Development of professional learning communities through action research: understanding professional learning in practice

ABSTRACT

This paper explores professional learning as teachers engage in action research to improve their practices. Despite many contributions on professional learning communities and their effects on school improvement, there is less research on how they are developed and how teachers learn collectively. Using a  social theory of learning, three dimensions of communities of practice are used to analyse and describe the qualities of learning groups, where teachers participate by conducting action research. Findings suggest that when teachers engage in action research, they develop a shared repertoire related to the local needs, as well as to the field and traditions of action research. In turn, the repertoire facilitates collaboration among teachers. However, different understandings of the project affect mutual engagement in the learning groups. This indicates that deficiencies in alignment between the local practice and the practice of action research, affect the group qualities and may hinder the development of a PLC. Hence, this paper argues for the importance of making explicit the learning goals for both the local schools’ improvement work and the new way of working, which is the refinement of the practice. The implications for practice in schools entail making practice visible, including each school’s learning history.

KEYWORDS:

• Classroom action research
• communities of practice
• professional learning

Introduction

Professional development (PD) and professional learning communities (PLC) are widely accepted as contributing factors for the improvement of teaching practices and the transformation of student learning (Darling-Hammond and Richardson 2009; Katz and Dack 2014; Kennedy 2016). While a PLC’s characteristics have been described, there remains the need for a deeper understanding of how teachers learn collectively and what enables teacher learning in situ (Opfer and Pedder 2011). According to Stoll et al. (2006), there is evidence that ‘educational reform’s progress depends on teachers’ individual and collective capacity and its link with school-wide capacity for promoting pupils’ learning’ (p. 221). Successful professional learning and development have been identified when teachers engage in inquiry and knowledge-building cycles that start with the students’ needs (Muijs et al. 2014). Action research is one approach to inquiry cycles that has been more commonly embraced in schools in Australia and England (Mockler and Groundwater-Smith 2015). This is also the case in Sweden, where the Swedish National Agency for Education (SNA) provides schools with collegial learning programmes and promotes schools’ engagement in action research to take responsibility for their own improvement (Skolverket 2016).

The changes in the Swedish Education Act in 2010 state that all education in Sweden should rest on science and proven experience (SFS [The Swedish Code of Statutes] 2010, 800), which requires schools to adopt research findings and scientific methods in their daily work. In an era of increased focus on student results and international comparisons, teachers are held more accountable for their students’ results, which might in turn undermine the critical dimension of action research (Mockler and Groundwater-Smith 2015). Furthermore, without problematising the end goal of action research, it might serve to reinforce existing practices (Noffke 2009) and thus not promote change. An uncritical adoption of action research might lead to its use as an implementation tool, with collaborations within the teachers’ comfort zone and decreased learning possibilities as consequences (Wennergren 2016).

Given this background, this study aims to describe and deepen the knowledge about the development of PLCs as teachers meet regularly to improve their practices through action research. Using analytical tools from Wenger’s (1998, 2000) social learning theory, this article examines how teachers engage with one another in their development work and what repertoire is developed through this work. The research questions are as follows: How does the development of a PLC unfold in practice? What does this mean in relation to teacher learning in practice?

Background

Continuous professional development (CPD) programmes come in different forms. In her review of the literature on CPD, Kennedy (2014) identifies nine models of CPD and labels them in relations to their purposes, ranging from transmissive to malleable to transformative, with an increasing capacity for professional autonomy and teacher agency from the first to the last model. CPD programmes can be national and state initiatives, collaborations between research communities and schools or local undertakings. In her spectrum of CPD models, Kennedy (2014, 693) labels action research as having a transformative purpose and being a collaborative professional inquiry model, with the highest capacity for professional autonomy and teacher agency. Additionally, action research is commonly promoted because of its promising abilities to bridge the gap between research and practice.

These abilities have more recently been further highlighted by Davis et al. (2018), who argue that teachers should think like researchers in an era when teachers are responsible for student outcomes. However, their study reveals difficulties among student teachers conducting action research in the practice of schools, where the time-consuming process it entails seems the most prominent. In their study, resistance towards implementing an action research project is manifested in ‘not associating the investment of time with the ultimate purpose of the research – to investigate problems of practice within their classrooms and gain insight and essential research skills from the action research process’ (p. 70). This is a common phenomenon in education, and with the attempt to address these gaps across research, policy and PD, Dimmock (2016, 52) argues for schools’ engagement in research around the notion of PLCs to close these gaps. The notion of PLCs and adoptions of the broad concept of knowledge-building cycles have carried with them an increased emphasis on learning.

For example, the term ‘action research’ seems to have been relegated somewhat in favour of the increasingly popular, and more broadly encompassing, ‘professional inquiry’; and ‘communities of practice’ are perhaps more commonly called ‘learning communities’ or ‘teacher learning communities’, maybe reflecting a more explicit emphasis on learning as opposed to simply practice. (Kennedy 2014, 692)

In the pursuit of a deeper understanding of ‘teacher learning’, Kennedy (2014, 690) concludes, ‘Most of this work, however, focuses on the individual teacher as the unit of analysis’, which calls for research that focuses on PLCs and schools as the units of analysis. The notion of learning in practice, as opposed to ‘simply practice’, also needs further attention.

As practices unfold differently in different schools, Groundwater-Smith and Mockler (2009) address the importance of making practice visible and participants’ sharing a collective responsibility. They suggest the possibility to imagine PLCs as communities forming for a specific purpose and ‘not an end in themselves, but a means of cultivating skills, knowledge and dispositions for specific purposes’ (Groundwater-Smith and Mockler 2009, 104). Stating this, they draw on the work by Warren Little (2002, pp. 936–937), who argues that learning becomes apparent in ongoing activities and changes in action and participation and that tracing trajectories of individual and collective changes in practice is a promising way to show development and learning in professional practice.

The issue on the effects of PLCs has also been raised. Darling-Hammond and Richardson (2009, 50) state that ‘[b]ecause effective collaboration requires much more than simply bringing teachers together, we need to learn how schools can form and support teacher learning communities that engage in joint work’. The present article can be viewed as a response to this and to Warren Little’s (2002) call for research that demonstrates how PLCs achieve their effects. In this case, this means unpacking the ongoing activities and changes in participation in teacher learning groups, organised around making changes in practices through action research. By doing so, this article contributes to deeper knowledge regarding teacher learning in practice through action research and its possible consequences for practice.

In her attempt to identify crucial factors concerning teacher learning in an inquiry process, Wennergren (2016) discusses the importance of a critical friend when teachers engage in action research. Her findings show that the absence of a critical friend’s role poses the risk of teachers engaging in more comfortable collaborations on changes in the classroom, rather than stepping into a zone of more discomfort, with increased possibilities for learning. Another crucial factor highlights the complexity of mastering several sets of skills in conducting action research (Wennergren 2016). Mastering procedural and methodological skills should coincide with the practice of teaching.

The differences between the research community and the practice in schools have also been highlighted by Møller (1998), who discriminates between action research as professional work and action research as a research strategy. This means that for teachers to embark on the risky journey of critically examining their own practice in order to learn from it, schools must have a culture of trust. Furthermore, the act of teaching should align with the act of researching to prevent utilising action research as an implementation tool for evidence-based practice (cf. Mockler and Groundwater-Smith 2015). In her historical review of action research literature, Noffke (2009) concludes that although action research takes various forms, there is a common epistemological ground where knowledge is closely connected to practice, and the political dimension is always present. While the evidence-based movement assumes that there are general answers on how to act in practice, this situated perspective indicates that all planned changes must relate to existing practices. Adopting this epistemological stance, the following section outlines the situated learning theory developed by Lave and Wenger (1991) and further developed by Wenger (1998, 2000), which guides the analysis.

Theoretical framework

The primary focus of Wenger’s (1998, 2000, 2018) theory of learning is on learning as social participation. In his case, participation refers to involvement in the negotiation and the reification of a joint problem or project in the practices of social communities, as well as the construction of identities in relation to these communities. This means that (a) for the individual, learning is an issue of engaging in the community’s practices, (b) for the community, learning is a matter of refining its practices and of its self-maintenance, and (c) for the organisation to support learning, it needs to sustain the interconnected communities of practice (CoPs) that make the organisation effective. According to Wenger (1998, 2000, 2018), CoPs can be described and analysed by means of three dimensions: shared repertoire, mutual engagement and joint enterprise.

A shared repertoire refers to ways of doing things, using words and tools, as well as concepts that the community has produced or adopted, throughout its history, that can be reified in shared histories and documents. However, gathering people who share a history in a room with a set of tools and documents does not necessarily mean that a CoP exists. A CoP is also characterised by the relations and the mutual engagement that are organised around the group’s tasks. Finally, joint enterprise is what the CoP is set to do, which is negotiated within the group. According to Wenger (1998), learning in practice therefore includes these three processes for the community: (1) evolving forms of mutual engagement; (2) understanding and tuning its enterprise; and (3) developing its repertoire, styles and discourses.

Participation in a social learning community also requires these three modes of belonging: engagement, imagination and alignment (Wenger 2000). To distinguish among these modes, Wenger describes engagement as doing things together and producing artefacts, and in the ways in which the community members engage with one another also shapes their experiences of who they are. For an individual starting a new job, this means engaging in daily meetings and practices in the workplace. However, for a community to learn a new way of working, this might entail engaging in novel ways of working together. It might be said that engagement is the easiest mode of belonging. In contrast, imagination requires a person to create images of oneself and the communities beyond the existing and situated reality in which one participates to orient oneself in the world. Finally, alignment entails a mutual process of coordinating local activities with other processes to achieve community goals.

As an example, becoming a teacher means that one participates in the daily school practices by engaging with colleagues to gain experiences as a teacher. Moreover, because a teacher is unable to engage with all teachers in the world, the mode of imagination enables one to identify with the teacher community at large. A group of teachers might then collaborate with a local environmental organisation to teach their students about environmental issues, which would in turn require alignment between the two communities (the teachers and the environmental organisation) to achieve their mutual goals.

Wenger’s (1998) theoretical landscape has been criticised for being empirically untested (cf. Wubbels 2007). Subsequently, the theory’s adoption in research has also been criticised for using only parts of the concepts from the theory and thus not using its full potential (Smith, Hayes, and Shea 2017). In the present case, the three dimensions of a CoP are used to analyse and describe the development of a PLC and to test them empirically. Additionally, the three modes of belonging are used to interpret the results.

Design and methods

The context

The study is designed as a case study of an upper secondary school in Sweden. The selection of the school is based on the premises of the interest in and the organisation for development work and action research; thus, it can be considered a convenient sampling. As an independent school, it started in the academic year 2014/2015, and since the beginning, it has had an organisation for teachers to work collectively on school improvement. The teachers hold a 75-minute weekly meeting, where they exclusively work on their development projects through action research. They are divided into two learning groups – the Monday and the Friday groups – each with eleven participants (Table 1). Although most group members are trained teachers, some have not completed teacher education, and three are in the process of completing their teacher training. The names used here are pseudonyms, and all participants have signed a letter of consent, with the possibility to withdraw from the study at any time.

Table 1. Participants’ education and years of employment in the school.

Learning group	Name	Completed teacher education	Employment in the school
Monday group	Karl	Yes	Since 2015
	Bo	Yes	Since 2016
	Tom	No	Since 2016
	Rickard	No	Since 2016
	Nils	Yes	Since 2015
	Mats	Yes	Since 2017
	Bill	Yes	Since 2014
	Urban*	No	2016–2017
	Stefan*	Ongoing	Since 2014
	Irma*	Yes	2016–2017
	Ingvar*	Yes	Since 2015
Friday group	Kerstin	Yes	Since 2014
	Julia	Yes	Since 2015
	Marie	Ongoing	Since 2016
	Björn	Yes	Since 2015
	Harry	Ongoing	Since 2016
	Ingrid	Yes	Since 2014
	Anki	Yes	Since 2015
	Stina	No	Since 2016
	Monika	Yes	Since 2016
	Elsie	Yes	Since 2014
	Per-Olov	Yes	Since 2014

*Has not been interviewed

Action research was first introduced in the school in the spring of 2015 as a way to conduct development work in practice. In the fall of 2017, the school started a one-year educational programme in cooperation with the University of Gothenburg, which aimed to learn about action research and how to conduct it in order to understand and improve educational practice. The programme was arranged as dialogue conferences (Gustavsen 2001; Lund 2008) that included four meetings with readings and work to do locally in between the meetings. Among the many approaches to action research, the one undertaken by the teachers in this study could be best described as classroom action research, which is defined as ‘involv[ing] the use of qualitative modes of enquiry and data collection by teachers (often with help from academic partners) with a view to teachers making judgments about how to improve their own practices’ (Kemmis, McTaggart, and Nixon 2014, 11). As a development leader in the school and a doctoral student, the researcher of this present study had the role of assisting the university representatives during the conferences and locally, performed the functions of leading the development work between the conferences and acting as a critical friend to colleagues.

Method and analysis

The analysis is based on evidence gathered from interviewing 18 teachers who participated in the learning groups in the school. As shown in Table 1, four teachers in the Monday group were not interviewed because in two cases, they quit their jobs and in the other two cases, the interviews were repeatedly postponed. The interviews were held in 2017, and the interview questions were designed to make the teachers describe the project of the learning group and how they related to one another in terms of doing tasks together. These 40–60-minute individual interviews were audio recorded and transcribed. The decision on using single-interviews instead of group-interviews was taken with the teachers, not to take time from their weekly meetings in the learning groups. Since Wenger’s (1998, 2000, 2018) theory is about individual’s participation in the social context, it was still possible to capture the individual’s statements about participation in the learning groups and then aggregate these statements to make the social object the analytical unit.

The analysis was conducted in four steps. The first step involved listening to each recorded interview as a whole to get a coherent sense of each teacher’s profile and descriptions of his/her professional role and what he/she does in the school and the learning group. Second, joint enterprise, mutual engagement and shared repertoire were deductively identified in relation to each teacher’s description of the improvement work in the school. When identifying the shared repertoire, this researcher searched for words and specific ways of doing things that the teachers talked about when describing their development work in the learning groups, as well as when giving examples of their previous development work. Mutual engagement was identified in regard to what was discussed as a collective vis à vis an individual endeavour, when answering the question of what they did together with their colleagues. The joint enterprise was identified according to the interviewees’ answers to the question about what they did in the learning groups (i.e., the group project).

In the third step of the analysis, quotations were chosen to exemplify the three dimensions of a CoP. The quotations were selected based on the notion of multivocality (Tracy 2010), which in this case means that the dimensions of the CoP are exemplified through the voices of many in the learning groups. The identified examples were categorised into those that were more closely related to the local history and those that were more closely related to the action research field and traditions, as presented in Table 2.

Table 2. Identified aspects in the learning groups in relation to the three dimensions of a CoP.

Joint enterprise		Mutual engagement		Shared repertoire
Local	Action research	Local	Action research	Local	Action research
Improving practice towards the school’s specific goals and developing a culture of inquiry	Trying to understand and conduct action research	Introducing newcomers and maintaining the community	Engaging in and contributing to one another’s action research work	A created lesson policy and assignment matrix, adopted words such as time on task and downtime	Learning dialogues, actions, and tools; keeping a log; engaging in reflection

In the fourth step, individual responses from the participants in the two groups were combined to describe the group qualities based on these three criteria:

1. Do they seem to have a joint understanding of the enterprise – the task that they are set to do in the group?

2. Do they talk about the work as a collective or an individual endeavour, and do they perceive one another as resources?

3. Is the repertoire referred to among the members, and do they seem to use it when working together?

The analysis makes it possible to describe the collective outcome in relation to the three dimensions of a CoP, as well as to describe possible differences within the groups.

Results

The aspects of the three dimensions of a CoP were identified in both learning groups. Table 2 provides an overview of the findings, and examples are given as each group is presented separately and later compared.

The Monday group

In the Monday group as a whole, the enterprise is mainly expressed as undertaking and completing an action research project, and the local project is somewhat deemphasised (cf. Table 2), as observed in these answers to the question about the work in the learning group:

Well, primarily it is the action research we work with […]; we also discuss educational texts. (Bo)

Action research, it all seems to be very practical. We all have to find our own area, well, research area, I guess; that’s what it is, to be able to ah, possibly make improvements in our own teaching methods and then to be able to share that with others, with all the terminology that’s in there. (Nils)

These quotes serve as examples of how action research is mentioned as the main project in the Monday group. However, Karl’s comment below, exemplifies that there are discrepancies in what is seen as the main project within the group. Whereas Nils and Bo put action research to the fore, Karl emphasises the local improvement areas, as illustrated in the following quote:

It’s organised reflections, kind of, about the work you are doing […]. You redo, improve it […] collegial reflections […] this improvement work we do, the action research, is intended to relate to our improvement areas in the school […]. You support each other and guide each other in these different kinds of dialogues […]. You can get help to find what you cannot see yourself, with the help of others […]. You are given relevant questions …; we all did learning dialogues. (Karl)

From Karl’s perspective, the local improvement areas guide the work in the learning group and action research is ‘intended to relate’ to these areas and contribute, as a means, to this collective work. He continues by mentioning the repertoire (learning dialogues) and engagement – in terms of supporting and guiding each other in dialogues – to undertake the enterprise of improving the prioritised areas in the school.

Differences in what is mentioned as the project affect the mutual engagement. For instance, Bill and Mats talk about the project in the learning group as ‘professional development’, as a place where they find time to discuss pedagogy and what to improve as teachers. However, regarding cooperation with colleagues, they are more loosely engaged although in somewhat different ways.

Mats, a newcomer to the profession and recently employed, explains that he would ‘like more guidance about what to do’, that the way that things are done in action research – to ask one’s own research question about the areas for improvement – is too difficult, and he would rather be told what to improve. In contrast, Bill, who has worked in the school since it first opened, talks about the project as coming up with one’s own improvement area but describes it as a rather individual endeavour:

What we do together, what becomes an asset to me is to be able to discuss the results, my own reflections, and particularly the occasions when you’re not sure how to go on, to be able to discuss, ‘What should I do now?’ I haven’t experienced that I have gained so much this year in the group discussions because I’ve had a very clear idea of what I want to do and what methods I will use. (Bill)

To Bill, it seems important that his colleagues can help him how to understand his results and how to proceed with his action research. In this case, when he already knows what to do, he does not seem to regard his colleagues as resources or himself as a resource to them. This indicates that the engagement is mainly organised around the success of everyone’s own action research project. On the other hand, Rickard, a newcomer to the group, explains the work in the learning groups as a place ‘to help each other in different ways’. While the project of the learning group is somewhat vague to him, he emphasises the cooperation and mentions several ways of doing things when conducting his action research, such as ‘keeping a log’, which he mentions when reflecting on the issue of time:

but to structure all that is needed to be done, with your log and all of that, and the practical, sort of, for me I would need a little bit more time, sort of. (Rickard)

The following quote illustrates the relation between the local enterprise and the action research enterprise within the Monday group:

What we do is basically, as I interpret it, trying to help each other in different ways, ehm … and that we try to go somewhat in the same direction maybe, with the pedagogical, then what we do, we do action research, which is also very new to me. (Rickard)

Drawing on the data from the Monday group as a whole shows the enterprise as twofold and still under negotiation. The project is both described as working together pedagogically on the local improvement areas (cf. Karl and Rickard), and as doing action research, with an emphasis on undertaking and completing the individual action research projects (cf. Bo, Nils and Bill). Hence, the engagement appears to unfold as help and support in one another’s individual projects. Finally, all members seem to have access to the repertoire, and they cite examples of how it is used when engaging with one another (e.g., learning dialogs, reflections).

The Friday group

In this group, most teachers talk about the work as a collective endeavour to improve instructional practices towards the school’s specific improvement areas and to develop a culture of inquiry (cf. Table 2). Regarding the dimension of mutual engagement, the teachers in this group discuss about supporting one another in their dilemmas and problems in the classroom, sharing thoughts and ideas, and contributing with different perspectives, as well as introducing newcomers to the community (see Table 2). The local improvement history and ways of doing things (repertoire) are frequently mentioned and shared among the participants.

To illustrate how the enterprise of this group appears to be more oriented to the local project of developing a culture of inquiry, Ingrid talks about the learning group as performing collective work with two purposes:

That you yourself improve […], but it is also something that we do in the school as a whole – we grow a culture; we strive towards improving quality all the time. (Ingrid)

This collective endeavour is also found in Monika’s presentation of her view on the purpose of the learning group:

As I understand, the purpose [of] the learning group is to … we have these mutual goals in the school, to improve, for example, being structured and clear, and feedback …, and this is what we do in the learning groups. We work [on] these improvement areas and how to put it … to practically improve them after the needs that you find in your classroom. (Monika)

To Monika, the mutual goals for the school is the primary focus. In her description, she mentions the repertoire related to the school’s history of working on the lesson structure and clarity. As suggested in her account, these goals also need to be negotiated in relation to the needs of the students in her classroom. Thus, in addition to the collective endeavour of improving practice towards the school’s specific goals, there is the issue of adjusting and renegotiating these goals with the classroom practice. Another group member illustrates the engagement in the group:

I try out my thoughts because when you think for yourself, it always sounds so good or bad … . You get confirmed, but not only; I’ve learned new concepts. Swedish teachers talk a different language. It’s exciting when you understand things in different ways […] and if someone is completely new and dares to talk about their feelings and if someone who has worked many years dares to talk about their feelings about it [the development work] … . I think my colleagues are very generous … . You dare to talk about what they have failed with, too, not just the success stories. (Anki)

When Anki describes the work in the learning group, she talks about her colleagues as resources to challenge her thoughts, and she also notes the mutual support between newcomers and old-timers. Later in the interview, she mentions ‘downtime’ and several ways of doing things that the teachers have worked on in the learning group, such as auscultations, interviews and learning dialogues (shared repertoire), as in the following quote:

We have tried auscultations; we’ve interviewed each other; we’ve read. I like the discussions about understanding different concepts […]. I like ‘learning dialogues’. I was very happy to find a method of talking that involves everybody; it really gives you opportunities to express yourself … . When I’m forced into these situations, when I’m supposed to share, well, I like to listen. Then I feel it’s good for me, but I find it hard … well, yes; basically I learn, in our learning group, that you can cooperate … . I learn how to share. (Anki)

The different ways of doing things that Anki mentions in the preceding quote have been introduced as means to have the teachers engage in one another’s development work and be critical friends in their action research efforts. As seen in the quote, this ‘new’ way of working has forced her to learn how to share, and she expresses her feelings about having to change her ways. Further examples of the relation between old-timers and newcomers are cited by Harry and Kerstin when discussing the cooperation in the learning groups from their different perspectives.

Well, […] say you have a problem […]; based on the premises, you are supposed to do something about it; it creates this … [O]ne of the first things I thought about [was] that it felt really safe to come in and sit down and talk when everybody [has] different problems, especially when you are new. […] There’s this development curve […]. I’m new. I’m not really sure what I’m doing, and I do my best, based on my ability. It feels safe, and I want to improve, and that feels good. (Harry)

In the preceding quote, Harry states that it feels safe to share with his colleagues, and he sees opportunities for him to develop as a teacher in a safe environment.

Kerstin, who has worked in the school since it first opened and can be considered an old-timer, starts talking about her new colleagues when sharing her thoughts on the school history:

Yes, new colleagues, for example […] we’ve been talking about that […] history; that this is what we’ve worked with earlier, but I think when you come here as new, then there’s a lot that’s new. There’s like a history of starting new […]. There’s a thought in the house; we have learning groups, we have action research, we have … . What else [have] we got? Well, it’s not that easy to just jump in and just get it […], but then again, perhaps you don’t need [an introduction] because here, now is now … so you don’t have to read some history. [B]ut there are many things we’ve developed that if you’d been [in] your own chamber, then you probably hadn’t gotten that far. I don’t think so, because we’ve done it together. (Kerstin)

To Kerstin, the collective work seems to have been an important aspect for the school to have ‘gotten that far’ in its development work. At the same time, she acknowledges that there might be a lot to grasp and familiarise oneself with as a newcomer in this particular school. In the previous quote, Harry’s way of talking about his colleagues and the practice of the learning groups suggests his reliance on his more experienced colleagues to help him with his improvement efforts. At the same time, observing his colleagues trying to improve their practices helps him recognise the possibilities for further continuous personal development. With their different perspectives, Harry and Kerstin exemplify the mutual engagement organised around the maintenance of the community and the introduction of newcomers (cf. Table 2).

To the Friday group as a whole, the enterprise seems more focused on local needs, and building a culture of investigating one’s practice and action research is perceived as a means to accomplish this. The engagement appears oriented towards introducing newcomers, maintaining the community, and supporting and challenging one another when undertaking action research projects. Similar to the Monday group, the repertoire is shared among the participants and used when collaborating to develop instructional practices towards the school’s improvement areas.

Comparing the groups: aligning practices

Comparing the two groups, although they work in the same school, the analysis shows some differences.

For the Monday group, the enterprise primarily seems to involve learning how to conduct action research. In their efforts to do so, the teachers engage with one another in the sense of participating in the learning group meetings and helping one another finish their individual action research projects. Through this work, they have developed a repertoire that entails words and ways of doing things that come from the field of action research, as well as the local schools’ previous development efforts.

In the Friday group, the local improvement areas are put to the fore, even though action research is frequently mentioned when asked what they do in the learning group, but more so as a means to do the work. The teachers in this group engage in one another’s work in their collective endeavour to improve their teaching practices, as well as introduce newcomers and maintain their community. The repertoire is shared among the participants and contains words and ways of doing things introduced through action research, along with locally produced documents from previous development work.

Reasoning with Wenger’s (2000) modes of belonging – engagement, imagination and alignment – might shed some light on the differences within the groups. For the teachers in these learning groups, engagement entails participating in the teaching practices, as well as attending the learning group meetings and performing activities together to improve their teaching practices. However, improving practice through action research also requires the act of imagination: to reflect on and critically examine one’s practice and imagine oneself as a teacher capable of making inquiries into one’s own practice to learn from it. Additionally, the mode of alignment is required to fine-tune the practice of teaching with the practice of research. To exemplify this, the differences between the two groups can be examined.

On one hand, the Friday group comprises more teachers who have worked in the school since its opening and already bring their experiences from engaging together in starting the school, as well as from jointly working on school improvement since the beginning. On the other hand, the Monday group includes four teachers who have not completed teacher education and one teacher who is a newcomer to the profession. For these teachers, the act of engagement alone requires them to create experiences as teachers (in this specific school), as well as teachers who research their own practice. This can be a time-consuming and difficult task and a probable reason why Mats, a newcomer who belongs to the Monday group, says that he would ‘rather be told what to do’ for his action research project, rather than come up with something himself. This indicates an insufficient alignment between the two practices of teaching and of research. This is further exemplified by Mats’ explanation that he is now finally through with his education, where ‘they have tried to teach me for five years what research is’. Now, he just wants ‘to know how to be a teacher’, which shows his view on the teaching profession as excluding working in a scientific way. In contrast, Ingrid, who belongs to the Friday group, presents a somewhat different view when discussing the work in the learning group, which also exemplifies the three modes of belonging (in brackets):

We grow a culture, we strive towards improving quality all the time, […]. We see teaching as something that is constantly being improved [alignment]. Action research has helped me see what I do [imagination], and it feels good to be someone who strives forward, kind of … [imagination]. There’s a lot of affirmation that you’re on the right track and do it right, think aloud [engagement]. We help each other to formulate research questions and suggest how you can measure this [engagement]. (Ingrid)

Being an old-timer in the school, already having experiences as a teacher, along with experiences of doing improvement work with her colleagues, Ingrid fine-tunes the alignment between the practices of being a teacher and of developing a culture of inquiry. The acts of engagement are exemplified as ‘think aloud’ and helping one another formulate research questions. Using the mode of imagination, she reflects on the community’s work, where action research has helped her recognise her teaching practices, with the possibilities of becoming someone ‘who strives forward’.

Discussion and conclusions

This study has aimed to describe and deepen the knowledge about the development of PLCs as teachers meet regularly to improve their practices through action research. Analytical tools from Wenger’s (1998, 2000, 2018) social theory of learning have been used in this study to answer questions on how the development of a PLC unfolds in practice and what this means in relation to teacher learning in practice.

To answer these questions, the results first show that the teachers in this case have developed a repertoire that contains the history of previous development work, as well as words and ways of doing things together that come from the field and traditions of action research. Examples have been found in the ‘lesson policy’ and ‘the assignment matrix’ (as presented in Table 2) and in specific words from the action research field and traditions, as well as structures for dialogues. Furthermore, this repertoire is interrelated with the mutual engagement and facilitates collaboration, as well as the introduction of newcomers to the groups. However, the analysis also shows that the enterprise for each group seems to differ to some extent and is not negotiated among the members, specifically on whether action research is perceived as a means to improve practice or as the end goal itself.

Second, its meaning in terms of teacher learning in practice can be summarised as follows:

1. Teachers learn by developing their repertoire together, applying new forms of collaboration (e.g., learning dialogues), creating local policies and documents, and adding new words and concepts to their repertoire.

2. Teachers learn by evolving forms of mutual engagement, such as introducing newcomers and maintaining their group, supporting one another in their action research projects with different perspectives, and formulating research questions.

3. Teachers learn by tuning their enterprise and negotiating on the local improvement work with the action research approach. This includes understanding action research and how to carry it out, as well as aligning the approach to everyday practice.

Differences in the group qualities found in the Monday and the Friday groups can be discussed with the help of Wenger’s (2000) different modes of belonging that coexist in social learning communities. The teachers in this case, while working in the same school, engaging in their daily work with one another, attending meetings and doing lesson plans together, are creating experiences of what it means to be teachers in this particular school. In the learning groups, the teachers also work at the boundaries of another community, that is, the action research community. Belonging to or becoming a member of such a social learning community requires the acts of imagination and alignment. In aligning these practices, the groups negotiate on their enterprises to meet the local needs. At the time of the interviews, these learning groups were still fine-tuning their communities to align these practices.

Findings presented in this article suggests that even for schools with an organisation and time for development work – thus creating the possibilities for engagement – the novel ways of working bring challenges to the daily work. Consequently, the goals for learning should be made explicit, particularly those where the content is further from the teacher, in this case, to work scientifically through action research. As improving practice through scientific methods has to coexist with the current practice of teaching in schools, the three modes of belonging (engagement, imagination, alignment) needs to coexist. Spending too much time reflecting scientifically and analysing practice might detract from engagement in lesson planning or teaching, among others.

For schools that hope that making time for teachers’ meetings will result in PLCs, which in an uncritical way meets the demands on teachers and schools to become scientifically grounded and to improve students’ results, this article contributes with perspectives to reflect on when trying to develop a PLC to close the gaps across research, policy and PD (cf. Dimmock 2016).

As presented in this study, for the individual teacher, learning entails engaging in both the daily practice of teaching and action research. To master these skills simultaneously (cf. Wennergren 2016), the acts of imagination and alignment are required, that is, reflecting on one’s teaching practice and imagining oneself as a teacher with the ability to improve and align the improvement work with teaching in the classroom. To the more experienced teachers in this study (who also share a history together), this set of requirements seems easier; hence, the mutual engagement appears more organised around maintaining the community and fine-tuning the practices. Whereas for newcomers, mutual engagement is mainly organised to support one another in the process of completing an action research project. For the community, learning in this case includes developing novel forms of working together that make it easier to align and to fine-tune the practices, as Anki in the Friday group elaborated on in an earlier quote about the learning dialogues and auscultations (see p. 17).

Reasoning with the arguments of Groundwater-Smith and Mockler (2009), the learning groups in this presented case could be perceived as means to increase the teachers’ skills to work scientifically in their daily practice. Although fulfilling the Swedish Education Act’s requirement to work scientifically, if this is not subordinated to negotiation in schools, the end goals of action research risk being undermined and unproblematised, which in turn might lead to action research being adopted as an implementation tool for evidence-based practice instead of contributing to critical practice and learning (cf. Mockler and Groundwater-Smith 2015). Thus, for an organisation to support learning, it is important to do the following tasks: (a) Negotiate and define the end goal(s) for the school (which might include improving scientific skills and increasing a school’s specific goals). (b) Define actions needed to achieve these goals (which might include adjusting the organisation to support teachers in mastering different skills simultaneously). (c) Make the learning process visible and adjust it when necessary (to introduce new employees and maintain cooperation in school). Acknowledging that working with scientific methods in schools is not easily added to the daily routines is the first step.

In conclusion, using theoretical concepts (as in this case) makes it possible to describe and make visible professional learning in practice: the repertoire that the teachers develop, how they engage in one another’s work and towards what goals. In accordance with Noffke’s (2009, 16) recommendation, instead of reinventing action research and labelling it differently under the broad concept of knowledge-building cycles, this paper calls for more research that examines knowledge-building in practice, specifically with the collective as the analytical unit, not just individual teachers. In particular, there is a need for further studies to explain the learning process of aligning the practice of research with the daily practice of teaching, for instance, during the critical phase of analysis. Only then can educational researchers and educators come closer to helping schools on how to support teacher learning communities to achieve their goals, not to adopt an action research strategy just to ‘tick the box’ indicating that they work scientifically.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.