Towards Variation in Professional Learning Practices: A Case Study on Collaborative Inquiry with Language Teacher Candidates

Creating conditions that allow for the autonomy of educators during professional learning has been a key focus in educational research in recent years. Much evidence supports that collaborative inquiry (CI) is a model that can foster this autonomy by prioritizing teachers’ concerns, needs, and interests in the professional learning process. By working on problems they encounter in their daily experiences, groups of educators are able to develop unique professional learning practices that attend to their context. Through the lens of complexity, this study examines how variation emerged in the CI practices of four groups of teacher candidates who shared the common discipline of language teaching. The data were collected with participants through interviews, video recordings, and a researcher journal, then reconstructed into a narrative case study to showcase the unique learning trajectories of each of the CI groups. I discuss the nuances between these trajectories and the implications for CI initiatives with language educators.