Recently, the need for more learning opportunities to improve teacher quality continues to be a pervasive research theme in the teacher education literature. Community of practice (CoP) has been accepted as an effective form of teachers’ professional development (PD) by many scholars and practitioners (Lieberman and Mace, 2009; Wenger, 1998; Armour and Yelling, 2007).

Thoughtful facilitation is one of the feature of effective CoP (Poekert, 2011).  Current research examining facilitators has focused on the role of the facilitator in CoP success (Nachielli, 2011; Patton, Parker, and Neutzling, 2012), the actual process of facilitation (Jenlink and Kinnucan-Welsch, 2001; Molle, 2013) and the pedagogy of facilitation that takes place in quality PD opportunities (Patton, Parker and Pratt, 2013; Poekert, 2011). Research, in both general education and physical education, examining facilitators’ roles in PD report that facilitators’ give different descriptions about their role in terms of their common beliefs about teacher learning related to their thinking and self-identified actions (Patton, Parker and Neutzling, 2012). Therefore, in this study, to educate the teacher as a facilitator, four interactive skills/behaviors that are acknowledged in the facilitation and pedagogical literature have been chosen to help the teacher-facilitator to work effectively with teacher-participants. These skills/behaviors are: (a) active listening: It is stated in the literature that asking questions and listening are the primary functions of an effective facilitator (Killion and Simmons, 2004), (b) Understanding group dynamics: In small group conversations informal interactions and spaces can be informative; encourage contributions that are on point (Patton, et al., 2012), (c) guiding interactions: The role of the facilitator is to create and maintain a supportive climate that promotes conditions necessary for learning to take place (Zachary, 2011) and (d) encouraging participation by all: In order to develop trust and respect in a CoP, the facilitator should let teachers have an equal voice during meetings, with the facilitator’s role decreasing over time (Hunuk, et al., 2013).

Constructivist pedagogies and teacher learning

The design of the current study employs a constructivist perspective on teacher learning. Constructivist perspectives focus on learning in relation to the social environment. Learning also involves interaction and collaboration with learning peers, as well as interaction with more knowledgeable individuals in society (Biggs, 1996). Therefore, in this study, the teacher - facilitator engages in a process that reflects Patton, Parker and Pratt’s (2013) pedagogical strategies of learning as doing, trying and sharing; activity, reflection and conversation with an experienced facilitator to discover new knowledge.

Constructivism also suggests that learning is experiential in that people create knowledge through their own experiences and ideas (Kolb, 1984). Basically, Kolb argues that learning is experiential when experiences are being transformed into knowledge. According to Kolb’s model, the most effective learning takes place in four different stages: concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualization, and active experimentation. In this study Kolb’s Experiential Learning Cycle (ELC) is used to describe a physical education teacher’s journey as she learns to extend her professional role to include that of a facilitator in a newly constructed and co-facilitated CoP.

Despite the frequent recognition in both the USA and Europe, that CoP is an effective form of PD, there is dearth of knowledge on how to educate a teacher, or other professional to be a facilitator. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine if engaging in facilitation through the use of expert modeling and the experiential learning cycle is effective in developing a teacher as a PD facilitator. 

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