a successful CoP from this group requires contextualized knowledge

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about the group, this study was directed at uncovering common pathways for
participatory engagement through exploring common experiences of “meaningful
engagement,” a concept identified from the literature to be a central driver of a
successful CoP experience. The specific research question in this study was: a) is
there a common understanding of meaningful engagement between members of
E3 Washington’s educator leader community, and b) can that common experience
be contextualized within Community of Practice (CoP) theory to help make
facilitation E3 Washington’s educator leader group more strongly engaged and
successful over time?” For this purpose, this study utilized the psychological
phenomenological method, discussed in greater detail in the Methodology
chapter. It is hoped that this study will help inform E3 Washington’s specific CoP
theory-to-practice challenges as well as inform the broader environmental
education field about translating CoPs from theory to practice, by uncovering
qualitative interview data that uncovers a shared socially situated mechanism of
engagement among a potential environmental education CoP group. This research
is an effort to contribute to a much-needed social shift towards participatory
practice and collective impact that can successfully move towards mitigation and
solution of the complex environmental challenges of our time.
From the results, this study found that the participants interviewed did
indeed share a common perception of “meaningful engagement” in the individual
group-situated ESE-related activities they experienced. Participants identified
social concepts such as A Sense of Success/Achievement and A Sense of
Responsibility/Engagement, leading to or stemming from A Paradigm Shift and a

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sense of being Connected to Something Bigger Than Themselves as key facets of
meaningful engagement in group-situated, ESE-related activities. This finding is
significant because, though the individual experiences of each participant varied,
common aspects of their experiences exist that meaningfully engaged them in
their related ESE activities. This suggests that diversity of stakeholder
background is not a significant barrier to successful CoP development in this case
and identifies specific process-based values on which participants of E3
Washington’s educator leader CoP may meaningfully engage moving forward.
The remainder of this thesis will present and defend its findings by first
exploring the literature that informed this study. In order to fully inform the reader
as to why this particular study is important and timely, particular attention will be
paid to the multifaceted allure of CoPs, their history and development, their
foundations in social and psychological science, and the specific barriers to
practice. The literature review will continue with an expanded exploration of E3
Washington and its interest in CoP theory, as well as popular guidelines for CoP
facilitation, to assist the reader in understanding that the results of this study (i.e.,
common expressions of meaningful engagement) are not ends in themselves, but a
piece of the puzzle that will help bridge the gap between CoP theory and practice
for E3 Washington and hopefully perhaps informing the wider literature’s search
for practice-based solutions toward CoP development. Psychological
phenomenology, the research method chosen for this study, will be presented in
detail in order to fully understand the critical terms and tools, rationale,
significance, potential challenges of the method. Following this, the interview

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process, participant selection criteria, and research design will be described before
presenting the results and analysis of the data, which will also reflect on the
literature for validity and context. Finally, the discussion section will present the
findings in a multifaceted light, pausing to comment on the successes and
limitations of this study, questions for further development, and lessons learned.

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Literature Review - Building Understanding

This chapter is intended to give the reader the necessary background and
history behind the concepts utilized in this paper, in order that the reader may
meaningfully understand and interpret the results. The literature review will begin
by describing the definition, history, and theoretical bounds of Community of
Practice (CoP) theory. The history of CoP implementation in two of the major
areas this study examined (the contemporary business and educator communities)
will be covered, so that the reader has a firm grasp of the “fit” in these areas for
CoP implementation and the importance of overcoming the theory-to-practice
challenges associated with it. The literature review will then deepen by exploring
the psychological and social foundations upon which CoP theory is founded, so
that the social-based results of this study will be relevant and meaningful. Having
provided a thorough foundation on CoP theory, its definition and bounds,
challenges, and possible solutions, this literature review will reference the CoP
facilitation guidelines found in the literature, since facilitation is the method by
which E3 Washington (and perhaps related organizations) may “operationalize”
the findings of this thesis.

The Appeal of Participatory Practice
A Community of Practice (CoP) is known in the literature as a group of
individuals “informally bound together by shared expertise and shared passion for
joint enterprise” (Wenger, 2000, p. 139). It is a discrete organizational unit of

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people who share a common goal, interest, or language and participate together in
perpetuating it over time. The idea of community “is as old as humanity” (Clegg,
2006, p. 55), and CoPs have a long history that precedes society’s desire to
intentionally create them in the modern business setting. Historically, CoPs came
together on their own, outside of social or business mandates. Historically,
businesses and organizations such as E3 Washington did not attempt to create
them within their own organizations. Examples of CoPs include unions of
community craftspeople, clubs, and social circles (Amin and Roberts, 2008), from
gangs to fraternal orders, who convene to share ideas, innovate solutions to shared
challenges, and nurture their field’s identity (Kulkarni et al., 2000). CoPs would
historically create their own leadership hierarchies and create their own goals,
agendas, and physical outputs. In this way, CoPs are considered “participantdriven” because their norms, values, goals, and output are co-defined by their
members rather than imposed by management, and participants might remain
connected to each other simply through the shared passion for their work (Niesz,
2010). The shared passion that Wenger (2000, 2002a, 2002b) and Niesz (2010)
referenced, which is at the heart of successful CoPs, expresses itself as field
knowledge, skill mastery, and community cohesion (Amin and Roberts, 2008).
In order to account for the seemingly spontaneous aggregation of
individuals joined in a mutually supportive shared practice (resulting in a CoP),
modern researchers theorize that CoPs nurture an intrinsic human desire to “form
and maintain social bonds” (Walton et al. 2012, p. 513). Researchers such as
Wenger (2000), Niesz (2010), Senge (1994), and Snow-Gerono (2005) have

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written that CoPs naturally occur because they create social meaning and a sense
of belonging as well as providing, creating, and securing the tools and the support
that members require in order to better execute their work. Recent research
suggests that people will participate in CoPs for the opportunity to reflect,
connect, and find a deeper meaning in their work through the “material meaning”
they generate (Niesz, 2010) and out of an innate desire to develop their personal
sense of being meaningfully connected to their peers and their greater world in
general (Snow-Gerono, 2005).
It is believed that a sense of meaningful engagement with one’s peers
provides supportive contexts that “help people feel safe to explore their
environments and pursue their interests…” (Walton et al., 2012, p. 514).
Moreover, “meaningful engagement” has been identified from the literature as a
way to help engage collaboration in pursuit of a larger vision because it is thought
that identifying with community participants’ major desire to be meaningfully
engaged strengthens their commitment and output (Passy and Giugni, 2000). In
other words, through meaningful engagement, CoPs can provide an opportunity
for individuals to increase their sense of personal and professional well-being.
Scholars believe that traditional CoPs need no intentional external inception
because individuals naturally want to belong to a community, and want to be at
the core of it (Yakhlef, 2010), and when fully committed, people become deeply
engaged. This engagement, its social benefit, and organizational output, is what
makes CoPs so appealing to contemporary organizations, and is what has been
driving recent desire to intentionally create them. Specifically, E3 Washington, as

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an ESE support organization devoted to nurturing field-wide knowledge, skill
mastery, and community cohesion as a route to achieving increased capacity for
ESE across Washington State, fits this profile, yet, there is more to understand
about the business/professional world’s interest in creating CoPs as well as the
tensions that are created in trying to manifest them intentionally. Understanding
these challenges will help E3 Washington and related organizations to be better
armed to address and overcome them. This literature review will explore these
topics, both broadly and with special attention paid to E3 Washington’s home
field of education.

Participatory appeal in the business world. Given that businesses and
organizations are often tied to their bottom line, CoPs are enticing because they
can be sustainable, cost-effective, and “potentially transformative” (SnowGerono, 2005, p. 243) for their participants and the field where they practice.
Granted, scholars are not claiming that a sense of meaningful engagement
necessarily translates to increased revenue. There are other factors at play, and it
will be helpful to understand the specific business challenges that CoPs are
thought to be able to address. CoPs are thought to be especially useful in
environments where problems and solutions are complex and nonlinear, where the
community is more likely to produce informative solutions than a managing entity
would be, and where sustained individual commitment is a key to success.
It is believed that CoPs are exceedingly efficient at producing groundbased knowledge because they can organically synthesize group knowledge from

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a diversity of participant sources. This is key because contemporary society is
increasing its ability to understand the complexity of problems faster than we can
address or manage them, confronting us with what Senge (1994) has called a
knowledge challenge. Acquiring “knowledge” in this case can lead to mastery
over internal efficiency in the workplace, a cohesive vision of the workforce,
leverage over specific social or economic challenges, or all of the above. The
acquisition of knowledge is key because knowledge is linked to innovation which
often leads to organizational success (Smith, 2001). In other words, in scholars’
vision of the workplace, it is believed that our ability to perceive problems and
complexities predetermines our ability to manage them for clear answers and
over-all success (Senge, 1994). Because of this persistent knowledge challenge,
businesses see a need to “become more intentional and systematic about
managing knowledge” (Wenger, 2002, p. 6) in order to succeed, and CoP theory
is thought to address that complex need through the mechanics of participatory
engagement.
Knowledge production can occur within CoPs because CoP social
structure, in theory, allows their members to co-define their realities and ask
questions in ways that traditional command-and-control hierarchies do not.
Kulkarni et al. (2000) believed that this happens because knowledge-making is
nonlinear and dynamic, in opposition to standard linear business models which do
not allow institutions or their members the freedom to stop, question, and/or
systemically manage their practices to check and define themselves against
operational, cultural, or managerial momentum. In other words, the inability to

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create new knowledge through properly interacting with the knowledge
production system may end up systemically producing incomplete or faulty
information, perpetuating or worsening the “knowledge challenge.” However,
properly facilitated CoPs’ interrogatory natures can allow participants to
reexamine ingrained assumptions and operational realities, to generate critical
knowledge on deeper levels, and innovate and adapt to challenges (Snow-Gerono,
2005). Therefore, this structure is seen to be effective at generating critical
knowledge about operational unknowns, and is therefore valuable for
organizations facing knowledge challenges, such as those in the environmental
arena especially.
Moreover, CoP theorists believe that social participatory practice is a
necessary key component of social knowledge acquisition because “new
information and ideas emanate not only from individual learning, but also from
interaction with others” (Hadar and Brody, 2010, p. 1642). Given that innovation
is generally interlinked with new knowledge, and that knowledge is often cogenerated (as we shall see below), CoP theorists believe that innovation can
organically arise from learning that occurs as a result of interactions with others.
CoP practice is seen as a new paradigm because in traditional hierarchies, a
managing entity generally sets the boundaries on learning and interaction with
others, and assumes that leadership alone has the professional skills and
knowledge to acquire solutions and mandate action. However, social theorists
such as Ali Yakhlef have written that knowledge making takes place in social
settings and “ultimately comes to count as knowledge for a community” (2010, p.

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41), which means that if management or other community members are
disconnected from the social process of knowledge production, the knowledgedependent innovation system can break down. CoP theory asserts that, when
multi-level, nonlinear learning is engaged, innovative solutions to complex
problems and organizational unknowns are much easier to achieve. CoPs are more
likely to produce informative solutions and foster greater engagement than a
disengaged managing entity might otherwise be able to do, especially when
sustained individual commitment is a key to success. “The basic rationale is that
in situations of rapid change [such as with environmental issues], only those
[organizations] that are flexible, adaptive and productive will excel. For this to
happen, it is argued, organizations need to discover how to tap people’s
commitment and capacity to learn at all levels” (Smith, 2001, para. 8). For these
reasons, nurturing the social component of the knowledge acquisition process is
an important aspect of CoP theory.

Participatory appeal to the field of education and to E3 Washington.
In the education field, knowledge production and reception are often the measures
of organizational success. Educators are especially sensitive to their ability to
foster critical learning, and this literature review has found that educators have
special interest in developing participatory methods for education as part of a shift
from traditional “lecture-style” teaching methods to frameworks that value
community and inquiry. The belief is that fully making the shift to a communitybased, participant inquiry stance that allows for co-learning and discovery will

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sustainably enhance learning for educators and students alike (Snow-Gerono,
2005). This section will explore that interest by touching on the concepts of
cooperative learning and educational leadership.
The recent recognition of the need for socially based change in the
education system is occurring from the “ground up” because some educators
believe that systemic change towards socially engaged learning revolves around
educators themselves (rather than upon administrators or students, specifically).
Hadar and Brody (2010) have written that in order to change the program, you
need to change the teachers. Empowering social meaning through targeted
knowledge generation effects learning and behavior resonates through society.
For example, Chawla has written that if “educators understood the type of
experiences that motivate responsible environmental behavior, they would be
better able to foster the development of an informed and active citizenry” (1999,
p. 15), which is one of the key rationales behind exploring methods such as CoP
facilitation for environmental organizations like E3 Washington.
E3 Washington believes that a facilitating a CoP amongst its educator
leader network can be a potentially supportive structure for that specific group,
which would resonate outward to the organization as a whole and the ESE field
statewide. Educator leaders such as those in E3 Washington’s network are
roughly defined as educators who engage and collaborate with other education
professionals in order to study and improve their field (Snow-Gerono, 2005, p.
421). They can be teachers, students, or administrators, and E3 Washington
believes that they may thrive as a facilitated CoP because educator leaders are

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shown to be generally predisposed towards the type of socially supported
participant learning and social enhancement that CoPs can empower. For
example, Niesz (2010) and Snow-Gerono (2005) have written that teacher
learning and development is best supported in sustained peer groups that value
participant interaction and social support as a central part of the evolution of the
education system. These teachers are often passionate about learning and thinking
due to the nature of the field (Hadar and Brody, 2010), and because passionate
individuals generally desire to share and co-create their passions with others
(Amin and Roberts, 2008). Therefore, E3 Washington believes that situating a
CoP in its educator leader network well prove fruitful because the ESE field’s
educator leaders are predisposed to nurture their field’s identity through CoPbased groups.
Educator leaders generally value cooperative learning (which can be
defined as learning that takes place in settings that value and foster learner
dialogue and co-inquiry) because it increases individual learning, retention, and a
motivation to continue to learn (Walton et al., 2012). Cooperative learning also
assumes a greater measure of group cohesion and attention to social acceptance
than traditional instructional methods, and social acceptance has also been shown
to positively effect learning and a desire to learn. For example, learners who are
more accepted by their peers do much better in class, which influences the quality
of their self-esteem and their relationships with other students (Clegg, 2006). In
contrast, not belonging is very demotivating in education settings (Walton et al.,
2012). Realizing this, an increasing movement in the education field is seeking to

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leverage the social aspects of learning as part of the needed shift toward
participatory paradigms in education. Participatory communities of educator
leaders are generally poised to spearhead that shift, and value the support that
CoPs provide (Niesz, 2010). In sum, many educator innovators believe that in
order to ensure a shift from traditional lecture-style teaching to participatory
learning and meaningful engagement, classrooms need two curricula; one that is
based in the textbook, and another, called the “cultural code curriculum”
(Yakhlef, 2010, p. 45), that is designed to create and ensure a level of base
support for student engagement that leads to increased and sustained learning.
This is important because socially-based learning environments can strongly
support the learner engagement critical for the development of sustained learning.
Learning environments with a level of social literacy and psychological support
can be so critical because engagement is shown to be socially constructed and
psychologically rooted. This literature review will explore that relationship further
in order to continue to set the context of this study.

The Psychological and Social Construction of Meaningful Engagement
In the literature, the positive products of CoPs benefit society in a variety
of ways, from healing endemic social disconnectedness, to empowering
individuals and groups to manifest the change they seek to create in their world. It
is believed building these groups is valuable because they can meaningfully
engage each participant and the community to which they belong (Krach et al.,
2010). More specifically, Snow-Gerono (2005) showed that, in studies of formal

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educators (participants in a professional development school partnership),
participants became very excited and worked with dedication when they felt
meaningfully connected with each other. Participatory practice theorists have also
found that success in achieving sustained participatory process occurs by breaking
what can be referred to as a social isolation barrier (Wenger, 2000; Senge, 1994;
Niesz, 2010; Snow-Gerono, 2005). By way of explanation, Walton et al. wrote
that “cooperative activity is [psychologically] critical to human welfare” (2010, p.
514), and that “among the most powerful human motives is the desire to form and
maintain social bonds” (2010, p. 513). In order to properly prepare for facilitating
a dynamic CoP informed by this study’s results, this literature review will the
psychological and social roots of engagement and connectivity in a CoP, as well
as explore why isolation-vs.-engagement is an underlying factor of CoP success.

Connectivity is psychologically rooted. The sensation of meaningful
engagement between individuals, which can be linked to cooperative activity in
participatory theory, was shown in this literature review to be rooted in the human
psyche. This section will outline the rationale behind the belief in a common
mechanism of a human desire for social engagement.
Cooperative activity, which is “doing things together,” is strongly
connected to a sense of the community, of community acceptance (Walton et al.,
2012). Community acceptance is analogous to inclusion, which is articulated as
salvation from alienation, and scholars find that freedom from alienation is a
“driving force in society” (Hadar and Brody, 2010, p. 1649). This means that

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desire for inclusion, for a sense of meaningful engagement, can be considered a
driver of social interaction. For example, a recent study by Clegg showed that,
among students, a sense of not belonging is linked to “loneliness, emotional
distress, psychosocial disturbance,…predictive of depression…anxiety and
suicidality…[and] identified as contributive to a number of different mental
illnesses” (2006, p. 59). On the other hand, Clegg also wrote that “a sense of
belonging was found to be associated with psychosocial health [and]…identified
with better school performance and adjustment” (2006, p. 59). Further studies
have shown that there are neurological roots to explain Clegg’s (2006) findings,
that a desire for belonging is processed in the pleasure-based mechanism in the
brain. For example, Krach et al. have written that in neurological imaging studies
in humans, that “social reward is processed in the same subcortical network as
non-social reward and drug addiction” (2010, p. 1), and that both social and nonsocial reward is linked to the same neural network and forms the primary pathway
for effecting human behavior (Krach et al., 2010). These studies suggest that
feeling meaningfully connected to others is biologically and psychologically
rewarding itself, is a major contributor to overall human mental health and
wellbeing, and is a persistent human desire.
“For [the philosopher] Wilheim Fredrich Hegel, alienation was the
profound estrangement that he observed between self and world. This
estrangement manifested itself in numerous ways, among them the estrangement
of spirit and nature, human desire and social institution” (Clegg, 2006, p. 55). In
effect, the social drive to want to belong is psychologically created, because

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individuals simply want to feel connected to others and be at the core of a
community (Yakhlef, 2010), but it does not explain why alienation is a persistent
theme in human psychology. Studies seem to show that failure to successfully
engage, and the social tension that is created because of it, unfolds in the social
context. Failure to successfully engage at social belonging, as we will explore
below, can systemically occur because it is in a constant state of reconstruction
and negotiation.

Connectivity is socially constructed. Despite its psychological origins,
the predisposition for humans to feel reward in being meaningfully connected to
others is anchored and developed in the social context. Given that facilitated
participatory engagement also unfolds in the social context, a brief exploration of
the link between the social and social construction of connectivity is warranted so
that its relationship to facilitated participatory engagement in CoPs is clear.
Social belonging is articulated in the complex negotiations that take place
with other humans that establish boundaries and hierarchies of interaction
(Walton et al., 2012). Tension between human desire for social bonds and the
success at articulating that connection is created because humans have different
personal beliefs, which are psychologically articulated, but share the social tools
to connect and learn, which are socially constructed. The two are distinct, but
inextricably linked and constantly being redefined. Studies suggest that without
others, there can be no real learning, that people add social knowledge to their
self-knowledge from the present and the past, to create themselves over time

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(Passy and Giugni, 2000). Our goals and inclinations are not built solely by
ourselves, but are tied to our considerations of others. Given that our perceptions
are mutually constructed, our sense of reality encompasses and is co-built with
those who we value (Walton et al., 2012), or sometimes against those who we do
not. We are so rooted in this co-development process that other people’s goals
become our own with minimal ties that start with tiny cues, because people want
to be coherent and congruent. Generally, we want to feel aligned to each other in
order to create acceptance and safety (Passy and Giugni, 2000).
In sum, aptitude with the social and psychological constructions of
engagement in facilitated CoPs are important to possess because the ability to
successfully focus on the construction of engagement between community
participants is important for CoP functionality. As we become increasingly
isolated from our peers and a sense of community connection, we become
increasingly unable to receive, build, and generate relevant information, which
means that our ability to produce information and to participate becomes
hampered. This occurs because a person “is neither a coherently bounded
individual, nor a set of anonymous practices, but individuals-in-interactions;
individuals who are co/inter-dependent on one another’s knowledge” (Yakhlef,
2010, p. 45). Failure to meaningfully connect in the social-belonging and
knowledge-making process can eventually create psychological distress as well as
social breakdown in a cascading effect, and if an intentional CoP is meant as a
vehicle for successful engagement and meaning making, then the ability to focus
on balanced construction of engagement is key. Therefore, one ultimate goal of

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this thesis was to suggest a common experience of meaningful engagement that
could serve as “common ground” for sustaining CoP connection for
organizational, social, and individual well-being in a targeted community of
professionals.
However, the absence of a fully informed system for sustaining CoPs
through building positive social participant bonds means that conceptual
understanding is not an end in itself, but only a descriptive step that can support
facilitation of pioneering participatory practice. Moreover, dynamic social fluidity
is not the only problem or challenge that facilitators of intentional CoPs face. This
literature review will continue by identifying the operational challenges in moving
from CoP theory to practice.

Problems and Challenges Facing Intentional Communities of Practice
Over the past twenty years, CoP use in many fields has been rising
steadily as the successes of CoPs have become empirically evident in the
literature (Jeon et al., 2011). For example, case studies exist that detail the
transformative business successes of companies that have been successful at
creating isolated, innovative CoPs in their workforce, even in high-level
organizations such as Royal Dutch Shell, Kyocera, Ford, and the Boston Celtics
(Senge, 1994; Smith, 2001; Wenger, 2000). Unfortunately, many organizations
face a lack of clear guidelines from the published literature as to how to
specifically make these knowledge shifts happen (Yakhlef, 2010), and CoP
culture itself faces challenges such as individual access to information within
social hierarchies, personal and cultural learning ability, social justice and group
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equality, etc. However, some critics claim that the results are not conclusive,
charging that these examples to not specifically explain how their CoPs cogenerate knowledge or shift professional practice (Niesz, 2010). Organizations
who attempt to create CoPs without taking the time to develop a contextualized
understanding of the social and organizational environment in which they are to
be built can end up undermining the conditions necessary for their success.
Researchers believe that current participatory theory has difficulty articulating
common powerful practices because of the different ways that different
communities interact and build meaning (Smith, 2001; Jeon et al., 2011). General
targeted theory recommendations for participatory communities can lose
applicability, break down, or not apply from group to group, and all that is left is
the general conceptual theory, which can be of limited help in getting beyond the
theory-to-practice challenges referenced throughout this literature review.
Therefore, one of the aims of this study is to contribute to the literature base by
providing a targeted study of how one particular participatory community develop
successful participatory practices, by exploring the process based (social and
psychological) elements of their participatory engagement. Overall, the literature
suggests that implementation of CoPs within existing organizations faces two
categories of problems that limit the critical thinking and intentional human
connection they require in order to flourish. These problems include
organizational/business hierarchy challenges and social barriers embedded in
cultural norms. This section will explore both sets of challenges in order to inform
the reader of the barriers that this research is meant to help address.

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Organizational challenges. Researchers believe that focusing on
community connections and setting a safe environment in which to connect are
the first steps in developing a CoP (Hadar and Brody, 2010), but CoP
development challenges begin with these first steps as well. One of the first
problems with intentional CoP development is the conflict between a CoP’s need
to independently grow, and its parent organization’s need to achieve specific predetermined goals. The development of an intentional participatory community is
usually “goal-directed, determined by social, professional, and political interests”
(Yakhlef, 2010, p. 41), but participant-driven groups are historically guided by the
goals or interests of their members (Walton et al., 2012). Despite that the broad
vision may be the same (as in the case of environmental stewardship) these
possibly conflicting sets of goals may need to be resolved in order for CoP
success over the long term, which can be a social and organizational challenge.
For example, E3 Washington’s 5 Statewide Goals (Get Together, Lead Green,
Build Support, Go Out, & Connect Up [E3 Washington, 2009, para. 1]), were
originally informed by its stakeholders and can be said to still ensconce the
personal and professional goals of the members its educator leader network.
However, its broad goals cannot be said to reflect individual stakeholder goals
precisely (i.e., what does “get together” specifically mean from person to
person?). Discovering a common experience of meaningful engagement may help
support commitment for collaboration, which may help effect the desire of
participants to integrate their individual goals for collective organizational

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movement. Moreover, a community’s ownership of the participatory process,
which is a driver CoP success, is more real and lasting when the process is built
by the participants, rather than being imposed on by management of from outside
of the group (Snow-Gerono, 2005).
Secondly, the business world can be a very problematic place in which to
intentionally create a participant-driven community because the stereotypical
“rush” of businesses to achieve success (profit) can conflict with the idiosyncratic
nature of CoPs (Smith, 2001). Oftentimes, companies who have rushed to achieve
knowledge sharing and innovation through building a CoP have destroyed the
delicate conditions for CoP success (Amin and Roberts, 2008). The broad concept
and discipline of a CoP is diluted and blurred in this rush (Amin and Roberts,
2008; Thompson, 2005). Much in the way that knock-off versions of an original,
innovative product might soon flood a market, many companies are rushing to
implement these groups without really understanding their function, form, or how
to properly facilitate them, which can “cheapen the market.” Some say that the
traditional pressures of capitalism and consumerism are at fault (Clegg, 2006),
that the rush to make money or sell products cannot ultimately sustain the selfdirected social conditions necessary for participant-driven communities to thrive.
It is argued that the ideals of CoPs, such as co-learning, group consensus, social
well being, and identity co-construction (Wenger, 2000) are largely
incommensurate with the short-term demands of the capitalist system and the
contemporary Western business model (Smith, 2001). In some ways, a
participant-driven community inside of a corporation can sound like an

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oxymoron, and indeed some amount of facilitation is necessary to isolate an
intentional CoP from the managerial pressures of the parenting organization.

Social challenges. In addition to a number of organizational challenges to
successful intentional CoP facilitation, a number of social challenges also exist
(Snow-Gerono, 2005). This subsection will explore those challenges in order to
better support the results of this study. From a social standpoint, the rewarding
nature of human connection is well documented (Clegg, 2006) such that entire
organizational guidelines have been written to leverage them (Senge, 1994;
Wenger, 2000, 2000a, 2000b). However, the language of facilitation that
currently exists for CoPs can tend to be jargonistic and idealistic, which can
present problems of accessibility for individuals or organizations who are new to
participatory concepts. For example, Senge has written that in order for us to
integrate the complexity of life into systemic social solutions, we need “to see
interrelationships rather than seeing things, for seeing patterns of change rather
than snapshots” (1994, p. 68). He argued that we must move from visualizing
linear relationships to picturing more interrelated, systemic balances, and
cultivating a deeper understanding of the reasons why we act the way that we do
(called “mental modeling”), so that conversations result in real, new learning,
rather than perpetuating ingrained (old) knowledge (Senge, 1994). Other
examples of high-level CoP language can be found through Snow-Gerono (2005)
who referenced Klark’s (2001) guidelines of good conversation necessary for
facilitation of a CoP, which are: “an articulation of implicit theories and beliefs;

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perspective-taking; developing a sense of personal and professional authority;
reviving hope and relational connection; an antidote to isolation; reaffirmation of
ideals and commitments; developing specific techniques and solutions to
problems; and learning how to engage with students in learning conversations”
(Clark, 2001, p. 173). From these examples, one can imagine the high level of
conceptual aptitude and theoretical familiarity required to utilize the literature
fully. Organizations and facilitators who are not trained or versed in CoP theory
may have a difficult time successfully supporting group members to engage,
which becomes especially problematic because CoPs are leveraged on participant
buy-in. This means that E3 Washington and/or similar organizations may need to
take the extra step of acquiring or training CoP facilitators before they can
successfully utilize the community-specific insights that studies such as this thesis
find.
Further, some theorists argue that the broad success of intentional CoPs
are implausible because social and personal barriers prevent some individuals
from “opening up” to the shared personal engagement required (Smith, 2001). For
example, in addition to the “minimal cues” that are shown to start engagement
(Walton et al., 2012), Baumeister and Leary have said that in order for social
connection to be created and sustained, “people need frequent personal contacts or
interactions with the other person…[and they] need to perceive that there is an
interpersonal bond or relationship marked by stability, affective concern, and
continuation into the foreseeable future” (1995, p. 500). Maintaining these kinds
of connections amongst professional colleagues can take a tremendous amount of

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effort and engagement because some individuals in a professional setting are there
merely because they want a job, and not for social connection (Smith, 2001). CoP
theory assumes that the individual desire for human connection is always present
and accessible, but sometimes the opportunities for meaningful engagement
simply may not exist given the situation at hand. In this case, E3 Washington and
organizations preparing to facilitate intentional CoPs must develop strategies that
do not depend on a complete percentage of engagement, in order to be prepared
for community members who are resistant to personal engagement to or are
simply not interested in participating.
In sum, the organizational and social challenges outlined in this section are
neither small not simple to unravel, nor are they comprehensive. This literature
review is not intended to address each aspect of the CoP theory-to-practice
problem, but simply identify a few of the major challenges related to this thesis’
question. Given that skilled individuals who have the tools and capacity to
navigate these challenged may be required to guide an intentional CoP from
creation to full functionality, the next section will discuss theoretical guidelines
for facilitation found in the literature.

Guidelines for CoP Facilitation
The next section of this literature review will explore some of the
theoretical guidelines that exist for CoP facilitation so that the reader has a sense
of some of the structure by which E3 Washington and future users of this study
might implement its findings. As mentioned previously, facilitation is necessary

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because CoPs “require focus, engagement, and leadership in order to flourish”
(Hadar and Brody, 2010, p. 1643). Focus and leadership can require
comprehensive theoretical knowledge, full community awareness, and a specific
leadership skillset as well as a cultivated sense of feeling voluntary for the
participants involved (Snow-Gerono, 2005). In the past twenty years of theoretical
development of participatory theory, many scholars have suggested extensive
tools for facilitators to utilize in the development of CoPs (Hadar and Brody,
2010), but this literature review will not explore the practices and procedures of
facilitation, as they are an exhaustive field to themselves and are not in the scope
of this research. However, this section will touch on the definition and conceptual
practice of facilitation in order to set context for the reader regarding how and
why the study’s results might be used.
Facilitators, or individuals trained in the art of fostering group coparticipation, can be necessary to achieve success in intentionally built CoPs.
Facilitation is “the interpersonal process by which an individual is enabled to
explore opportunities and learn without being directed” (Murrell, 1998, p. 303). It
is an essential element to the formula of a successfully built CoP because it (a)
protects the development of a participant-driven community from outside
organizational pressures (such as traditional capitalist business models of the
linear-learning paradigms of traditionally run educational systems); (b) translates
the jargonistic and highly specialized language of CoP theory into a language that
the local lay community speaks; and (c) integrates the parent organization’s broad
goals with the individual goals of CoP participants. Overall, facilitation

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encourages people to reflect, feel safe, and engage in the process of new meaning
making and identity building (Jeon et al., 2011; Murrell, 1998), and hopefully
building shared knowledge to overcome shared challenges in a virtuous cycle the more that participants engage, the more learning and sharing occurs, and the
more success encourages engagement. Through facilitation, a group reinforces
itself as knowledge and meaning is generated (Wenger, 2000, 2002b),
perpetuating itself over time. This is meaningful because working towards
sustained participatory engagement is one of the goals of facilitated participatory
practice. Moreover, research shows that successful CoPs require a high degree of
group engagement in order to ensure intended knowledge building, because, while
people don’t necessarily need to participate to learn, merely participating doesn’t
guarantee learning (Yakhlef, 2010).
Facilitators are empowered individuals. Murrell advised that “a facilitator
[needed] to be a 'real person' who was comfortable with self-disclosure and was
able to use a variety of strategies… promoted and allowed safety, trust,
enjoyment, listening, sharing and even non-participation” (1998, p. 306). These
last guidelines are critical because the communities we belong to need to touch us
in order to feel real (Yakhlef, 2010). One of the most important functions of a
facilitator is to provide opportunities for participants to reflect on their
community, their values, and their goals through participation and dialogue.
Through talk and reflection, community participants explicitly co-create meaning,
co-create value, and find common truths of their reality (Niesz, 2010). Common
truths, of course, are the tools that people use to co-build and make success in

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interacting in their world; the tools guide group meaning. The success of those
tools makes learning (Yakhlef, 2010). Therefore, reflection and talk are the
gateways to learning, and successful facilitators help to allow that process to
develop.

Summation of the Literature Review
The fields of research that were referenced in this review are varied, from
environmental issues, to environmental justice, to CoP theory, to human
sociology and psychology. This literature review has attempted to provide the
reader with some familiarity with the concepts, terms, and rationales used by this
study in pursuit of addressing the theory-to-practice problem of creating
intentional CoPs in contemporary organizations. This summation section will
provide an overall assessment of where the literature in this field has been, the
most important things it has accomplished, lessons learned, and next steps.
Environmental science has shown us that the quality of our shared
environments has been deteriorating at an increasing rate. New, innovative
methods at tackling these challenges may be necessary to overcome them by
shifting how we as a global culture interact with our green and built environments
(Barr et al., 2011; O’Brien et al., 2013). Since the early 1990s, emerging theories
such as CoP have been focused on increasing participatory engagement for
sustained collective impact amongst businesses and other organizations (Senge,
1994; Wenger, 2000). As more information is gained, the critiques of the theory
have become more precise, and new research has emerged to answer these

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critiques (Smith, 2001; Amin and Roberts, 2008). The field of human sociology
and social psychology provide the groundwork for CoP theory; research in these
areas is well chronicled since the 1900s and has provided material to support the
claims of the social and psychological power of meaningful engagement
(Baumeister and Leary, 1995; Clegg, 2006; Krach et al., 2010; Walton et al.,
2012). Within the past ten years, studies have become increasingly aimed at
understanding how participatory theory is applied in local contexts, especially
education (Kulkarni et al., 2000; Snow-Gerono, 2005; Niesz, 2010; Hadar and
Brody, 2010, Yakhlef, 2010).
The literature referenced in this review has also provided researchers with
clues on moving forward on developing strong and successful participatory
practices in a few important ways. Firstly, it has grounded the movement by
connecting social psychology to the phenomena of participatory engagement.
Secondly, it has helped give organizations of all sizes and capacities powerful
conceptual tools for moving forward in the face of complex social and
environmental challenges. However, the literature has also warned of lessons
learned the hard way, that organizations cannot rush the innovative changemaking CoPs can provide, and must be prepared to let them develop at their own
pace (Senge, 1994, Smith, 2001; Thompson 2005, Yakhlef, 2010). Therefore,
CoP practice in organizations requires contextualized understanding as well as
strong facilitation, and too much “management” may destroy the delicate
conditions necessary for their success. CoP facilitation requires a delicate balance
between convening participants and energizing them forward, and allowing group

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momentum, output, norms, and styles to develop organically. Moreover, a
facilitator is integral to the success of an intentional CoP because of
organizational and social barriers at play, because the language of CoP interaction
can be technical and jargonistic, and because some CoP participants may require
assistance in reflecting on meaning making and how it is connected to their world.
In the view of this thesis, what is needed is to continue gathering and
describing contextualized success and failures of intentional CoPs in order to help
paint a larger picture of how they function in action. Continued research into the
nature of facilitated CoPs will, by trial and error, elucidate powerful practices and,
hopefully, begin to paint a picture of commonality and a general theory-topractice canon for facilitating participatory engagement. However, a word of
caution: facilitated CoPs should be a supporting aspect of organizational behavior,
but not a “new paradigm” or singular model for change. Organizations who use
CoPs to further their vision should not rely on them as a robust mechanistic
engine of change, but rather as an idiosyncratic organism that will produce fruit if
tended over time. This is mainly because CoPs have been shown to be powerful
forces for renewal and engagement but grow best when unconstrained and free
from certain organizational and social pressures. Moreover, by nature of the colearning that unfolds in participatory practice, the output and development of
CoPs are somewhat unpredictable. There is a danger that organizations who look
to this model as a “sole savior” for addressing organizational challenges may
invariably put too much pressure on them to succeed in predetermined ways,
which can undermine the conditions for their success in the first place.

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Finally, this thesis was designed as a case study whose goal was to
describe a localized understanding of the process-based commonalities of
meaningful engagement that exist between members of one potential intentional
CoP, such that those elements can be focused on for sustained participatory
engagement over time, guided by the lessons learned from the literature. The next
section, Methodology, will outline the methods and research design that were
used to develop this study’s findings.

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Methodology
Introduction
The central research question of this thesis was two-fold. It asked a) is
there a common experience of meaningful engagement between members of E3
Washington’s educator leader community, and b) can that common experience be
contextualized within greater CoP theory to help make their localized CoP more
strongly engaged and successful over time? In order to explore these questions,
this study selected ten of the forty members that E3 Washington is interested in
convening into what it calls a regional leadership community of practice
(RLCoP), and interviewed them in order to uncover their most powerful
experiences of “meaningful engagement” in sustained, group situated ESE-related
activities (such as those that E3 Washington’s RLCoP would focus on). Their
individual answers were then composited together to uncover a common
experience of meaningful engagement in order to answer the central question of
this study. The rationale for this approach was that this study sought common
elements of meaningful engagement, which are predicated on belief and meaning.
The belief is that because common meaning is a key part of the knowledge
building and social connective process, finding common meaning amongst
respondents will allow E3 Washington to successfully focus on those common
elements of meaning as it builds its RLCoP. Success will help work for greater
meaningful engagement over time. Given that this thesis searched for aspects of
lived phenomena rather than attempting to reduce observations to laws and
quantitative data, the psychological phenomenological method was chosen as the
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preferred inquiry approach. This chapter first will describe the study group of E3
Washington and its rationale for participating in this study. Next, the history,
rationale, and challenges behind phenomenology will be outlined, including key
terms and processes associated with phenomenology and why each was important
to the successful execution of this research. This chapter will then conclude with
an overview of this study’s research execution, including brief descriptions of the
interview participants.

Introduction to E3 Washington
E3 Washington is a statewide organization that attempts to bring diverse
stakeholders together to work via collective impact to raise the capacity for
environmental and sustainability education (ESE) across Washington State. Its
network functions as a social tool to share ideas and resources, connect for
professional development, leverage support for funding, and to hold special
events and programs geared towards the success of its mission. Its educator leader
base is comprised of about forty leadership-level individuals who participate in
ESE in their local communities, are networked through E3 Washington’s website,
and are loosely coordinated for collective impact, assisted by E3 Washington
staff.
E3 Washington volunteered to participate in this study for two major
reasons. Firstly, E3 Washington seeks to leverage participatory engagement in
order to achieve its organizational mission, and CoP theory represents one of the
most thoroughly developed participatory approaches available. Secondly, E3

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Washington believes that its members are participating in a shared enterprise (i.e.,
working to build capacity ESE) for a common goal (to make ESE a more
significant part of their local communities), and that many of them face similar
organizational and informational challenges, such as limited resources and
capacities. In other words, E3 Washington believes that certain groups of
individuals within its member base, such as its regional educator cohort, may
constitute potential CoPs and is interested in exploring the possibility of
empowering them through facilitated CoP practice. Through participating in this
research, E3 Washington hopes that the results will assist them in building an
educator leader CoP within its network, to convene, share ideas, support one
another, and raise the capacity for ESE across the state through leadership in
collective impact and participatory support. The members involved in this study
were selected according to various criteria outlined later in this chapter.

Introduction into Phenomenology
Phenomenology, the methodology used in this study, collects aspects of
lived phenomena as they are experienced by the individual, and analyzes them
with specific techniques designed to examine participants’ subjective reality while
controlling for bias as much as possible (Murrell, 1998). Phenomenology is useful
because ethnographic studies such as these deal with lived subjective experiences
that cannot be objectively reduced to facts. They deal with contextualized group
meaning and knowledge-making (Giorgi, 2011), where there is no universal truth
but constant subjective refinement. Edmund Husserl first developed

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phenomenology in 1910, in response to the increasing growth of predictive theory
in turn-of-the-century sciences. He felt that science needed to get “back to the
things themselves,” rather than attempt to fit reality to scientific laws and
equations. Phenomenologists believe that, in order to have a reliable model of
lived phenomena, one needs to understand the phenomena as they are experienced
(Murrell, 1998). Phenomenologists build a mosaic picture of reality by describing
the essential individual aspects of lived phenomena and the commonalities
between them. It is a non-reductionist method (Giorgi, 2011), in which “the
various aspects of everyday life and activities are seen as parts of a whole, with no
clear-cut separations between them” (Passy and Giugni, 2000, p. 130). The
research is also interdisciplinary (Niesz, 2010), because it requires the researcher
to gather information and incorporate realities from across theoretical boundaries.
A phenomenological approach is very suitable for this study because the
goal is to translate the responses of individuals in as unbiased a way as possible in
order to discover a common definition of “meaningful engagement” within the
aspects of their lived phenomena. Scholars believe targeted research is necessary
in order to find such commonalities because people don’t necessarily share
personal beliefs (i.e., meaningful connection) out-of-hand (Yakhlef, 2010).
Ultimately, common human methods of interacting with the world can be found
(Clegg, 2006), and an accurate definition of meaningful engagement amongst this
particular group can help provide the understanding necessary to bridge the
theory-to-practice challenge during CoP facilitation.

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Challenges of Phenomenology. Despite its advantages, there are certain
challenges associated with the phenomenological method. Firstly, the method
suffers from a certain lack of methodological uniformity. The absence of
uniformity has resulted from tension between the two main schools of
phenomenology: the Duquesne School, based on the work of Husserl himself, and
the Dutch School, based on the work of Martin Heidegger (Murrell, 1998; Clegg,
2006). Phenomenologists from these different schools disagree on certain basic
tenets of the method. Chiefly, there is disagreement as to the function of bias in
research. Husserl asserted that a researcher needed to isolate and manage for bias,
while Heidegger believed that bias was an important tool to be utilized in the
reconstruction of lived experience. This singular discrepancy is the point of origin
for differing and sometimes conflicting phenomenological approaches, and
because these two differing paradigms are practiced concurrently, “the basic
principles of phenomenology are often cited correctly but they are not fully
understood nor are they always implemented correctly” (Giorgi, 2011, p. 360). In
order to execute a solid study, I chose to explicitly follow the precepts of the
Duquesne School. While both schools have their merits, the Duquesne School’s
method of isolating bias was chosen because explicitly incorporating bias into the
study would have increased the complexity and size of this thesis, which was
prohibitive under the timeframe available.
Yet, challenges of execution still exist. Any scientific method requires a
certain level of skill to practice effectively, and this thesis represents my (the
researcher’s) first foray into phenomenology, so an increased amount of study

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was required. As Hadar and Brody (2010) pointed out, researchers who aren’t
practiced at recontextualizing thinking will not be able to do it properly, and there
are three major reasons for this. Firstly, this type of research works with emotion
(Niesz, 2010), which is an exceedingly subjective realm (Murrell, 2010). It is not
a linear or even static science. Secondly, the stories received by the
phenomenologist during interviews are third hand. They are experienced firsthand
in the moment, recalled secondhand when processed and stored in memory, and
related a third time during an interview. Therefore, it takes a certain amount of
skill to isolate the essential elements of the story from potential artifact. Lastly, it
takes a lot of research to uncover the true essence and linkages of the
interviewees’ lived phenomena (Giorgi, 2012) because people are complex
individuals with complex motivations for why they act and feel the way they do.
Therefore, this thesis research required extensive periods of study and careful
management to ensure that I was properly executing previously unfamiliar
methods.
However, like all scientific methodologies, the act of practicing hones its
development and can lead to potentially surprising conclusions (Ramsey, 1997).
Despite some initial challenges with the theory and the difficulty of practicing
unfamiliar science, phenomenology is better suited to this thesis than other
methods because it values an expansion of experience and common lived
phenomena over a reduction to mechanistic laws, accepts subjectivity and
complexity over linearity and simplicity, and seeks to examine experiential data in
its own context. A review of the phenomenological the terms and processes that

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were followed during data collection and analysis are discussed next.

Description of Terms and Processes
This section will discuss a number of technical phenomenological terms as
well as present the methods used in this study. It should be noted that many
different researchers have developed their own steps and procedures for
phenomenological studies, and though some methods can be conflicting (as
referenced above), this study sought a variety of steps and guidelines aligned with
the Duquesne School in order to more fully inform its own particular
methodology. Three sets of procedural steps stood out in particular and are
included below (see Figure 1): Husserl’s five research principles and Collaizi’s
six procedural steps as written by Murrell (1998, p. 304) and McNamara’s eight
principles of interview preparation as written by Turner (2010). This study
followed the majority of these recommendations during the interview preparation,
collection, and analysis of this thesis’ research, with a few exceptions (described
below). This section will briefly explore those principles before turning to specific
terms of processes used in this study.
McNamara’s eight principles for preparing a phenomenological interview
are useful in helping to ensure proper, professional, and thorough data collection
(Turner, 2010). McNamara recommends interview spaces with as little distraction
as possible, where the interview purpose, format, time, and nature are clearly
explained to the participant. McNamara also recommends including giving the
participant the opportunity to ask clarifying questions, and that the researcher take

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notes in a reliable (non-mental) format to help preserve the accuracy and depth of
responses. Husserl’s five research principles as referenced by Murrell (1998) are
helpful in allowing the researcher to focus on the complex underlying subjective
experience of the participant and avoid focusing on the objects of the story being
told. This technique allows the full story to unfold without judging or quantifying
the experience, to help the researcher to stay as “detached” as possible so at all
times to refrain from inserting the researcher’s own subjective bias into the story
being told.
 

Figure  1:  Phenomenological  research  principles  utilized  in  this  study
 
 
 
Research  principles  from  Husserl’s  phenomenological  philosophy  (Murrell,  1998):
 
1.   Concentration  on  subjective  experience  in  a  world  of  objects.  
 

2.   Analyzing  human  experience  in  the  complexity  of  its  context.  
3.   Giving  a  fuller  and  fairer  hearing  to  the  phenomena  than  more  scientific  enquiry  would  allow.  
4.   Using  interviews,  written  reports  and  diary  excerpts  to  collect  information  related  to  the  
 
phenomenon  from  those  who  have  experienced  it.  
5.   Retaining  an  element  of  objectivity,  from  a  detached  standpoint,  by  “bracketing”  the  
researchers'  personal  thoughts  before  and  during  collection  and  analysis.  

McNamara’s  (2009)  eight  principles  for  the  preparation  stage  of  interviewing  (Turner,  2010):
 
1.   Choose  a  setting  with  little  distraction.  
2.   Explain  the  purpose  of  the  interview.  
3.   Address  terms  of  confidentiality.  
4.   Explain  the  format  of  the  interview.  
5.   Indicate  how  long  the  interview  usually  takes.  
6.   Tell  them  how  to  get  in  touch  with  you  later  if  they  want  to.  
7.   Ask  them  if  they  have  any  questions  before  you  both  get  started  with  the  interview.  
8.   Don't  count  on  your  memory  to  recall  their  answers.  
The  six  procedural  steps  in  Collaizi’s  phenomenological  data  analysis  method  (Murrell,  1998):
 
1.   The  written  description  and  interview  transcripts  are  read  in  order  to  gain  a  feel  for  them.  
2.   From  each  written  report  and  interview  transcript,  significant  statements  and  phrases  are  extracted.  
3.   Meanings  are  formulated  from  these  significant  statements  and  phrases.  
4.   The  formulated  meanings  are  organized  into  clusters  of  themes.  
5.   The  results  of  the  data  so  far  are  integrated  into  an  elaborate  description  of  the  phenomena.  
6.   The  researcher  returns  to  the  respondents  with  the  exhaustive  description.  Any  new  relevant  data  that  are
obtained  from  the  respondents  are  considered  in  the  fundamental  structure  of  the  experience.

41
 

 

Finally, Collaizi’s six procedural steps are instructive in data gathering
and analysis (Murrell, 1998). Collaizi recommends that interview transcripts
should first be read broadly to gain a holistic feel for their contents, then parsed
into significant phrases onto which relative meaning is attached. After this process
is completed for all interviews, the relative meanings can be aggregated into
similar themes, which can then be woven together to give a sense of the overall
phenomena being described. Collaizi further recommends that the transcribed and
translated data be offered to the original interview participants for their comment,
and that any new data received from those comments are treated with the same
weight as previous data collection. I chose to offer translated data to the study’s
participants, and the responses I received were treated according to the
methodology’s recommendations. In addition to these conceptual procedures,
phenomenological literature recommends a variety of tools to ensure accurate and
reliable data gathering and analysis. The following is a discussion of certain key
tools this study utilized, including bracketing, description vs. translation,
unconstrained recall, free imaginative variation, and others.
Bracketing. According to the Duquesne School, bracketing serves to
protect elements of the research, such as design, interview flow, data analysis, and
study conclusion from as much researcher bias as possible (Murrell, 1998). Prior
to executing segments of the research, the researcher will list (or “bracket”) out
their expectations, such as what they intend to find, why they are doing the
research, etc., in order to explicitly identify any biases that they are carrying into
the experience. The researcher should maintain bracketing control throughout the

42
 

 

research process, so that they will be able to check their actions and processes.
Giorgi (2012) recommended two major guidelines for bracketing: firstly, do not
judge how you view a phenomenon, but simply record it as presented; and
secondly, do not use past, outside, non-given information to elucidate or support
the experience that you are presented with, but take only what you have. Yet, the
method recognizes that complete elimination of bias is impossible because the
researcher, in viewing the experience, must use his or her subjective faculties to
interpret the receive and make sense of experience (Giorgi, 2011) Therefore,
bracketing serves to protect as much of participants’ lived phenomena from
researcher bias as possible while allowing for certain unavoidable subjectivities.
Translation, and description vs. interpretation. Phenomenology utilizes
translation as a means to convert raw interview data to a form that can be
compared against one another. Translation is defined as describing an experience
in different but equal terms, and phenomenology defines two differing types of
translation: description and interpretation. Description is favored by
phenomenology and is the process of accurately reducing lived phenomena to
their essences. By contrast, interpretation is defined as recontextualizing lived
experience into another value-dependent format (Giorgi, 2012) and is avoided in
Duquesne phenomenology. For example, description of the lived phenomena of
an airborne dogfight might read, “pilot A, noticing pilot B drifting left, executed a
thirty-two degree turn to follow, aware that such an action was a dangerous
maneuver,” whereas an interpretation of the same scene might read, “pilot A
closed in on the target heedless of the danger.” The difference can be subtle, but

43
 

 

description endeavors to preserve the essence of lived phenomena as objectively
as possible. Giorgi (2012) gave five steps for transcribing interviews descriptively
rather than interpretively:
1) Experience the whole. Understand what the responses are like.
2) Start again. At each transition in the interview, make a cut.
3) Transform/translate these parts into their psychological value, a relative
assignment of worth according to what is being studied.
4) Use free imaginative variation (described below) to get an essential
structure of the experience.
5) Use the essential structure as a lens to help clarify the raw data.
The above guidelines are useful to avoid unintentional data corruption during data
collection and analysis.
Semi-structured interviews and unconstrained recall. Whereas
structured interviews are guided questions that must be answered in a linear
sequential fashion, semi-structured interviews start with a core and follow-up
questions, but allow for new and spontaneous questioning or the omission of predefined follow-up questions. This format allows the researcher to adapt to the
interview, such as following unexpected and potentially valuable lines of inquiry,
and connecting to participants in their own idiom (Snow-Gerono, 2005). The
informal structure allowed in a semi-structured interview also allows information
to flow freely and for a less complex interview design (Turner, 2010). This
freedom is allowed because even though memory can be weak on the factual
details of lived phenomena, memory can be highly accurate on “high-importance”
44
 

 

events. These events will be recalled naturally, and unfold naturally when allowed
to do so (Chawla, 1999). In other words, this study is designed to explore the
unknown in an expansive fashion, and the semi-structured interview is
appropriate because it is “designed to evoke descriptions, not to confirm
theoretical hypotheses” (Clegg, 2006, p. 63).
Unconstrained recall is a partner to the semi-structured interview, and is a
psychological method whereby “people are allowed to develop their own account
of the past at their own pace” (Chawla, 1999, p. 16). Research has shown that
interviews conducted with unconstrained recall are far more accurate and rich
than interviews that require individuals to remember specific pre-defined aspects
of lived phenomena. Moreover, “constrained recall,” or pre-formulated
questioning, can be based on biases of what the researcher thinks is important.
However, unconstrained recall can be more difficult to use than other methods.
For example, some participants may be allowed to explore concepts that others
are not prompted to consider. As a result, some interview segments and themes
may not line up with other interview segments and themes or may be tangential,
which may weaken the qualitative potency of the full dataset. Ultimately, the
ability to manage these risks and successfully align and analyze interview data
obtained through unconstrained recall rests on the capacity of the researcher
(Turner, 2010) but is generally seen as worth the effort/risk, because freely
explored and unbiased responses are critical to studies such as this one. Specific
to this study and to E3 Washington’s needs, it is believed that the common
definition of meaningful engagement that is drawn from the interviewees’

45
 

 

responses must be as reflective of the community as possible in order for
facilitation strategies developed from that definition to be accurate and successful.
Sample size and selection. “Small, non-random, purposive samples are the
standard in this type of research” (Clegg, 2006, p. 65) because the
phenomenological method is seeking to expand on the knowledge of lived
phenomena one small step at a time. This study chose ten participants due to size
and time constraints, attempting to construct a sample representative of the
diversity of E3 Washington’s educator leader community; of age, demographics,
professional experience, from formal and informal education sectors, and from
those regions of the state in which E3 Washington is currently focusing
development (Benton/Franklin, King, Kitsap, Kittitas, Olympia Peninsula,
Spokane, Thurston/Mason, and Yakima, which are roughly analogous to state
counties) (E3 Washington, 2013). Twelve individuals were ultimately selected.
Two declined to participate. This thesis followed the phenomenological research
conventions by specifically selecting members of the population under study that
were likely to have had powerful experiences to share (Chawla, 1999), which was
determined by the amount of time each participant had spent within the E3
Washington network, their level of current engagement as leaders in local E3
Washington regions, and by the history of success of, and commitment to, their
individual work.
Free imaginative variation. According to the phenomenological method,
once the interviews have been performed and the data collected, free imaginative
variation is used to reduce a participant’s responses to their critical essence

46
 

 

(Giorgi, 2011). This process allows participants’ data to be compared against one
another in the most essential and simple terms, such that patterns are easiest to
identify. Free imaginative variation works in tandem with the
description/interpretation dynamic and proceeds as follows: a particular interview
segment, or excerpt, will be broken up into its component emotional or factual
components, and each part will be systematically removed or altered to see
whether the essential experience of that segment is still described. Free
imaginative variation ends when a segment can no longer be reduced of parts
without altering the essential description of the experience. When this process is
complete, the segment is ready be coded.
Open coding. Open coding is a process used by phenomenological
research to identify and aggregate meaningful themes from transcribed interview
data (Chawla, 1999). “Codes” are defined as markers for the important themes of
the lived phenomena under examination, and open coding is the process whereby
codes are created and applied freely to an individual’s translated experiences
without trying to fit a particular experience into a particular category. Rather than
creating a code library at the outset of analysis, one creates codes as the data is
analyzed, to let patterns emerge naturally. For example, a phenomenological
study of colors of flowers might include “red,” “pink,” etc. as codes attached to
transcribed interview excerpts, where excerpts can be defined as relevant sections
of a transcript that encapsulate a particular thought or expression, such as “I
walked out of the back door and noticed that all of the roses in the box were red.”
Proceeding through interview excerpts, the researcher would create codes as they

47
 

 

occurred, rather than attempting to imagine codes beforehand. During Open
Coding, Giorgi (2011) warned researchers to practice care, and not immediately
link by association to what the researcher wishes to see. Bracketing is necessary
to identify potential biases and avoid the coding of what researchers think they
see (such as relationships between transcribed data and a possible code), rather
than what exists.
Data verification. For this study I decided to allow respondents to
comment on their translated data to verify that I had arrived at an accurate essence
of their lived phenomena from their point of view. In the literature, the degree to
which this step is necessary is debatable. To ensure researchers’ proper bracketing
and to review for successful free imaginative variation, some scholars advocate
allowing other phenomenological experts or the respondents themselves to verify
translated data against the original data. However, others believe that outside
experts, who themselves are operating with bias, may apply another layer of
subjectivity to the study, and/or that respondents may not understand the process
of description and therefore corrupt the translated data themselves (Giorgi, 2011).
Scholars recommend limiting bias by limiting data exposure because humans
don’t always understand why they do the things they do (Yakhlef, 2010). For this
study, I chose to verify translated interviews (and not the coded excerpts) with
respective respondents before moving to coding and analysis in order to provide a
check against my own work but to limit the data to outside exposure.

Methodological Execution

48
 

 

Given that this thesis’ study group and the theoretical background,
processes, and tools of phenomenology have been reviewed, this section will
describe the process of execution. For this study, the interview format and
interview questions were developed through coordination with Evergreen State
College Internal Review Board; the Executive Director of E3 Washington, Abby
Ruskey; and questions were adapted with approval from the work of Dr. Joshua
Clegg (2006). The questions used are included in the appendix. The participants
in this study were comprised of ten environmental and sustainability education
leaders in the E3 Washington network who have been included in the early stages
of E3 Washington’s regional educator leader CoP, termed a “Regional Leadership
Community of Practice” (RLCoP). E3 Washington believes that these individuals
have the potential to form a CoP within the organization because they participate
in region development for E3 Washington. As of this writing, region development
for E3 Washington is defined as: a) helping to convene local E3 meetings
between diverse stakeholders (education, business, agency, tribal, etc.) in local
regions to inform regional local E3 region plan-building. E3 region plans are
strategic planning documents consisting of goals and strategies for building
capacity for ESE among local stakeholders into 2013-2014 and beyond. Given
that each region plan reflects back to E3 Washington’s statewide goals and
structure, and because regions’ plans are analogous to one another (due to
analogous stakeholder needs across the state), E3 Washington believes that this
group of regional leaders reflect much of the basic definition of a CoP, or sharing
“shared passion for joint enterprise” (Wenger, 2000, p. 139). For this interview,

49
 

 

prospective participants were selected according to their familiarity and past
experience with E3 Washington, and the possible relevancy of their experiences
of meaningful engagement in leadership in ESE related activities, as referenced
earlier. Again, this process assumed a certain amount of bias but was allowed
because previous work done in phenomenology allows non-random selection in
order to address the need for depth-of-responses in limited-scope studies (Chawla,
1999). E3 Washington’s Executive Director and I engaged in a series of meetings
to decide how to best balance the participant pool’s diversity between male and
female respondents, gender, professional history, age, etc., such that the
respondent pool was a balanced cross section of the larger leadership group and
would have relevant stories to share. I sent out initial email invitations in late
January of 2013. Each respondent in this survey volunteered to participate. In
order to respect the privacy of invitees, this study did not send more than two
follow-up invitations. Participants were given interview numbers and pseudonyms
to protect their identity. The ten respondents who participated were diverse: split
between business sectors and across professional levels. The group included four
formal education individuals, including two public school district administrators,
one school district specialist, and one teacher. The group also included six
informal educators (individuals employed or aligned with an organization whose
mission overlaps with education), such as one state business representative, four
representatives from non-profit organizations of varying size and scope, and one
local entrepreneur. A brief profile of the respondents is included below:
Chris

50
 

 

•

informal educator with a small/medium-sized organization

•

local community organizer and entrepreneur with a focus on
environmental justice and environmental responsibility

•

working with other leaders to inform E3 Washington’s
programmatic development at a statewide level

Jessica
•

informal educator

•

local community organizer and educational leader for multiple
organizations

•

working in partnership with E3 Washington along with other
colleagues in her region to implement parts of her region’s E3
plan and integrate that plan with other regions

Matt
•

formal education district supervisor

•

business professional with a focus on environmental justice,
environmental responsibility, and cultural competency

•

an educational leader, working with other leaders to inform E3
Washington’s development at a statewide level

Jen
•

informal educator

•

local community leader who focuses on place-based education and
service learning
51
 


 

•

working with other E3 Washington colleagues in her region to
develop and implement parts of her region’s E3 plan for
connecting formal and informal educators through shared
community assets

Ann
•

formal educator

•

local community organizer and leader

•

involved in working with her E3 Washington regional colleagues
to develop and implement parts of her region’s E3 plan for
connecting formal and informal educators through shared
community assets

Mary
•

an informal educator

•

local community leader and organizer

•

working with regional E3 Washington colleagues to overcome
inter-organizational barriers for better networking at local and
statewide levels

Sue
•

formal educator

•

local community leader

•

working with E3 Washington to implement parts of her region’s
plan and to overcome challenges to organizational collaboration
52
 


 

Tim
•

formal educator and district director for a small school district

•

working with regional E3 Washington colleagues to implement
parts of his region’s plan for increased connections between
community learning opportunities and schools

Michael
•

formal educator and district director for a large school district

•

working with regional E3 Washington colleagues to implement
parts of his region’s plan for increased connections between
community learning opportunities and schools

Luke
•

informal educator with a medium/large organization

•

focus on place-based education and service learning

•

working with regional E3 Washington colleagues to overcome
challenges to inter-group and inter-regional collaboration

Each interview lasted between forty-five and sixty-two minutes at varying
locations around Washington State, in varying settings determined by each
participant to maximize comfort, including office buildings, meeting rooms, and
pubic spaces. According to the precepts of the phenomenological method, I
conducted a session of bracketing before each meeting to identify and sequester
my biases and presuppositions. Each interview was conducted in a semistructured fashion, recorded on a digital audio device. Each interview began with
53
 

 

the same core question: “think about an time where you were involved in a
sustained, group situated ESE-related activity that powerfully impacted you,
professionally or personally, in a transcendent and lasting way. Try to place
yourself in the context of that experience and then recount it is if you were telling
a story.” The interview was guided by pre-determined follow-up questions but
relied on unconstrained recall so that relevant and unexpected lines of questioning
could be pursued in each interview. Interview questions may be found in the
appendix. I took no notes during the interview so I could concentrate wholly on
the questions asked, and remained as neutral in my posture and engagement as
possible, so as not to overly influence the participant. Given that the interview
process was intentionally not uniform, content was not uniform. In practice, some
respondents spoke very quickly, while others spoke very slowly or haltingly.
Some respondents required time to verbally process their responses, which
resulted in data that was not directly applicable to this study’s main question. I
attempted to give each participant ample time to fully understand the study’s
purpose and to do some mental preparation before I arrived to conduct the
interview, but some participants were far more prepared than others, resulting in
interviews with varying depths of content.
After each interview, the data was transcribed manually to retain a wordfor-word written account and then was translated according to the guidelines of
phenomenological methodology (i.e., using descriptive free imaginative variation
to condense each respondent’s thoughts to their most essential elements).
Translation resulted in a condensed, semi-objective, third-person account of each

54
 

 

participant’s shared experience, formatted in a way that could then be crossanalyzed for codes and themes. Before coding began, I emailed each participant a
copy of her or his translated data for comment or corrections if necessary. I only
received returned comments from three participants (one without comments and
two with clarifying comments). I incorporated those clarifying comments into the
analysis.
An open coding system was used through Dedoose, a web-based data
management program. The coding process focused on words and phrases that
conveyed personal opinions (i.e., “I believe,” “I feel,” “I think,” etc.), or that
indicated meaning (i.e., “meaningful,” “surprising,” “gratifying,” etc.). Open
coding was used for each transcription because this study did not assume to know
how each participant defined personal meaning. Therefore, a new code was
created for each excerpt where a relevant code did not already exist, and existing
codes were attached to each excerpt where appropriate. This process was repeated
through each interview. Upon completion of coding, I reviewed and eliminated
any codes that were tagged three or fewer times, and collapsed codes that were
similar or analogous.
Dedoose’s “code application” and “code co-occurrence” functions were
used to identify the most “popular” (and therefore meaningful and/or relevant)
codes and to find coding patterns among them. I established a metric for code
application, which did not account for the number of times a code was mentioned
per interview, only that it was shared between all interviews. This was done
because this study searched for base commonalities and was not necessarily

55
 

 

concerned with how “heavily” a concept was coded per interview. As a result,
some manual work was required to sort skewed data, because some codes were
unevenly tagged across interviews (i.e., where certain participants mentioned a
particular coded concept more times than others did). According to the metric, a
code was central to the study if it was shared by all participants, meaningful to the
study if it was shared by at least eight participants, and not significant if shared by
less than eight. A similar scheme was applied to code co-occurrences tagged to
the same excerpt: a code relationship was central to the study if shared by all
participants (i.e., code co-occurrence A x B occurred in at least one excerpt in
each participant’s translated data), meaningful if shared by at least seven
participants (changed from eight above because there were no codes shared by
eight), weak if shared by at least six, and not significant if shared by five or less.
Finally, I graphed out code applications and code co-occurrences according to
their filtered frequency and analyzed the pattern that emerged. I used a colorbased system so that the patterns were easier to identify. These patterns and the
story that they tell are explored next, in the Results section.

56
 

 

Results

 

The purpose of this research was to contribute to a much-needed shift
towards effective participatory practice in addressing contemporary
environmental issues by working to address the CoP theory-to-practice problem in
a local context. This study’s local research intended to discover a common
experience of meaningful engagement amongst educator leaders in E3
Washington’s regional network, in order provide specific process-based
recommendations as E3 Washington begins to facilitate its RLCoP. This chapter
will begin with a brief outline of this study’s significant findings before
continuing to detail the code results that informed the major discovery of
significance. Significant codes and code co-occurrences will be isolated and
broken down in further detail to describe the full findings from this study.
Participants shared their stories of a time when they were meaningfully
engaged in a group-situated, ESE-related activity that powerfully impacted them,
personally and professionally, in a transcendent and lasting way. The results
uncovered shared process-based aspects of meaningful engagement, and most
responses were powerful, including participants’ attachment to environmental and
sustainability education themes. Responses indicate that eight out of ten
participants are still connected to the field or activity that powerfully impacted
them. For example, two participants are still involved in the specific project that
they described in their interview, six are involved in a similar professional pursuit,
and two describe themselves as not connected to what meaningfully engages them
at this time. Respondents’ stories were varied. The lengths of their experiences
57
 

 

varied from as short as two weeks to as long at ten years. Some participants talked
about one specific instance of meaningful experience, while others mentioned one
or more vignettes in a detailed story of meaningful engagement. The total
experiences shared fall into the following categories: conferences, specific
moments in time, project-based periods, and summative stories of
curriculum/school development.
The results indicate that of the thirty-two different elements (codes)
related to “meaningful engagement” described amongst participants, one
particular quartet of code co-occurrences was significantly linked throughout the
data: A Sense of Responsibility/Engagement, Sense of Success/Achievement,
Paradigm Shift, and Connected to Something Bigger. This significant
commonality suggests that there was indeed a significant common experience of
meaningful engagement shared by the participants of this study. Interestingly,
this relationship was broadly articulated as a non-linear cycle, meaning that
although each code theme strongly informed the others, participants experienced
the relationship in different orders of occurrence. One participant’s particular
experience was articulated as a sense of success or achievement in breaking
traditional barriers in education, learning, and/or environmental
literacy/awareness that led to a shift in perspective of professional capacity. This,
combined with a sense of responsibility/engagement towards learning and/or
environmental achievement, led to a sense of being connected to something larger
than oneself. Other permutations of this significance will be discussed later in this
chapter, and though code and code co-occurrence results informed this study’s

58
 

 

conclusions but it is important to note that the general synthesized (and resultantly
non-linear) story is what is of most importance in finding shared elements of
meaningful connection amongst the group studied. The results section will next
continue with an expanded description of the codes uncovered during analysis.

Code Results
Code definitions. Coding was the mechanism used to isolate definitions
of “meaningful engagement” from respondents’ translated interviews. Codes were
applied to interview excerpts, which were reduced via free imaginative variation,
extracted from translated interviews, and then collected into interview
“documents.” Code counts reflect the number of times a particular code was used
per document. Each translated interview contained sixty-six code occurrences on
average with a range of forty-seven to eighty-six per interview (excluding outlier
interviews of twenty-one and 135 code counts) (see Figure 2).
The respondent who was coded the least did not directly answer many of

 

Figure  2:  Code  excerpts  and  applications  per  interview
 
 

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

50

Number  of  excerpts  isolated  per  interview

10

20

40

60

80

100

120

140

Number  of  codes  applied  per  interview

59
 

 

the interview questions, so some of that respondent’s coded answers were not
aligned with the group and therefore discarded during code filtering. The
respondent who was coded the most repeated responses multiple times so their
applied code count was artificially high. Excerpts were tagged with one to ten
individual codes, or 3.5 on average, resulting in three to four code-occurrences
per excerpt on average. The range of length for an excerpt was between ~50 to
~1500 characters; the average excerpt length was ~150 characters (see Figure 2).
Code counts and results. From the data, thirty-two codes were shared by
at least four respondents, the minimum recognition criteria (see Figure 3). Of
those thirty-two codes, seven codes were shared by all ten respondents, and an
additional two codes were shared by nine respondents. Those nine codes emerged
as central to the study. They usually occurred in groups with each other, and
represent what this study counts as relevant elements of meaningful engagement
in participants’ ESE group related experiences. These nine codes are “Paradigm
Shift,” “Sense of Success/Achievement,” “Sense of Responsibility/Engagement,”
“Connected to Something Bigger,” “New Personal Learning,” “Sense of
Community,” and “Co-Learning” (shared by all 10 participants) plus “SelfQuestioning/Interrogating” and “Different from the Familiar” (shared by 9
participants).

60
 

 

Figure  3:  List  of  codes  shared  among  respondent  interviews
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The results of the coding process seem to minimally suggest that, in
general, the participants were influenced by a sense of success and achievement in
an endeavor they were engaged with and felt responsibility for, such that success
led to (or was precipitated by) a shift in their understanding. Additionally,
participants felt that these experiences connected them to a sense of something
bigger than themselves or their immediate sphere of influence, and that new
personal learning and a sense of community had been developed, sustained, or
made possible through their experiences. Finally, participants generally felt that
these experiences are, by nature, different from the familiar, and involved a
certain amount of self-questioning and interrogation of their or their
organization’s practices and assumptions. A detailed explanation of the nine
central codes is provided below, beginning with individual codes and moving to
this study’s most significant code co-occurrence.

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Code Occurrences
Paradigm shift: Participants suggested the concept of a paradigm shift
when referring to an occurrence that opened their eyes to a different way of being
or to a different idea of what was possible, including breaking conventional
wisdom or standard practices in an unexpected way. For example, Sue, a science
educator, believes that “once you break conventional wisdom, and you have a
different way of being, things break open…it was like, this whole idea
of…welcome to a different world. It can exist.”1 For her, re-creating that kind of
paradigm shift for students is “one of the hallmarks of [her] career.” Jessica’s
experience is more personally located: she feels that her views on the possibilities
for community collaboration were perhaps “very narrow,” that her experience of
engagement “opened her eyes up.” Her point of view on the collaborative
possibilities in her community was changed; because of her experience, a big
lesson for her is not to take what can happen for granted. She continues to work to
re-create her experience for others. Other participants also felt meaningfully
engaged when re-creating a paradigm shift for others in addition to experiencing it
themselves, which is perhaps to be expected in a field of educators. For example,
Michael, a district administrator, is excited when sees his students make the
connection between their learning, their environment, and their communities, and
when they move from compliant learners and teachers to committed learners and
teachers.
Sense of Success and Achievement. Participants expressed a Sense of
Success and Achievement as achieving targeted goals and objectives (usually

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
1

All quotes from interviewees are taken directly from their interview transcripts.

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learning) or being connected to the achievement of group goals, both of which
were powerful for participants. Luke, a high-level informal educator, remembers
that “at the time it just looked like an open field. And we knew what our charge
was, and there wasn’t anybody saying that it wasn’t our charge, and we ran with
it. And I think we made—I know we made some real significant difference and
impacts.” Participants also co-located their meaningful feelings of ESE success
within their community or colleagues. For example, “this was about transforming
education to real [sic],” says Sue. “These kids weren’t just studying about
something for the sake of studying about it; they were producing good data for the
system. They were participating in science and improving their world.” Ann, a
local teacher, is similarly personally moved by her success in empowering her
students: “They were hugely empowered through the program and I get into that,
that’s good stuff.” Additionally, successes such as these are often tied to a sense
of leadership. Michael believes that his sense of success, which is similar to
Luke’s, is defined as “true leadership. It’s setting priorities and then making
things happen...[even though] it’s not necessarily me setting the priorities.” He
also believes that feeling connected to success “was probably more meaningful
than when we actually got [the physical reward for their success], because at that
moment, I had heard these teachers and these students communicate what a great
learning experience this was for them.” On the other hand, Matt, a high-level
company leader, relates how his success was community-related but far from
personal:
… it felt very gratifying, rewarding, and uplifting. You know, in
terms of having gone through the process, worked through some of
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the issues and challenges, and also having built a level of
understanding among folks who didn’t have a good appreciation for
it. So, all of those things were very important to me. It wasn’t just
my own personal gratification; it was just knowing that I had helped
a number of professionals [in the group] and within the organization
with a better understanding and a perspective about the importance
of this issue, to this [organization], and the stakeholders that they’re
serving.
Sense of Responsibility/Engagement. Responses coded to a Sense of
Responsibility / Engagement centered on participants’ emotional stake in the
outcomes of the community, or encouraging others to have a similar emotional
investment. In the responses, environmental and sustainability education was a
background theme. For example, Jen, an informal educator, wants people to find
their own learning, to be curious, to come self-engaged and come to conclusions
for themselves. She is gratified and feels engaged by watching others engage and
succeed through her assistance. She says, “when they are given a challenge, and
made to feel like what they are doing matters, many of them will meet and exceed
that challenge.” For Ann, her similar sense of engagement was powerful. “I lived
to show up for those kids” she says, “and I lived to make that program go, and I
lived to develop it further.” Other responses were more personally located. For
example, Luke spoke directly to personal feelings of responsibility to the project
and to others:
While you have that [organizational] ember, with the traditions and
mission, you’ve got that in your hands, at that point in time. And
it’s a precious thing to have the opportunity to be able to hold it.
And it’s in your hands. How willing are you to make sure that it
flourishes? What are you willing to commit to, so that while that
thing is in your hands, you’re doing everything you can

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professionally, emotionally, [so that] when you’re ready to release,
it is actually brighter and stronger than when you got it?
From the responses, it seems that a Sense of Responsibility / Engagement is
connected both to the personal and to the community, and arises from a
combination of emotional responsibility to the task and group engagement with
others.
Connected to Something Bigger. For the participants in this study, a sense
of being connected to something bigger was related to witnessing that they and
their actions affect or are related to more than just themselves. For example,
Jessica did not originally believe that she was surrounded by many like-minded
individuals in her community, but “it was very enlightening…to see that people
do come together, and there are a lot of people in this community that want to see
something happen, and that they’re willing to work together to make that
happen.” Similarly, Chris was engaged in a conference on environmental issues
and was opened up to the true scope of the environmental issues at hand, that the
environmental issues that he and his colleagues were wrestling with were far
larger than he’d previously thought. On the other hand, some participants felt
meaningfully engaged and connected to something bigger through transferring
learning to others. For example, Ann’s connective experience is related to helping
her students learn, and expand their horizons. She feels connected in translating
learning for them, specifically about things that they “hadn’t stopped and thought
about.” Tim also believes that transferring learning was connective. In sum, it
seems clear from the results that Being Connected to Something Bigger was
predicated on community connections and acquiring or transferring knowledge.
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New Personal Learning. New Personal Learning was identified as
individual learning that enabled participants to engage with the community or
with their professional work in a new way that is attached to success or increased
capacity for learning. For example, Chris believes that his retreat experience
“invited me to think in a more systemic way at the interconnections of things. It’s
invited me to have the courage to take on issues that I have not traditionally cared
about, or have felt are too overwhelming.” Similarly, Tim feels enlightened
through what he terms “whole new learning” and connects it to being able to be a
more developed person, reflecting that “any time one can be enlightened, I think
you’re probably a better individual.” Mary also resonates with the idea of
increased perspective and capacity to learn. She feels highly engaged when she is
“in a group process with people around a sustainable topic, and we’re reading a
lot of different perspectives on that topic and we’re all bringing our questions and
bringing our ideas, recognizing our shortfalls as well, in that process.” From the
results amongst this group of educator leaders, it seems that new personal learning
is valued and generally connected to a sense of community and/or increased
capacity to learn more.
Sense of Community. From the results, participants believed that a sense
of community involves being engaged with colleagues or students in a in a way
that ties their works together. Jessica references being connected to the group
specifically, saying that “it was really neat to see that this group was able to bring
together all these different people to work on one project, and to get it to work.”
Ann specifically notes that her students were her community, tied through their

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co-learning. Tim also believes that meaningful co-work with is students is very
engaging; he feels strongly connected when he and his community are
“embracing a real issue, a world problem, on a local scale, and attempting to
engage staff and students in those issues, to develop stewards that can be able to
take on those challenges.” As referenced earlier, a sense of community is also
often co-located with other elements of meaningful engagement as defined by this
study’s results. Although there is no significant aspect from the results that speaks
to creating community, it seems clear that community connections are important
for supporting other elements of engagement throughout the results.
Co-Learning. Co-learning was defined as learning that is reciprocated by
and co-generated with others. Experiences of co-learning allowed the participants
of this study to feel more meaningfully engaged with one another. For example,
Matt feels that he has developed answers to organizational challenges alongside
his colleagues, in a meaningfully engaged way “they [feel] gratified, and they
could say ‘well here’s the work that we’ve been doing along these lines, and it’s
very consistent, and aligned, with what the agency itself is doing.’” Tim and his
education colleagues co-developed a mission and vision for his district that was
informed and built in coordination with the district’s residents, leaving him
feeling very engaged. He feels that it was very powerful that a diverse set of
individuals was exploring how to create the school mission together. Sue
elaborates, by expressing that she learns from her students on a weekly basis,
which keeps things new and meaningful between she and them. From the results,
it seems that Co-Learning is important not only because it generates new

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knowledge, but because it tends to either create feelings of closeness and
empowerment within the community or emerges from a result of feeling close and
empowered within a learning community.
Self-Questioning/Interrogating. From the results, nine out of ten
participants explicitly expressed a willingness or a need to self-question their
present realities in order to spur growth and change. Tim believes that “it is
always important to pause, think, and reflect,” and Michael is “always looking for
continuous improvement.” Respondents seem to feel that reflection allows them
to understand how they are integrated with their community and the challenges
they face. For example, individuals like Matt and Michael both routinely use selfquestioning guidelines to help them be better leaders, as do Mary and Chris, who
value self-questioning in order to develop better tools to successfully engage with
their colleagues and students. Similarly, teachers such as Sue and Ann interrogate
their approaches to teaching and learning in order to make them more successful
for them and their students. Participants’ individual experiences of co-learning
were not explicitly aligned with one another but do strongly suggest that selfquestioning is a valued way to move forward towards successful engagement with
themselves, their communities, and the professional challenges they face.
Different from the Familiar. Nine out of ten participants expressly noted
that their particular ESE-related experiences were meaningful in part because they
were different from their normal day-to-day experiences, even though their
individual experiences varied in specifics as well as duration. For example, Chris,
Sue, and Luke relate occasions in which their physical surroundings and daily

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tasks were so different from the norm that they were almost “out of space in
time,” which allowed them to engage differently by disengaging from familiar
routines. For others, their different surroundings allowed them to grow through
new awareness. For example, Jessica, Sue, and Ann were exposed to different
professional practices, such as in the change and empowerment that could occur
in formal education and in witnessing the power and possibility of collective
impact in action. Chris also realized new personal empowerment through his
retreat experiences. Tim and Michael; however, feel engaged through unexpected
district learning, which disengaged them from familiar experiences and primed
them for new systemic learning. Responses for this particular code were varied
but all linked to seeing the world in a different way. Given this commonality, it
seems that Different From the Familiar is also linked to Paradigm Shift in
meaningful engagement because it primed participants for a substantive
perspective shift.

The Most Significant Code Co-Occurrence
All of the central themes discussed above co-occurred together in various
combinations throughout participants’ responses (Figure 4).

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Figure  4:  List  of  significant  codes  and  code  co-­occurrences2

Central  common  codes
‡Paradigm  shift  (10)
‡Sense  of  success  and  achievement  (10)
‡Sense  of  responsibility/engagement  (10)
‡Connected  to  something  bigger  (10)
‡New  personal  learning  (10)

‡Sense  of  community  (10)
‡Co-­learning  (10)
‡Self  of  questioning/interrogating  (9)
‡Different  from  the  familiar  (9)

Code  co-­occurrences
Central  code  co-­ocurrences
‡Sense  of  responsibility/engagement  x  Sense  of  success/achievement  (10)
‡Sense  of  success/achievement  x  Paradigm  shift  (10)
‡Paradigm  shift  x  Sense  of  responsibility/engagement  (10)

Meaningful  code  co-­occurrences
‡Paradigm  shift  x  Different  from  the  familiar  (8)
‡Sense  of  success/achievement  x  Being  connected  to  something  bigger  (7)
‡Being  connected  to  something  bigger  x  Paradigm  shift  (7)
‡Being  connected  to  something  bigger  x  Change  making  (7)

Weak  code  co-­occurrences
‡&KDQJHPDNLQJ[Paradigm  shift  (6)
‡1HZSHUVRQDOOHDUQLQJ[  Paradigm  shift  (6)
‡Self  questioning/interrogating  x  Paradigm  shift  (6)
‡6HQVHRIFRPPXQLW\[Sense  of  success/achievement  (6’s)
‡Self  questioning/interrogating  x  Sense  of  success/achievement  (6’s)
‡Self  questioning/interrogating  x  Sense  of  responsibility/engagement  (6)
27KHQXPEHULQSDUHQWKHVLVLQGLFDWHVLQKRZPDQ\LQWHUYLHZVWKHLWHPRFFXUV
&RORUVDUHLQWHQGHGWRDVVLVWLQYLVXDOJURXSLQJ

Code co-occurrences are paint the most interesting picture of meaningful
engagement among participants because the existence of code co-occurrences
suggest that meaningful engagement is made up of interrelated factors that affect
and support one another, rather than the existence of one or two single dominating
concepts. Alone, individual codes tell us about the general attitudes of meaningful
engagement from person to person, and single code commonalities tell us about
certain shared aspects (i.e. Sense of Responsibility/ Engagement, Paradigm Shift,
etc., in this case) but individually they paint a rather shallow and two-dimensional
picture of participants’ lived phenomena. Code co-occurrences, on the other hand,
allow us to connect aspects of meaningful engagement into three-dimensional
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pictures of depth and nuance, allowing for complex stories to emerge. This study
found three central code co-occurrences, four meaningful code co-occurrences,
and six weak code co-occurrences (Figure 4). Full analysis of each code cooccurrence would be enormous and is outside of the scope of this limited thesis,
and in some ways is not necessary for the purposes of this thesis question, which
was to isolate the single most powerful definition of meaningful engagement for
facilitation in practice. Therefore, the top co-occurrence relationship of Paradigm
Shift, Sense of Success/Achievement, and Sense of Responsibility/Engagement will
be explored next.

Paradigm Shift, Sense of Success / Achievement, Sense of Responsibility
/ Engagement, and Connected to Something Bigger. The top three commonly
coded experiences, Paradigm Shift, Sense of Success/Achievement, and Sense of
Responsibility/Engagement were heavily interrelated across participants, which
suggests that this relationship is central to meaningful engagement. Overall, this
relationship is characterized by a sense of shifting one’s perspective (or shifting
the perspective of others) through collective success related in a mutually engaged
goal, activity, or concept. Additionally, eight out of ten respondents explicitly
connected a sense of being Connected to Something Bigger to the relationship
above, so can be considered a major supporting aspect. In other words,
organizational success through being meaningfully engaged leads to a shift in
understanding, and encourages participants to perceive that they are meaningfully
connected to something bigger than what they were previously. Tim, a district

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administrator, encapsulates this relationship when he describes his sense of
success and being connected to something bigger than himself by supporting his
teachers and students to be engaged in seeing a new way of teaching and learning.
He relates:
It’s really exciting for me, as an educational leader, because you have
teachers that are really committed to this hands-on learning and so that’s
really exciting me, to see that it is not just me that’s committed to it,
you’ve got all these teachers that are in the classroom that are excited
about it, and can’t see teaching any other way than teaching this hands-on
learning for kids… It feels very gratifying…that’s where the transcendent
part comes in.
In other words, Tim feels meaningfully engaged because he is succeeding at the
work to which he feels responsibly connected. Through that work he is connected
to a circle larger then himself and is shifting paradigms in education. Michael
feels similarly to Tim except that his vision of success is also explicitly connected
to his community at large. For example, his work is most meaningful, and he feels
most meaningfully engaged, when he is able to see his students doing real
research and being competent with the material to a point where they start to put
their learning into a social context and begin to ask their own interdisciplinary
questions in the community. To him, it means that he and the district are
accomplishing a significant portion of their mission to produce learners with the
skills and abilities needed to positively impact their world. In other words,
Michael feels that he is succeeding at fostering environmental stewardship by
engaging others in learning to a point that shifts learner paradigms for seeing their
world, and is thereby successfully connecting himself and his students to the
greater community. Perhaps more succinctly, Mary, an informal educator, feels a
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powerful “sense of wholeness” from feeling like she is an active participant
among a number of parts that are working in a coordinated and connected way.
She looks for things that will bring her and her colleagues to a place of
commonality, and feels that her increased understanding means that she can
connect and integrate better. It seems clear from the responses that success in
engagement with others, related to a paradigm shift and a sense of being
connected to something greater than themselves, forms the foundation of
commonalities amongst the respondents in this study, and that each participant is
drawn to community-based engagement in which success involves putting new
learning into action in a coordinated way, either for themselves or for others;
usually both.
While the experiences above are compelling, they do present a certain
limitation. The four codes above occur in participants’ stories in different ways,
so the mosaic of their values is non-linear and therefore somewhat general. For
example, a Paradigm Shift can occur either before or after a Sense of
Responsibility/Engagement, and between other codes in various permutations. In
order to describe a common story that answers the thesis question, we must accept
a somewhat non-linear and general mosaic. However, a degree of imprecision
might be a fair price to pay for a common four-way connective story in the first
place. This trade-off will be discussed in greater detail in the Discussion section,
but first the Analysis section will continue by touching on common themes not
raised during coding.

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Other Common Themes
Other common themes exist that did not emerge as significant codes
because, in some or most responses, they were not attached to value statements
that triggered coding. They were noticed during analysis through the
metacognition of the researcher, and are included here for their possible
significance. In these cases, they were not explicitly referred to across all
respondents, and so are somewhat more generalized, but were clear themes
nonetheless. They are included here because of their commonality (and therefore
possible significance). These common themes include Being a Captive Audience,
Sharing Stories, and Breaking Traditional Barriers. This section will pause to
briefly examine each.
Captive Audience. From the research, nine out of ten respondents
described their powerful experiences within a context of being a “Captive
Audience” in some fashion. They described in situation that allowed or forced
their focus to be directed a precise experience in a manner that is not standard or
usual in their personal or professional environment. For some, it was indeed
explicit. For example, Chris believes meaningful paradigm shifting experiences
require a “multi-day, or even just a one-day period of being able to really have an
individual experience with other people…that has an emotional component and
factual data.” Michael seems to agree, but was not explicit, saying “it was
powerful to witness people getting together, focusing in on, and developing his
district’s mission statement through asking some very intentional questions,
dialogue development, and sharing beliefs” in a focused retreat environment. Sue,

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meanwhile, remembers her “professional development boot camp” experience to
initially be quite discomforting, like “a bunch of junior-high kids…hauled off
somewhere,” although she feels that because of the clear focus that resulted, her
group was able to interact together such that “the rest of it didn’t matter. And you
were clear the whole time, your purpose to be here and to learn how to be
outdoors, doing citizen science.” Luke feels similarly, that through an intensive
retreat, his cohort bonded emotionally and professionally in a way tat perhaps
would not have occurred otherwise. It seems that being in a place that allowed full
attention in the moment helped to catalyze important moments of meaningful
engagement for this set of respondents.
Sharing Stories. Sharing Stories was a value explicitly noted by three
respondents, but implicitly referenced by another five, and is connected to the
idea that sharing stories generates meaning, which encourages engagement.
Respondents generally felt that the ability to relate to the story that was unfolding
within their experiences allowed them to engage. For example, Ann believes it is
pivotal for students to connect to the question—especially in their own
language—of “why” they are learning about a particular subject. It gives them a
validated way for them “to hook in.” Chris is explicit about his belief in the
power of sharing stories, saying that stories and storytelling are key to being able
to understand the issues, to understand a shared reality, and to confront them with
courage. “When we can tell the story, then we know; we’re in a relationship with
the problem…. I feel like storytelling leads to consciousness.” Ann, who believes
in co-empowerment through learning, believes that “we’ve all got stories to tell,”

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and Sue believes that “we lose when we don’t share this way.” More generally,
storytelling seems to be an essential element of participants’ powerful
experiences. This seems to echo Niesz’s (2010) belief that sharing stories allows
participants to connect over the meaning they generate, and may also be explained
by education as a profession, which relies on the ability of educators to verbally
foster meaning making through discourse.
Breaking of Traditional Barriers emerged as a theme shared between all
participants to varying degrees. Sue believes that the traditional classroom
teaching style is “totally frustrating,” but that new ways of teaching can open
students up to “amazing possibilities” and still teach to the standards. Jen believes
similarly and shares that she had to overcome certain barriers so that her students
could successfully learn, including convincing the learners of her neutrality and
helping them overcome potential resistances to the environmental-educationrelated project at hand. Michael feels similarly, that “being engaged with school
and learning… could be an entry point for those kids, to really be a life-changing
experience for them.” Meanwhile, Ann evaluates her barrier-breaking experiences
personally. She says that the teachers “were very limited. They were not creative
about how they did it at all. I love to dream up ways to engage. I’m about
engagement. So the administrators got excited … because I was showing them
another way to do business.” Showing people “another way” also resonated with
Matt, who believes that he came to more fully learn how to “work so that people
feel heard, engaged, and respected” through helping an agency begin to
organizationally re-learn how to do business by interrogating the cultures and

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customs that had become “entrenched” in the system.” Overall, Breaking
Traditional Barriers seems to be centered on a certain degree of freedom from
traditional systems so that learning and engagement can occur in a new way.
Additionally, Breaking Traditional Barriers seems to be socially rooted in the
community, connected to breaking collective barriers, or barriers for others.

Summation
The phenomenological method was useful in during analysis in
uncovering root commonalities and was helpful and instructive in avoiding
personal bias. Bracketing required that I stay conscious of the way in which I was
making linkages, and not forcing linkages simply because I might be interested in
them. For example, there was a mildly implicit emotional connection that wove
through each participant’s response but was only explicitly coded in two
responses, and implicitly referenced in three others. Therefore, it could not be
counted as a significant code of common theme in this study.
Overall, the results from this study were diverse, with thirty-two coded
themes shared by at least four respondents, nine central code occurrences, three
un-coded common themes, and one central code co-occurrence. Most
significantly, A Sense of Responsibility/Engagement, A Sense of
Success/Achievement, and Paradigm Shift, supported by a sense of being
Connected To Something Bigger were shown to be significantly shared between
all respondents and encapsulate the strongest common definition of meaningful
engagement among participants in this study. Even though the particular stories

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that gave rise to those feelings were varied, the results suggest a common mosaic
of meaningful connection and give a synthesized picture in which these major
elements are connected non-linearly. The Analysis section will break down these
results somewhat further and explore their connection to the literature in order to
ground the results in participatory theory literature and provide a measure of
validation to support the findings’ applicability for E3 Washington and the wider
CoP field moving forward.

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Analysis

The purpose of this study was to discover common elements of
meaningful engagement among a selection of E3 Washington’s potential RLCoP
members as a way to help address the theory-to-practice challenges in utilizing
participatory approaches in contemporary organizations. During facilitation, this
study may help E3 Washington to make its RLCoP more connective and
successful over time by leveraging the social connections described in this study.
That success, and this study’s methodology may also enrich the broader literature
on making the shift in society to participatory practice for sustained collective
impact in addressing contemporary environmental issues. Analysis of this study’s
results shows that while the collective mosaic of participant responses was not
concentrated in any one single theme, many of the themes identified are
congruent with major parts of the literature that upon which this study was built.
This suggests success. In order to illustrate, this chapter will begin by examining
conceptual congruencies to the literature such as “encouraging connectedness”
and “commitment and output,” and will then move to the organizational
congruencies of this study’s findings to the literature, such as “community” and
“knowledge formation.” The Analysis section will conclude by identifying some
concepts in the literature that were not specifically addressed by this study.

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Social and Psychological Congruencies to the Literature
This study explored elements of meaningful engagement shared by
participants in individual, group-situated, ESE-related activities. Therefore, the
results are socially or psychologically based because meaningful engagement is a
personal feeling. This study’s results should be verified with the social and
psychological tenets of participatory theory, to provide a check that the findings
resonate with the theoretical framework. A check is important because, if the
findings aren’t congruent with theory, then the underlying theory cannot be
expected to help support the findings in practice. This section will explore
congruencies in “encouraging connectedness,” “commitment and output,”
“connection and performance,” and “focus and leadership.”
Encouraging connectedness. Krach et al. (2010) have said that
meaningful engagement in communities can heal social disconnectedness, and
Walton et al. (2012) believed that the kind of social connection and improvement
promised by CoPs is shown to be important for personal wellbeing in a wide
variety of ways. Those ideas are reflected in this study. For example, Ann and
Chris relate how meaningful interaction brought them and their community closer
(i.e., in the case of Ann’s students and Chris’ peers), not only to one another but
closer to finding solutions to shared challenges. Sue and Michael, both formal
educators, were excited that such connections could, in Michael’s words, “be an
entry point for those kids to really be a life changing experience for them.”
Similarly, the theme of Breaking Traditional Barriers reflects Michael’s words
and underscores how meaningfully engaging via new avenues provides

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meaningful professional and personal enhancement. For example, Mary, Jessica,
Jen, and Chris all discuss how encouraging connectedness in their community
encouraged the community to make change, and Mike and Matt both believe that
collective learning leads to a greater understanding of the challenges involved, a
greater capacity to succeed, and, ultimately, social reward through the social value
of being connected.
Commitment and output. Passy and Giugni (2000) asserted that
identifying with community participants’ major desire to be meaningfully
engaged strengthens participant commitment and output, and Niesz (2010) wrote
that people will participate in community-based groups for the opportunity to
reflect, connect, and find a deeper meaning in their work through the “material
meaning” they generate. All of the participants in this study felt meaningfully
engaged via their work experiences. Unfortunately, we cannot say whether their
desire to be engaged strengthened their output, or whether their output
strengthened their desire to be engaged, but we can say that the study’s
respondents did indeed participate in their communities to connect, reflect, and
find a deeper meaning in their work as suggested by Niesz (2010). The code of
Self Questioning/ Interrogating reflects this, in that participants valued selfreflection as a way to develop themselves and their communities, personally and
professionally. For example, Tim, Mike, Sue, and Ann felt proud and connected
to the work that their students had accomplished through their leadership, and Jen
and Matt felt similarly connected through their committed work to help
colleagues co-learn. Finally, Ann and Sue both were especially committed to the

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increased output, such as learning, comprehension, and engagement, that resulted
from empowering their students in place-based co-learning.
Connection and performance. Snow-Gerono (2005) has said that
connection and engagement occurs out of an innate desire for participants to build
themselves and their communities, and Walton et al. (2012) believed that through
interaction, colleagues work much better and improve performance. These
assertions resonate with participants’ stories. For example, Matt, Tim, Mike, Jess,
Jen, Ann, and Mary operated out of a desire to build their communities, from
Tim’s belief in environmental stewardship, to Jessica’s desire to convene local
stakeholders for community action, to Mary’s desire to be in the middle of
collaborative and systems-thinking conversations. All participants noted an
increase in work output because of or resulting from their connection. Indeed,
connection and performance can be powerfully linked. For example, Luke
believes that the goals and objectives that he set for himself and his team
developed in “ways that were beyond the scope of what [he] would have
imagined.” Luke’s belief was echoed by Jen. Meanwhile, Jessica was powerfully
impacted by the collective impact that she witnessed during her conference, and
engages to continue that work daily.
Focus and leadership. Finally, Hadar and Brody advised that CoPs
“require focus, engagement, and leadership in order to flourish” (2010, p. 1643),
and this is reflected in participants’ stories as well. For example, Luke recalls that
the innovative success of his leadership team was possible only because of their
ability to create their own leadership; that without co-creating strong guidelines

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and guiding principles to propel their work, they would not have succeeded in
forming and maintaining a cohesive unit. Tim and Michael reflect that their ESErelated work requires constant effort, that without focusing and engaging the other
individuals in their district, the group meaning and momentum is lost. Ann relates
how her highly successful program quickly fell apart when she was no longer able
to directly lead it, but Jen relates how through her leadership, many of her
students not only became engaged in the learning but “actually changed their
definition of community.”

Organizational Congruencies to the Literature
In addition to social and psychological congruencies of the results to the
literature, organizational congruencies exist as well. This section will touch upon
those congruencies, such as “community, communication, and knowledge
formation,” “cooperative learning and breaking isolation,” and “passion for
learning and thinking.”
Community, communication, and knowledge formation. From the
literature, Community, Communication, and Knowledge Formation are key
organizational aspects of a meaningfully engaged participant-driven community,
which is reflected in this study’s results. For example, Hadar and Brody believed
that “new information and ideas [i.e., knowledge] emanate not only from
individual learning, but also from interaction with others [in community
communication]” (2010, p. 1642), which is reflected in participants’ responses.
For example, Sue and Ann both relate that they and their administrators learned

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how to innovate within their local education system through collaboration and
dialogue, some of which was difficult or challenging. Chris, Sue, and Jess
describe mutual learning experiences that unfolded in a conference and resulted in
new learning that may not have otherwise occurred in isolation, and Matt and
Mary believe that co-interaction with their colleagues generated new and
meaningful knowledge that would not necessarily have been developed through
isolated professional development exercises. Returning to the literature, Kulkarni
et al., (2000) found that conversations such as the ones that Hadar and Body
(2010) say are necessary require communal development and communication in
ways that are not possible or effective in standard, hierarchical business models,
and Yakhlef (2010) wrote that knowledge reception is based on collaboration and
participation. Ann and Sue agree that changing their system to a more
participatory format in order to advance co-learning was ultimately necessary and
highly valuable. Sue believes that “once you break conventional wisdom, and you
have a different way of being, things break open. And I guess that’s probably one
of the hallmarks of my career.” Mike and Tim both believe that their programs
sometimes struggle against the prevailing social environment in their districts,
sometimes requiring them to work to alter the system for change so that effective
communication and learning can occur. Further, Matt believes that a large portion
of the success of his work was in learning how to guide his colleagues to adapt
and change the formal organization in which they were working, in order that
critical learning could occur.

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Cooperative learning and breaking isolation. Additionally,
participants’ meaningfully engaged experiences were shown to be generally
centered around the increased engagement that came from cooperative learning,
which seems to echo the belief of Walton et al. (2012) that cooperative learning
increases learning, retention, and a motivation to continue to learn. For example,
Tim recalls seeing students and teachers move from compliant learners and
teachers to committed learners and teachers when they collaboratively make the
connection between their learning, their environment, and their communities.
Further, Ann and Sue recall that their teacher-student co-learning dramatically
increased engagement. For example, Ann remembers that a school board
administrator “actually articulated that she’s ‘learning from me.’ And I was
learning from my kids, because they were actually picking me up and moving
me.” Ann’s experience is intertwined with the concept of breaking isolation
barriers between students and teachers, which is reflected in Hadar and Brody
(2010) belief in the power of breaking the isolation barrier as a force for
development. Ann joins Sue, Chris, Jen, and Jess, in telling their own different
stories of development through overcoming isolation, which are all in turn linked
to the community connections that are forged through co-learning. Those stories
are not uniform, so their responses vary (for example, Chris’ development was
fairly personal while Jessica’s development centered around others), but each
story is congruent with social and personal development that occurs in breaking
isolation barriers via co-learning.

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Passion for learning and thinking. All of the formal educators in this
study echoed with Hadar and Brody’s (2010) belief that teachers are usually
passionate about learning and thinking. This is reflected by the common theme of
Self Questioning/Interrogating, and participants’ willing desire to engage in selfreflection for development. Tim uses the term “enlightened” to refer to his
personal practice of thinking about learning, and Michael specifically references
his desire for his district to be a “Learning Organization.” It is possible that these
responses are connected to Snow-Gerono’s (2005) studies of formal educators
showing that participants become very excited and work with great dedication
when they are meaningfully connected. Indeed, Sue says that her school “made
magic” through her meaningful engagement, Luke passionately recalls “moving
the needle” in his organization, and Mike’s describes his dedication to his
district’s development as “transcendent.”

Concepts Not Addressed
Not every concept from the literature was reflected strongly in this study.
For example, Walton et al. (2012) believed that cooperative activity is strongly
connected to a sense of the community and of community acceptance, but this
was explicitly reflected in only two participants, and of those two, one cited it as a
potential challenge. For example, Jen recalls that her colleagues actually “changed
their definition of community” through collaboration, but Luke recognizes the
belief of Walton et al. (2012) as a potential challenge, saying that “we gravitate
towards [community acceptance in cooperative activity], and put this kind of

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pressure on ourselves to have that be the feeing, and at the same point in time
we’re also trying to run these non-profit businesses that are really, really hard
right now…there’s some tension in there, for certain.” In other words, Yakhlef’s
(2010) claim that individuals simply want to belong at the core of a community
can be inferred through the code A Sense of Community, but participants did not
articulate a desire to simply belong. Additionally, some important concepts from
the literature, such as the origins of social connectedness and the specific
organizational benefits of CoPs do not significantly arise in the data, but this cold
be because the scope of the interview questions were geared to uncover moments
of meaningful engagement rather than systemic aspects of connection in society.
This suggests that while this study is congruent with important concepts of
participatory practice, it is not a comprehensive reflection of the theory as a
whole. These limitations, in my opinion, do not detract from the small but
significant discoveries that this study has made and the value that the findings can
have in helping to inform the wider literature.

Summation
In sum, the collective responses from participants in this study are
generally congruent with multiple findings from the literature on key social,
psychological, and organizational CoP concepts, including collective learning and
cooperative activity. The data seem to be therefore validated by key elements of
the literature, implying methodological success. While the overall story painted
by this study’s responses does not suggest uniform content-based mechanisms of

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meaningful engagement amongst the group, it does paint an overall picture of
process-based engagement, which is meaningful for moving forward (i.e.,
attempting to address the theory-to-practice gap in the literature). Moving
forward, there is room for much discussion about the respondents’ common
identity as a learning community, how the data may apply to CoP facilitation in
the future, and what kinds of research may be useful in future studies of this or
similar professional communities. The Discussion section will explore these
concepts next.

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Discussion

Overall, this study succeeded in identifying a common set of elements of
“meaningful engagement” between survey respondents among group situated,
ESE-related activities. This discovery helps to uncover at least a part of the
mechanics of community engagement that might be fruitful to focus on in
developing a regional leader CoP in E3 Washington. Through targeted
facilitation, it is quite likely that this study will provide a useful guide. However,
this study does have its limitations and leaves a few unanswered questions. This
chapter will discuss limitations and questions from the preceding chapters and
touch on lessons learned.
One of the major limitations of this study is that it cannot say whether the
participants of this study, and E3 Washington’s regional leadership network by
extension, represent or are pre-disposed to connect as a CoP. Despite that each
participant in this study shared a common experience of meaningful engagement
that originated from their own local CoPs, it is beyond the ability of the
phenomenological method to suggest any degrees of success for E3 Washington’s
RLCoP in the future. It can be dangerously easy to jump to conclusions because
the existence of a shared experience of meaningful engagement between
participants that is also congruent with key literature concepts can unfairly
suggest that they will be predisposed to meaningfully engage with each other,
which may not be the case. One must stay within the bounds of what this study
can provide, which is a process based definition of meaningful engagement

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among participants. Despite that success of E3 Washington’s RLCoP cannot be
guaranteed from the findings of this study, the findings are significant because
they can be used within participatory facilitation guidelines to help work for that
success.
As mentioned earlier, this study can only accurately comment on the
process of shared meaningful engagement (i.e., ideas, emotions, themes, etc.) and
not the content (i.e., actions, activities, frameworks, etc.). The reason for this is
because the individuals who were interviewed came from different content-based
worlds (i.e., classrooms, boardrooms, outdoor settings, etc.) and shared
experiences that were spread over different time periods. Some participants honed
in on one specific experience that spanned a period as short as a two-weeks, but
most shared stories that lasted multiple years, over more than one specific type of
content-based engagement. Therefore, the data on what participants did is varied
and therefore not significant from a qualitative point of view. Yet interestingly,
there was content-based commonality between members of the same field (i.e.,
district-level formal educators spoke about classroom visits, curriculum
development, and celebrations of student achievement). The sample size in this
study for such breakout groups is too small to be qualitatively useful, but it does
suggest questions for future studies. For example, are there common contentbased mechanisms among like colleagues that could complement the data
obtained in this study? At what point do colleagues’ work circles no longer
overlap in a content-based way? Perhaps a large or more targeted study would
find commonalities that this small study did not. Even so, these observations seem

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to suggest that E3 Washington is attempting to make an aggregate CoP out of
network representatives from other individual CoPs (such as teachers from
classrooms, principals from schools, and nonprofit executives from local
organizations). In fact, this seems to fit with E3 Washington’s organizational
model, which has been to convene local leaders in local groups across the state,
organized under the E3 Washington vision, for individualized and mutually
resonant ESE capacity building. Such an observation reinforces the idea that
future phenomenological studies focused on more targeted specific aspects of the
E3 Washington network may yield interesting results.
In this study, the strength of each individual coded theme per respondent
was not considered to be of relative importance because this study was focused on
finding the greatest common shared picture of meaningful engagement in their
individual ESE-related experiences. For example, it is significant to know that
each participant’s experience was catalyzed or cemented by a Paradigm Shift in
understanding, but the power of that shift per individual is of less importance in
this case, even if the paradigm shift experience was central to some and merely a
supporting factor for others. This knowledge raises an interesting idea, that even
though there are core commonalities among this study’s participants, those
commonalities are not uniform and should not be relied to be during CoP
facilitation. In other words, assumption of uniformity is likely to undermine
success because a CoP must feel relevant and real to each participant involved,
and over-concentrating on a particular element not pivotal for all may create a
feeling that the host organization is attempting to push an agenda or not listening

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to its members needs. Therefore, as organizations utilize knowledge of their
members’ engagement to facilitate CoPs, they must remember to focus on subtle
base commonalities in order to engage the most members, and not focus on
certain strong or singular aspects in the assumption that they will magically
produce strong engagement.
The interview process, as might be expected, suffered a few flaws and
inconsistencies. For example, even though questions were emailed to respondents
days before each interview with a request that they read and prepare, some did
not. As a result, some respondents were prepared with well-reflected answers and
insights, and others needed to verbally process “off the cuff.” Therefore, those
who were better prepared for their interview or simply spoke more quickly than
others seemed to share a greater volume of their experience, which sometimes
resulted in a heavier code count and may have therefore skewed the code results.
Additionally, using unconstrained recall meant that interviewees were able to
wander; I let them explore their stories because I didn’t want to interrupt the flow
of what they felt was meaningful to share. As a result, one participant’s interview
was comparatively weak, which notably impacted the depth of the available data
due to the small sample size of this study. Therefore, I find myself wondering
whether or not I would have inserted an unacceptable level my bias into an
interview if I had interjected to keep the interview “on track.” Is such a sacrifice
worth the possible increased uniformity of data in a small sample such as this? I
believe that experiencing these questions has brought me to more fully understand
the methodological disagreements that different phenomenologists struggle with.

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Nevertheless, despite the difficulty in judging how much more informative or
accurate more tightly guided interviews would have been, I suspect that the
interview questions themselves could certainly have been made somewhat more
specific in order to draw out more uniform experiences. For example, would
setting experience parameters (i.e., asking only for experiences of two weeks or
less, or experiences of one year or longer) have drawn out different
commonalities or more precise answers of common engagement?
During analysis, coding was subjective in a way that I was not expecting,
and I have gained a greater understanding of and appreciation for the threat of
bias in phenomenological research through that challenge. For example, I found
myself having to restrain the impulse to stretch the applicability of codes in order
to make a qualitative connection. I had to mind the line between translating and
interpreting; occasionally I came close to unintentionally interpreting participants’
lived phenomena because I desired that the data be meaningfully informative.
Bracketing was a constant and useful exercise. The processes of
collapsing/combining similar codes to condense and enrich the common picture
and applying the same code to different content-based stories also presented
unexpected challenges, because in this dual process, precision of the original
experiences was somewhat lost in the combined story. For example, the code for
“paradigm shift” lost some of its precision in being applied to multiple, unique
paradigm-shifting experiences, even though the importance of a shift in
perspective was still represented clearly. Because I needed to cast a wide net
through my given responses in order to achieve code commonality, there are a

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few degrees of qualitative uncertainty between the commonality of a code and the
specific nature of the code itself from person to person. This small study is
handicapped from digging deeper and it seems that a future focus on one sector of
education leaders (such as school principals), or one specific mechanism of
experience (such as conferences and events) would be fruitful. It would be
interesting to conduct individual studies geared at extracting more data; for
example, to ask what defines a specific “paradigm shift” for each participant, and
would pinpoint understanding echo this study’s combined story?
Lastly, the problems and concerns raised in the results and analysis of this
study seem to echo some of the critiques of participatory theory. Critics argue that
participatory theory isn’t broadly applicable, because at a high enough
granularity, the content-based mechanisms of engagement are no longer
congruent; all that is left is the process, the psychology. That seems to bear out in
this study, because in order to find common, process-based commonalities
amongst study respondents, I had to sacrifice some amount of resolution.
Similarly, there are no specific content-based commonalities that this study can
identify to suggest for facilitation of E3 Washington’s regional leadership CoP,
which would be very helpful.
Though certain literature critiques remain relevant and challenges for
future implementation remain, none of these limitations detract from the fact that
this study has revealed strong, process-based commonalities of meaningful
engagement amongst survey respondents that are congruent with key
psychological, social, and organizational concepts and references in the literature.

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This is key because for groups such as E3 Washington because targeted
knowledge of the home community is necessary before participatory theory can
be applied there. This study also represents success at utilizing phenomenological
methods to uncover a common element of meaningful engagement amongst a
diverse set of ESE stakeholders and is therefore successful at gaining a piece of
critical contextualized knowledge about the nature of individuals who may
compromise E3 Washington’s RLCoP. Hopefully, these findings will be of use to
E3 Washington and the greater field of research in participatory practice, in
working to overcome theory-to-practice challenges and to make the much needed
shift towards participatory practice for collective impact on the complex
environmental issues faced by contemporary society.

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Conclusion

This study has succeeded at describing a common expression of
meaningful engagement between a selection of individuals that comprise a
potential intentionally facilitated CoP. Having found a common expression of
meaningful engagement in this particular professional community is significant
because it shows that this study has successfully, if only in part, described
contextualized knowledge of key experiences that give rise to desire for
meaningful and sustained participatory practice. It further suggests that these
individuals are enough alike that a CoP facilitated amongst them, and based on
the findings, may strongly succeed. This research is one of many that are being
done around the world as a way to help inform the theory-to-practice gaps that
exist in participatory theories such as CoP, and this study contributes to that
expanding body of knowledge. Ideally, the findings of this research and its
research design can help inform other studies that are working to address this
question in other professional communities. This success represents a small step
towards understanding of the larger picture, which is a much needed shift towards
participatory practices and collective impact currently believed to be the best and
most effective ways of addressing the myriad complex environmental issues
facing contemporary society. In essence, despite questions and weaknesses
associated with this small study, this study is significant in presenting just one
small piece of the larger puzzle, contributing to a mosaic that informs the whole
in working for sustained solutions to environmental challenges in diverse fields.

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This study was leveraged on the social and psychological desire for
educators to form professional collegial communities in order to feel connected to
one another, develop professionally, and innovate solutions to shared challenges.
Operationally, this study interviewed ten members of E3 Washington’s fortymember regional educator leader network, in order to help lay the foundations for
facilitation of a regional leadership community of practice within the community,
which is something that is new to the organization. Additionally, this study
represents the first social or psychological survey of that member base,
recognizing that identifying with participants’ major desire to connect strengthens
the commitment and output of individuals and the group as a whole. Through the
research, this study identified four major interconnected psychological elements
of meaningful engagement between the individuals interviewed, interwoven to
create a non-linear tapestry of engagement. One possible strategy for
operationalization could be as follows: to convene potential members in a focused
environment (such as regular robust meetings) and define a group project,
activity, or focus that they could all feel responsible/engaged in completing, and
guide and support them through incremental successes over time. More social
elements of engagement identified in this study, such as paradigm shifts and
feelings of being connected to something larger than themselves, may need to be
allowed to emerge organically through their social interactions, co-learning, and
output. Throughout, targeted facilitation by the convening organization may be
necessary to keep the CoP focused and aligned.

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This study recognizes that its findings are not full answers to larger
questions involving the content-based nature of participatory methods, the
specific content-related aspects of meaningful engagement across E3
Washington’s regional educator leader network, or how to specifically integrate
these findings into facilitation methods. Further studies into the content-based
mechanisms of meaningful engagement amongst this community will provide
substantial clarity and balance to the process-based commonalities described in
this study. However, in sum, successful facilitation requires specific knowledge of
the community context, which this study has, at least in part, provided. The
process-based conclusions that this study have drawn are congruent with
prevailing literature and may provide a promising process-based mechanism for
engagement of the educator leaders in E3 Washington’s network. This may make
its RLCoP members more meaningfully co-engaged, and ultimately more
innovative, transformative, and sustainable over time. In a broader context, this
study may be helpful in informing similar organizations with some conceptual
tools to overcome the theory-to-practice barrier in facilitating participatory
engagement at large, designed to generate critical community knowledge, codiscover solutions to shared organizational opportunities, and approach sustained
participatory-based solutions to our shared and ever increasing environmental
challenges.

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Appendix
Interview Questions for Thesis:
“Exploring the Experiences of Meaningful Engagement
in Preparation for a Community Of Practice”
Aaron Zimmer, Spring 2013
Core question: “Think about an time where you were involved in a sustained, group situated
ESE-related activity that powerfully impacted you, professionally or personally, in a transcendent
and lasting way. Try to place yourself in the context of that experience and then recount it is if you
were telling a story.”
Context—Set the Stage
When and where did this take place?
Describe yourself at this time.
Who are the other major figures in this story?
What was your relationship to them? Describe them.
What events or relationships led up to this experience?
Experiences—Share the Story
Were there any particularly important events in this experience - events that caused you to feel
meaningfully engaged and/or changed in a positive and lasting way?
Tell me the story of these events.
What, specifically, were you feeling or thinking during this time?
What was your attitude to the other participant/s?
What attitude did the participant/s have toward you?
What was it, specifically, that made you feel like you were meaningfully engaged in a
positive/lasting way?
What was it, specifically, that tipped the experience from meaningful to transcendent?
Evaluations/Integrations—Summing up the Story
Was there any clear point at which this experience ended?
What did you think and feel when this experience ended?
How did you and the other participants respond to these events after they had ended?
How do you and the other participants feel about this experience now?
Do you see this experience differently now than you did at the time that you had the experience?
How so?
Do you feel like there is anyone or anything to specifically account for this experience?
Additional Questions—Shifting Contexts
Try to describe this experience from the perspective of another participant.
Have other people commented on this experience either at the time or later? What were their
comments?
How did you feel about those comments at the time? How do you feel about them now?
Have you had other experiences like this one? How often and in what contexts?
What similarities and differences are there between these experiences?

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Media

Zimmer_A-MESthesis2013.pdf