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The ‘dark side of the moon’: a criticallook at teacher knowledge constructionin collaborative settingsLily Orland‐Barak a & Harm Tillema b

a University of Haifa , Israelb Leiden University , The NetherlandsPublished online: 24 Jan 2007.

To cite this article: Lily Orland‐Barak & Harm Tillema (2006) The ‘dark side of the moon’: a criticallook at teacher knowledge construction in collaborative settings, Teachers and Teaching: theoryand practice, 12:1, 1-12

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Thematic introduction

The ‘dark side of the moon’: a critical look at teacher knowledge construction in collaborative settingsLily Orland-Barak* and Harm TillemaUniversity of Haifa, Israel; Leiden University, The NetherlandsTaylor and Francis LtdCTAT_A_136433.sgm10.1080/13450600500364505Teachers and Teaching: theory and practice1354-0602 (print)/1470-1278 (online)Original Article2006Taylor & Francis121000000December 2005LilyOrland-Baraklilyb@construct.haifa.ac.il

Over the last two decades or so teacher knowledge construction has gained aprominent place in the research literature of teaching and teacher education, as wellas in the design of pre-service and professional development programmes. The vastmajority of research programmes have focused on first person accounts of the chal-lenges, affordances and assets of doing collaborative teacher research, as well as onthe barriers, impediments and confusions that teacher researchers face ‘on the way’.However, of central concern is what conditions in the collaborative process play outin collaborative teacher research and knowledge construction to transform it into aprofessional learning experience. Drawing on five enquiry study groups this issueattends to critical aspects in the co-construction of knowledge in teacher enquirygroups. The five contributors to this issue focus on the different ‘sides’ of knowledgeconstruction, as shaped by the unique contexts within which their enquiry groupswere situated.

Conversation and dialogue are at the core of knowledge construction. MichalZellermayer and Edith Tabak’s study, ‘Knowledge construction in a teachers’

*Corresponding authors. Lily Orland-Barak, University of Haifa, Mount Carmel, Haifa 31905,Israel. E-mail: lilyb@construct.haifa.ac.il; Harm Tillema, Department of Education, LeidenUniversity, PO Box 9555, NL 2300 RB Leiden, The Netherlands. E-mail: tillema@fsw.leidenuniv.nl

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community of inquiry: a possible road map’, is situated within the context of a part-nership established between their teacher education college and several elementaryschools in the vicinity. The goal for this partnership was to construct a community ofenquiry for in-service and pre-service teachers, as well as for their clinical supervisors.Their role as partnership research facilitators was to move them towards a collabora-tively designed study that they choose and to empower them by involving them fullyin negotiating its aims and methods.

They describe work with members of the community to create a relationship ofmutuality between their research and that of the others. How the cycles of study wereconnected to the changes that took place in the teachers’ perspectives on knowledgeand knowing and to their conceptions of teaching and learning is shown. Further-more, the authors demonstrate that teachers’ perspectives on knowledge, teachingand learning were closely related to their understanding of relationships and related-ness and to their notion of agency and identity.

In her study ‘Convergent, divergent and parallel dialogues: knowledge construc-tion in professional conversations’ Lily Orland-Barak focuses on the process by whichteachers collectively and individually construct professional knowledge in profes-sional conversations. In particular, the question of how forms of participation operateto mediate meanings in conversation should be central to our understanding of thecontribution of major reform efforts in teacher education to engage practitioners inmore communicative practices, situated in their unique social-professional contexts.The extant research literature on knowledge construction and professional conversa-tion has provided important insights into the conditions that sustain professionalconversation frameworks, on the outcomes for professional learning and on theprocess and content of teachers’ conversational learning. This study adds to thisgrowing body of research to further understand how such conversations, viewed associal contexts for the co-construction of meaning, actually operate ‘in action’ andcan constitute opportunities for learning in the situated context within which theyoccur.

Drawing on data from seven monthly conversations conducted in the contextof an in-service professional conversation framework for the mentoring ofmentors, the study explored the dynamics of mentors’ conversations and theirpotential for constituting opportunities for learning. Analysis of the conversationsidentified three different forms of dialogue that operated ‘in action’: ‘convergentdialogue’, ‘parallel dialogue’ and ‘divergent dialogue’. The study highlights threefundamental points about professional conversations in relation to these notions.One, that in any one conversation we can identify various forms of dialogue, eachof which can be potentially valuable for examining either instrumental or concep-tual aspects of professional practice. All three forms of dialogue appear to providevaluable opportunities for co-constructing different kinds of understandings aboutpractice. Two, that divergent and parallel dialogues can constitute importantopportunities for learning because they prompt a discourse in which professionalsexpose, scrutinize and contest deeply ingrained assumptions about their practice.Three, the critical role that the facilitator plays in being attentive to the competing

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Teacher knowledge construction 3

discourses that emerge in conversation and how these shape its development intoeither convergent, divergent or parallel dialogues.

The interventional nature of collaboration is under scrutiny in the study by HarmTillema and Gert van der Westhuizen on ‘Knowledge construction in collaborativeenquiry among teachers’. Their main question is ‘Does active, collaborative andenquiry-oriented activity of teachers lead to knowledge productivity’, i.e. to anincrease in the capability of producing knowledge for practice? A study teamapproach was used to organize teachers’ learning collaboratively (self-regulation) bystudying an issue from different professional perspectives (cognitive flexibility) andby sharing existing knowledge and beliefs while working towards new knowledgeand understanding (conceptual change). This study groups approach was adoptedby teachers working together as colleagues in a team to become more knowledgeproductive learners in their work environment. The outcome of the process wasevaluated using three criteria set by the teachers: (a) raising knowledge and under-standing; (b) shifting individual perspectives; (c) utility of practical outcomes. Eval-uation of their learning processes reveals insights into teachers’ acceptance of thestudy team (i.e. collaborative) outcomes, especially their initial’ (un)easiness and(un)certainties about using this approach, as well as the conditions to be met inpractising it as a learning tool compared with other learning tools for professionallearning.

A concern for the impact and sharing of knowledge construction outside thecollaborative setting is present in the paper by Frances Rust and Ellen Meyers on‘The bright side: teacher research in the context of educational reform andpolicy-making’. While there is a growing body of research by teachers about lifein the classroom and an abundance of research about teachers, their worlds andtheir work, teacher research, i.e. research done by teachers that focuses on theirclassrooms and schools, has not made its way into the discourse about andformulation of educational policy. In part this is due to bias within the researchcommunity itself about the legitimacy of teacher research; in part it is due to the factthat teachers have not positioned themselves as critical stakeholders in the educa-tional policy debate. Efforts to address the issue of legitimacy have resulted in theproliferation of ‘spots’ for teachers’ work in journals and research conferences, butthese tend to be settings in which teacher researchers are essentially ‘preaching to thechoir’. Where teacher research has made its way into scholarship, it has done so byand large as the focus of academic research (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1992;Clandinin & Connelly, 1994) rather than on its own merits as legitimate study inresponse to a critical question. Thus the absence of teacher research as an influentialstrand in the educational policy debate is hardly surprising. This paper draws from aunique set of 120 action research studies completed over the past 6 years by a coali-tion of teachers across the USA who are fellows in the Teachers Network PolicyInstitute. While this work is collaborative in the sense that groups of teachers cometogether in local settings to share their enquiries and to support one another, they arenot bound by either their local or the national organization to focus their research onany one topic. Still, we have found that the research of those teachers who are

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focusing on their own practice or on processes in their schools inevitably devolves toa focus on one of the following areas: school organization and governance, the profes-sional development of teachers, including pre-service teacher education, instructionand curriculum development, and assessment of teaching and learning. The paperfocuses on the issues that confront enquiry-oriented teachers as they seek to betterunderstand their interactions with learners and as they attempt to translate their find-ings into data that can shape educational policy-making.

A still wider perspective is endorsed by Bridget Somekh. Her paper on ‘Devel-oping intercultural knowledge and understanding through collaborative actionresearch’ opens with an exploration of the process of ‘going into’ ideas and theo-ries through the construction of a text. This encapsulation and communication ofknowledge through writing is embodied in the metaphor of the chameleon that, inthe word’s of Hamlet ‘eat(s) the air, promise-crammed’. The paper then goes onto examine the process of knowledge production and intercultural learning in aEuropean funded action research network, Management for Organisational andHuman Development (MOHD), which the author directed in the mid 1990s.MOHD involved partners in Austria, England, Scotland, Spain and Italy.Researchers from Australia, Canada and the USA made significant contributionsto its work during periods of study leave. Over a 2-year period, research activitiesincluded a dozen or so projects with teachers in all phases of education carried outlocally, addressing local needs within the overarching research question of theproject: ‘In what ways can individuals, regardless of their formal position in thehierarchy, learn to understand their own power and make a conscious contributionto organizational development?’ The paper addresses key issues such as: knowl-edge production in action research through personal, dialogic learning; the socio-cultural formation of knowledge in a multi-site, international, research network;the role of individual identity and knowledge construction in building learningorganizations; the integration of intellectual and theoretical engagement in thepraxis of action research.

The purpose of this issue is to draw attention to some uncovered and unattentedand sometimes even neglected aspects of creating knowledge together. Collaborativeinquiry of teachers into their work and professional lives has, over the last twodecades, been advocated as a way of re-valuing teachers’ positions in educationalpractice and of developing their professional identity (Darling Hammond &McLaughlin, 1996; Cobb et al., 2003). Nonetheless, so runs the argument in thisissue, it is not devoid of difficulties and drawbacks.

By attending to the ‘dark side’ of collaborative enquiry we do not necessarilyimply a recounting of unsuccessful experiences with teacher enquiry. As thepapers in this issue may show, raising a critical voice prompts us to considerconcerns and tensions, as well as to delineate the bright side of informed partic-ipation in a community of inquiry (Farr-Darling, 2002). In doing so we can scaf-fold this form of exploratory learning (Castells, 2000), learn about its ‘Janusheaded nature’ and, consequently, form a more comprehensive portrayal of howteacher development can be initiated and supported. The collective papers, each

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in its own way, add to this portrayal, exhibiting a fair balance between the prosand cons of concerted study and teacher collaboration.

The main undertaking of collaborative enquiry and study is the co-construction ofknowledge, whereby local or implicit knowledge in teaching is made explicit (Feiman-Nemser & Beardsley, 1997). It has been advocated as a route in teacher research(Cochran Smith & Lytle, 1998) for a number of reasons, such as linking knowledgegeneration to the workplace, exchange of (practical) ideas and solutions among peers,enhancement of teacher participation in enquiry and of a dynamics of knowing inteaching (Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1994; Hofer & Pintrich, 2002; Mason, 2003). In thisvein, the co-construction of knowledge can be looked upon as a prime route to build-ing and sharing a knowledge base produced by teachers themselves, as well as a meanstowards self-directed professional development (Loughran, 2003). In particular, itsfeatures of partnership and joint collegiality are regarded as a strongpoint, not only tohelp teachers to recognize, interpret and respond to the challenges of their practice,but also to transform their work in the context of educational reform (Rust & Meyers,2006; Hargreaves, 1997). This concerted kind of teacher research, therefore, offersnew ways of seeing, being and acting in the professional world of teachers; emanci-pating them from the mere application of externally generated knowledge to theirclassrooms.

A number of basic issues running as common threads through the differentpapers may be of help to warrant whether or not participation in a community ofenquiry really endorses and supports professional learning. We need to ask, for exam-ple, whether collaborative study and enquiry really induces learning and developmentof teaching practices and not just reifies existing cultural artifacts and common prac-tices. With this question in mind, we focus our introduction on issues of learning,knowledge and knowing, as brought to the fore by the various collaborative enquirystudies.

Learning as a result of collaborative enquiry

A first concern identified in the collected papers, and a serious question to beraised in collaborative knowledge construction in general, is: ‘Has learning beenthe result of working together?’ The teacher groups studied in the papers in thisissue indeed provide testimony that learning has occurred, although each in a vari-ety of ways and probably with quite disparate and unforeseen outcomes. Despitethese differences, however, the kind of learning alluded to in all the studies may beunderstood as raising a situational understanding of one’s teaching and providingilluminative insights into one’s personal beliefs and orientations (as is, for instance,evident in Zellermayer & Tabak’s paper and also present in the examples putforward by Rust & Meyers). As a result of participation in enquiry, Zellermayerand Tabak noted that teachers changed in their perspectives on knowledge andknowing, specifically as related to their understanding of relatedness and personalagency, which eventually helped these teachers/mentors to engage in partnershipswith others. The co-construction of knowledge strengthened their involvement in

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the process and their ability to negotiate meaning and make informed choices.Learning to participate, therefore, gave way to a more informed and professionallyaccepted stance in studying a problem. Somekhs’ paper makes this clear by stress-ing how the collaborative process of knowledge construction moved between thepersonal and the public, encompassing political issues of power and control bothwithin the participants’ organizations and the team itself. Orland-Barak’s paperadds to this idea by showing how conversation supported mentors in buildingframeworks for understanding, and created spaces to discuss and elaborate initialunderstandings. It could be contended that these outcomes can contribute to peda-gogical thinking and problem-solving that is authentic and directed to the individ-ual teachers’ context. Having stated this, however, the study by Tillema and vander Westhuizen warns us of an overly positive evaluation of jointly constructedknowledge, pointing to the fragility of outcomes that can be shared and distributed.For example, knowledge productivity (one of the criteria for learning in theirpaper) was often not reached by groups working collaboratively. They contend thatat least three conditions need to be fulfilled in order for collaborative learningprocesses to be ‘knowledge productive’: the presence of a shared problem under-standing, a willingness to change one’s perspectives and a commitment to partici-pate in the dynamics of the group. In a way, these conditions coincide with Laveand Wenger’s characteristics of a community of practice (Wenger et al., 2002): afocus on shared interests, engagement in joint activities and development of ashared repertoire of resources (experiences, stories, tools, ways to address recurrentproblems). Thus, shared practice seems to be, indeed, a crucial ground for devel-oping knowledge. Cohen et al. (2002) claimed that groups learn as a result ofdiscussions and the creation of group products, a claim which correlates with thenotion of creating conceptual artifacts (Bereiter, 2002; Tillema & van der Westhui-zen, 2006). Learning, in the context of Tillema and van der Westhuizen’s study,was not a matter of sharing relevant academic knowledge but rather of reciprocalexchange of ideas and practices, brought about by participants’ willingness to beself-critical about what the group was creating.

The nature and dynamics of collaboration for knowledge construction

The question of whether groups can learn can also be restated: ‘Does co-construction of the knowledge of teachers (by engaging in the activity itself) createadequate opportunities for learning in the workplace?’, i.e. does it become easier forteachers to make connections to one another as colleagues, to construct usefulknowledge for their regular work and take part in debates at a time and a pace thatis suited to them. Most of the groups studied in the papers in this issue were exter-nally initiated, self-organizing and self-governing groups that shared a temporarycommon goal and interest, which, although connected to it, did not necessarilyemerge out of their regular work. These voluntary groups, of an informal andtopical nature, were often not long lasting (even in the case of Rust and Meyersthey were not conducted on a regular basis or school based). Yet, as the studies

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show, they were extremely resilient learning places (in the sense that their memberspartook and contributed intensely and vividly, as long as interests and issuescoincided and did not drift apart). Their relative loose embedding in the schoolcontext, however, may also mean that members may stop contributing when theyno longer perceive an added value, or they may withhold participation when newareas and problems emerge or when the group dynamics dissipate over time.

Somekh’s study raises the issue of the potentially destructive tensions ofcollaboration, when partners engage in an endeavour which is assumed to haveshared purposes and to be underpinned by shared values, while in fact theirdifferent life experiences and professional biographies often make it inevitablethat they will come up against major differences in each other’s working practicesand assumptions.

A real difficulty in knowledge construction, then, lies in the upholding of a self-sustaining and school-related learning environment, not rid of the natural workcontext of teachers or distanced from the natural classroom context. Otherwise,knowledge construction in cooperating groups will lack continuity and progressionin discourse. The study by Rust and Meyers is of special interest in this respect,because it shows that a group’s existence can be maintained over a longer periodof time without being a formally created group. Indeed, knowledge constructionoccurred in those networks that purposely came together from dispersed localsettings to share their interests. In such cases, however, one needs to be aware ofthe threats to cohesion and sharing. The other papers deal explicitly with formatsfor knowledge development in real, existing groups, i.e. the study team approachby Tillema and van der Westhuizen, the three professional conversation types inthe Orland-Barak study and Zellermayer and Tabak’s approach to partnership.Self-organization may be a strong incentive for groups to maintain their learning aslong as the common goals and aims are shared. Sponsored or self-instantiatedgroups, however, may show a very different kind of dynamics (Kelleher, 2003)from regular school-based groups, since their outcomes do not necessarily contrib-ute directly to the school as organization and the teacher’s work context. It seems,therefore, important to take into account the resources and contextualization ofcollaborative knowledge construction which could influence the potential and rele-vance of the group as well as its individual efforts to learn in quite different ways.The way groups initiate may affect the way in which a community of learnersdevelops.

Forms of intervention and knowledge construction

A third question or concern with regard to knowledge and knowing in collaborativeenquiry would be how (different) forms of intervention mediate meaning andunderstanding. The papers in this issue seem to offer a single answer, one whichsupports extant views on the co-construction of knowledge (Cobb et al., 2003:Loughran, 2003): through study and enquiry conducted by teachers themselves.The studies add evidence to support the claim that the ‘telling’ strategy,

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characteristic of an objectivist stance on knowledge construction (see Hofer &Pintrich, 2002), has now been exchanged for a constructivist stance, which viewsprofessional knowledge and knowing as being recreated and rebuilt by thosedirectly involved in the teaching context. According to this position, knowledge issituated and embedded and needs to be accredited as an ‘epistemology of practice’in its own right (Cobb et al., 2003). In this vein, thought and action are regardedas framed, shaped and scaffolded by the setting and social context within whichthey originate and within which learning takes place. This contextualist and inter-ventionalist assumption is quite explicit in the work of Zellermayer and Tabak andTillema and van der Westhuizen. They address the proliferation of setting andspaces in which teachers operate, extract and reshape meanings. In other words,the intervention constitutes a vehicle for creating a situational understanding ofpractice. Supporting each other in a collaborative setting aligned with a specificallychosen intervention might even prove to be a decisive scaffold for exploratorylearning.

Different forms of intervention (namely Rust and Meyers’, Somekh’s and thedifferent types of dialogue in Orland-Barak) might, indeed, have different effects. Acommon feature of the studies in this issue pertains to the set-up of engagement inthe collaborative sessions: they were all organized around participants’ expressedneeds and common concerns and developed into enquiry-oriented processes aroundthose issues of common interest. In the process, participants were granted maxi-mum freedom to arrive at idiosyncratic understandings and, at the same time, toframe common understandings that emerged from the process of joint exploration.However, on a deeper level the papers show marked differences in how differenttypes of intervention can lead to the construction of meaning. The study by Orland-Barak focuses on free conversation and dialogue as forms of intervention, leadingparticipants to unique interpretations of their roles and practices as mentors,whereas Zellermayer and Tabak use a guided intervention approach that leads tochanges in teachers’ understanding of and perspective on their practice. Rust andMeyers base their study on written reports, showing how this form of interventioncan inform practice and policy. Tillema and van der Westhuizen, however, focus onthe use of three specifically designed cases to focus on the outcomes of collaborativeresearch.

One may argue, however, that differences in types of intervention do not constitutea major issue in the co-construction of knowledge. As we well know, there are manyvariants that determine the kind of intervention that can best support collaborativeenquiry, depending on one’s aims, methods and the group’s characteristics. Whatseems to be important from the collected papers, however, is the merging or combi-nation of activities that characterize a particular form of intervention, for instance asmade explicit in the paper by Tillema and van der Westhuizen. In most cases itcomprises the following ingredients: (a) reflection or explication of beliefs; (b) studyor enquiry (collaborative or jointly) of a common concern, (c) sharing or bringingtogether the results in order to scrutinize existing knowledge and gain new under-standings.

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Local or distributed knowledge in collaborative enquiry

A related but no less crucial question in collaborative knowledge constructionevident in the papers in this issue is whether the knowledge constructed is, bynature, only local and inherently personal or whether it can be generalized (i.e. isthere a possibility for social, public knowledge represented by shared criteria). Ifknowledge is regarded as something ‘in the mind’ (Bereiter, 2002), i.e. as objectsor packages known to one person only, then it becomes hard to share this knowl-edge due to idiosyncratic differences in beliefs, orientations and perspectives. Thisposition is often reflected in ultimate constructivist approaches. However, if knowl-edge is regarded as embedded in contexts and as inherently situational (Wengeret al., 2002), i.e. it needs to be built by collaborative action in a context (or co-constructed), then it may be distributed, shared and accepted by others as well.Such a situated, jointly constructed view of cognition locates knowledge construc-tion processes in the actions of persons, provoked by their activities in a context(the contextualist stance, advocated by Lave and others; Edwards et al., 2002).The studies in this issue seem to display a diversity of positions with regard to thelocal and shared nature of knowledge construction. For example, the studies byOrland-Barak and Zellermayer and Tabak point to knowledge construction in thedeep sense of gaining situational understandings through conversation (as an aimin itself), while the studies by Rust and Meyers, Somekh and Tillema and van derWesthuizen envisage collaborative inquiry and study as a way of enhancing individ-ual as well as collaborative knowledge, aimed at change in the context of one’spractice (as a means). These two views combine in Bereiter’s (2002) commentabout the way in which situational understanding is gained: ‘Through continuousdebate and exchange leading, eventually, to change in thinking and action, both atindividual and contextual levels of practice’. A similar position was put forward byEdwards et al. (2002), who proposed the concept of informed participation in acommunity of practice: ‘Through successive participation in a community of prac-tice a person becomes better informed to act in ways which are suited andaccepted by that community’. A community of enquiry can, thus, beyond beingsimply a community of practice, multiply the process of sharing and constructingknowledge.

Mutuality in knowledge construction

How then, it could be asked, would reciprocity or mutuality in a community ofpractice be of help in knowledge construction? The distinction between conver-gent, divergent and parallel dialogue put forward by Orland-Barak may illumi-nate this issue. Dialogue between peers can be conducive to the development ofmore internally held discourses. It is the mutual nature of collaboration amongstprofessionals which can allow the scrutiny, exposure and contextualization ofdeeply ingrained assumptions and beliefs about practice (see also Somekh’s andRust and Meyers’ papers). Individual chains of thought can be broken open,

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allowing others to join in and yield a multiplicity of voices. This sense-making in jointaction could very well turn out to be a strength but also a weak spot of collaborativeknowledge construction: The degree of mutuality and reciprocity required to arriveat joint meanings may both be a threat to a person as well as an invitation to shareand explicate personal knowledge. The pressure put upon a person to share experi-ences in a self-organizing group can be pertinent as long as it adds value for thatperson and is free of power exerted on that person to contribute. In Somekh’sMOHD project, for example, mutuality was reflected in the ability of participants tochallenge understandings across different national cultures in a non-threateningatmosphere.

Collaborative enquiry always supposes an exploration of one’s own thinking ina non-threatening way. However, close interrelatedness amongst participantsmay also create escape mechanisms in complying with knowledge claims byothers and power relations in the group which will not bring forward change inan individual’s beliefs or action, certainly not a lasting one outside the realm ofthe group. Tolerance of different identities, mutual access to resources andequality in exchange are important ‘ingredients’ of knowledge construction, asZellermayer and Tabak and Somekh show. Personal development alongsideopen relations, coexisting in careful balance, seem to be important conditions forthe co-construction of knowledge.

How, then, do the different forms that mutuality and reciprocity take in thepapers contribute to knowledge construction? Zellermayer and Tabak’s paperhighlights the interrelatedness between personal identity and participation.Becoming a participant in a conversation is triggered both by self-regulation andby the groups’ decision to allow participation. In the process, participants immersethemselves in different situations which may serve as a leverage for them. Thisfinding, combined with the study by Orland-Barak, points to the utility of distin-guishing between diverse forms of conversations, since they provide differentopportunities for co-constructing unique understandings about practice.

Process and product in collaborative enquiry

From a more global perspective, it seems that the papers in this issue argue for twoapparently different ‘tracks’ in collaborative enquiry: one focusing on process and onefocusing on product. The ‘process track’ stresses the dynamics of knowledge, as itchanges and evolves throughout the enquiry, while the ‘product track’ seems to focuson the implication of collaborative activity (the interventions) for understanding andknowledge building. The papers by Tillema and van der Westhuizen, Somekh andRust and Meyers, particularly, are concerned with the conditions that yield certainoutcomes in collaborative knowledge building, either at the group or individual level,and seek to determine their impact on innovation and reform. Other papers, forinstance that of Orland-Barak, focus the process of gaining understanding throughprofessional dialogue. Although different in orientation, these two ‘tracks’ seem tomerge when considering how collaborative activity gives leverage to a community of

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enquiry. The process track may help to codify and disclose how knowledge isconstructed by professionals and how it is made accessible to them, whilst the producttrack helps us to focus on the connections between the knowledge generated, theirsources and their applications.

As such, the combined insights offered by the two tracks, as made obvious by thesestudies, may help to establish the supportive elements, i.e. the brighter side, in the co-construction of the knowledge of teachers. The studies in this issue point to at leastsome of them. Firstly, creating reciprocity and interdependence amongst participantsthrough informed exchange and progressive dialogue. Secondly, creating and gener-ating knowledge that emerges from active participation in conversational enquiry maybalance different (dis)positions. Every voice is worth hearing, since it may contributeeither by adding knowledge or by scrutinizing and exposing critical knowledge. Eachindividual contribution has an equal right and inherent value, stemming from anintentional orientation to contribute and add to the co-construction of knowledge.The group process, in turn, might contribute to identity formation of each of itsparticipants, by acknowledging the multiple voices foregrounded. The valuing ofmultiple perspectives seems to be an important constituent of knowledge construc-tion, because shifting between viewpoints and studying from different angles mightbetter ground the knowledge gained and cultivate what Christopher Clark (1995)referred to as ‘thoughtful teaching’.

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