Wenger-Trayner et al. (2015) propose that knowledgeability develops through engagement at the boundaries of communities of practice.  This paper draws on the experiences of the co-authors (a university-based teacher educator / researcher and two independent speech and language therapists) who worked in partnership towards the co-construction and implementation of a model for video-based inter-professional specialist coaching.  The coaching enabled workplace learning between speech and language therapists and nursery and primary practitioners. The original settings for this work were primary and nursery schools serving multi-cultural and multi-lingual communities in the East Midlands, UK. The approach was informed by models of teacher coaching (Lofthouse et. al., 2010) and video interaction guidance (Kennedy et al., 2009), and was rooted in learning which made deliberate and explicit work processes, learning activities and learning processes Eraut (2007).  The development of the coaching model allowed the speech and language therapists to engage teachers and teaching assistants in conversation their own classroom practices.  Earlier research reported on the impact of the project on the staff, the children and the settings. It indicated that inter-professional coaching can play a significant part in creating the conditions for bespoke workplace learning through creating a neutral, non-judgmental space in which teachers' own interactional practices can be exposed and made open to co-construction.  Coaching formed a key component of an ecology for focused professional development, providing participants with common understandings, a shared language, a willingness to share ideas, and to be more open to self-evaluation and critique.  

This paper is an autoethnographic study into the co-authors’ personal and professional experiences associated with this project, and as such it describes and analyses our learning through partnership and co-construction at the boundary of practice.  Both clinical and pedagogic influences and cultures are revealed, in addition to a consideration of how prior professional practices, contrasting professional cultures, learning and research are re-framed at the point of new inter-professional practice development. It illustrates the significance of aspects of both ‘imposed’ and ‘intrinsic’ relevance (Schutz 1970, p.26, cited in Hammersley, 2004, p.169) during the development process.  As opportunities and tensions occurred in practice, often influenced by the policy context, or by practitioners’ direct lived experiences (imposed relevance) they intertwined with learning and development of a more personally intrinsically interesting nature.  The landscape of practice became formed through individual, shared and co-constructed learning and experience and knowledgeability (not simply competence) and evolved through our relations to the ‘multiplicity of practices across the landscape’ (Wenger-Trayner et al. 2015, p13). At the boundary of practice, recognisable as a learning asset, opportunities were created for unexpected learning as we experienced a challenge to the value of our existing professional competencies. This resulted in a complex learning journey, which went beyond the practical construction of the inter-professional coaching model, and began to re-configure our professional identities. 

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