Emerging organizations when implementing a collaborative professional development program

In this article, we explore an emerging organization that unfolds during the implementation of a collaborative and practice-oriented professional development program (PD) called Action Learning. In Action Learning, local mathematics supervisors facilitate meetings where mathematics teachers collaboratively discuss and develop interventions in their own teaching. Thereafter, teachers carry out their interventions and are observed by the team, who afterwards provide feedback in an evaluation meeting, thereby taking on a central role in the PD program. Drawing on qualitative interviews of teachers, local supervisors, and school managers and observations of meetings in the PD program, we investigate what roles emerge for local supervisors, and how their contributions are framed by colleagues and school managers. This identifies three simultaneously present logics among the stakeholders, positioning the supervisors in roles as project leaders, academic beacons, and equal coaches, confronting each of them with different and mutually exclusive expectations.