Examining Collaborative Professional Development: A Participatory Teacher Inquiry by Teacher Educators

Abstract

As a teaching team for an undergraduate introductory education course with one faculty member and seven doctoral students, we both engage in and critically examine collaborative professional development (PD) as it emerged through our flexibly structured bi-weekly team meetings. Here, we draw upon our own experiences and support our learning with qualitative survey data via inquiries of two team members who share how they experienced the team meetings as collaborative PD. Our work highlights the value of the interdisciplinary expertise of our team and the role that reflective structures play in team members’ senses of responsibility to share resources, perspectives, and knowledge, advancing the curriculum and educator PD. Our unfolding research promotes future directions for teacher education and educator PD by inviting all to consider how we can position teachers as sources of knowledge from which we can develop new ways of interpreting curriculum, teaching practices, and PD.