This mixed methods study explores the impact of parents learning to practicemindfulness on their emotion regulation, their interactions with children, and their children’s emotion regulation. The study was situated within the Balsz School District, where children often have difficulty regulating their emotions, leading to emotional, behavioral, relational, and learning challenges. Whether by exposure to community or domestic violence, refugee or homeless status, many families within the district have been exposed to multiple forms of trauma, often associated with emotional dysregulation. Parent and child emotion regulation are interdependent and interconnected. Relationships and interactions between parents and children begin in utero lay and neurobiological pathways that are the basis for the child’s emotions, behaviors, beliefs about themselves, relationships, and the world. Working with parents is often an entry point in helping children. Mindfulness promotes emotion regulation through changes to the structures and functions of the brain. One way these changes become visible is through alterations in behavior and communication in relationships with others. The mixed methods approach of this study utilized surveys, auto-ethnographic observation, and interviews. Results demonstrate that parents who learned to practice mindfulness strengthened their emotion regulation and feelings of connectedness to others. They became more aware of their feelings when interacting with their children, particularly in moments that required discipline. When children needed to be disciplined, parents were able to pause, reflect, and communicate with their children to promote internalized learning. This learning was carried forward in children and evidenced through positive changes in children’s emotion regulation. Overall, children were less worried, easier to soothe, and happier.

Within English supplementary tutoring centers in China, the professional development teachers are afforded is limited due to time constraints and the qualifications of teacher trainers within those centers. To facilitate a novel means of engaging teachers in their professional development related to guided reading, an innovation configurations map was introduced to teachers at two centers in southern China. This map is composed of six configurations that would foster teachers’ understanding of what comprised effective guided reading classes. They include a focus on prior knowledge, vocabulary, reading skills and strategies, reading comprehension, class discussion, and written expression. Implementing the innovation configurations map for guided reading at the two centers occurred with head teachers and key informants from both centers. Other teachers participated to varying degrees based on their interests and availability. Using a qualitative case study methodology as part of an action research project, six strands of data were collected to assess how teachers used the map and what lessons were learned. These strands are institutional documents, interviews with participants, participant observation of academic meetings, direct observation of key informants’ classes, and education journey maps detailing participants’ experiences in using the innovation configurations map. For roughly seven months, the participants worked on developing their understanding of how to use the map and apply it within their contexts. They built this awareness within their activity systems with guidance and support from their colleagues and me. The contingent and responsive help teachers received was crucial in ensuring they understood how to use the innovation configurations map and their willingness to do so. Without that support and guidance, teachers were ambivalent about the use of the map and used it minimally or not at all. The findings, thus, indicate that for teachers to be willing to develop themselves professionally and use the innovation configurations map, they require ongoing support and guidance based on their needs to ensure they may do so effectively.

My research explored two issues in leadership development: how busy executives can sustainably learn with flexibility and efficiency and how to cultivate a grace-based approach to leadership. This is a dissertation in practice that offers an alternative format from traditional research yet still advances professional knowledge, rigorous thinking and complex problem-solving. This reimagined manuscript includes a multi-modal presentation of the theory, methods, analysis and findings for an emerging leadership concept and an improved direction for mobile learning research. These findings can be experienced by listening to an embedded podcast series and reading draft articles for academic and business media journals that speak to the audience of influencers in my professional context of leadership researchers, advisors and coaches. The learning innovation involved is a podcast called Giving Grace Matters that includes narrative and interviews with high-performing executives about a grace-based approach to leadership, and the qualitative analysis of these interviews served as the basis for constructing the knowledge about this leadership concept using three guiding theories: Planned Behavior, Self-Determination, and Intentional Change. The research identified the novel concept of a grace-based approach to leadership that can be applied in organizations as well as the need for further evaluation of how a flexible learning framework for microlearning experiences, such as podcasts, can be intentionally designed.