Occasioning possibilities, not certainties: professional learning and peer‐led book clubs

Abstract

How might four teachers working together in a book group utilize their learning to better ensure students’ academic success? In what ways might this collective’s learning emerge as the group worked together? Questions such as these prompted the author to investigate the professional learning that occurred during book club sessions with one group of teachers enrolled in a graduate course. Her intention in presenting this case study of four elementary teachers and the complex learning associated with the book club process is two‐fold: to describe how the teachers participated in peer‐led book clubs and made use of the book club experience as a practice field in which they rehearsed instruction they would conduct with students; and to conclude this discussion by focusing on how book clubs are potential communities of practice that exemplify complex professional learning.

Keywords:

• professional learning
• complexity
• Mikhail Bakhtin
• peer‐led book clubs

Notes

1. All student names are pseudonyms.

2. Reading Recovery is an early reading prevention program developed by Marie Clay and implemented at first grade in some schools in the United States.