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The article shares collaborating educators (authors’) experiences in supporting a group of student-teachers’ interventions to improve learning practices as part of an action research course in a teacher education setting. The authors engaged in a series of reflective discussions in making sense of and improving the course process. Facilitation and students’ experiences retrieved from course artefacts and written evaluations provided a context for the authors’ self-study practices and identifying critical learning experiences. Qualitative data, including practice-based discussion transcripts and students’ evaluations, were coded and thematically analysed. The two data sets were combined in showing how students’ experiences instigated educators’ learning in developing contextualised conceptions and practices of self-study. The notion of turning points was also employed in analysing data that significantly influenced conceptions of self-study and shaped the course of facilitations. Framing the experiences within community of practice and self-study of teacher education practices literature, we have discussed changing conceptions and practices of self-study while supporting students engage with data for and during interventions. Course experiences on how intervening to improve practices amplify the relevance of action research in teachers’ learning, and the significance of generating evidence from data in action research are discussed.

Engaging prospective teachers in collaborative inquiry into their own processes of learning was the driving intention of the collaborative action research (CAR) course which was part of a teacher education program at a college of education in Eritrea in the academic year of 2018/2019. The course led by the first two authors was collaboratively designed and developed by the authors who were closely and regularly working as passionate learning community of educators who are committed to enact change in their own practices for the past seven years. Embracing the complexity of learning teacher educating we align with the notion of inquiry as a stance in learning to live up to the complexity. Accordingly, we engaged in an intentional collaborative self-study into our own practices of facilitating a course on inquiry. The aim of this paper is to articulate key experiences of committed collaborative learning in facilitating a course of inquiry. Employing a self-study methodology, we were engaged in individual and team reflections documented in our shared diary, regular meetings to discuss and develop the CAR process, and analyzing written feedbacks given by our student teachers (STs). In this article we attempt to explore headway pedagogies while we were collaboratively learning to facilitate and support a senior class of prospective teachers (n-27) carry out their CAR projects into their own processes of learning for four months. We argue that those experiences have critical implications in developing professional identity of prospective teachers, creatively overcome the theory-practice conundrum in teacher education by developing essential experiences that prospective teachers could creatively adapt in their school practices.

This study focuses on three essential concepts -- collaboration, action, and research. It was initiated by three former teacher educators (TEs) at Asmara Community College of Education (ACCE), Eritrea (now defunct), and data was drawn from their written accounts and rigorous reflective discussions. It illuminates the lines of development while attempting to improve practices, the tensions this created among individuals, collective agencies, and institutional transformations. It reveals "realities" about the perpetual and unpredictable challenges the TEs encountered and the outcome of the actions they attempted to execute. Along the way, they uncovered evidence on why and how they could enrich their professional values when they come together and collaborate in exploring the essence of their practices. The findings reveal that TEs who systematize their practices through collaborative action research (CAR) can significantly develop their professional effectiveness. They have established that TEs should "collaborate, act, and engage" in research to develop enduring professional identities which can adapt to changing educational situations.