Considering teacher professional development (PD) a process of continuous (de/re)construction of professional knowledge (PK) within practice (Gonçalves, 2011), professional development opportunities (PDO) are considered places of experimentation which can lead to innovation and renewal of practice. However, several studies showed that transformative practices and sustainable PD are not achieved simply by attending workshops, seminars and teacher education courses, though these may often include action research methodologies where the participant’s practice is investigated (DiPaola & Hoy, 2014; Fullan, 2007; Hargreaves & Fink, 2007; Vieira et al., 2014). Therefore, other more flexible ways of providing in-service teacher education should be sought, suitable to specific educative contexts, addressing teachers’ concerns and needs, enabling self-directed PD processes and simultaneously empowering teachers and strengthening their PK. This study intends to share a 3-phased PD strategy (preparatory, launching and co-designing phases), which enacts the formative potential of PK and experience of Portuguese heritage language teachers in Switzerland. The PD design follows a job embedded approach (DiPaola & Hoy, 2014) and respects the components of environments that foster PD (Gonçalves, 2011). It was designed by the pedagogical coordinator (PC) and has been being implemented since 2014. The findings of the first and second phases underline the difference between being an active or a receptive participant in PDO and also the positive impact of those roles on the motivation to invest in PD (Gonçalves, 2017a, 2017b). The third phase is being implemented, and aims at promoting collaborative professional learning, fostering experimentation and innovative practice. Teachers work collaboratively in groups of 3 to 5 elements. The PC launched the working sessions, thus assuring the project was understood and simultaneously helped in laying the foundation of the work throughout the school year. This paper focuses on the collected data of the third phase: a multimodal portfolio, a register grid with the evolution of each group work, and individual topic-oriented reflections. The data analysis will allow us to understand how this PDO may help to reframe teachers’ PK, leading to transformative teaching practices and the design of their own PD. Having in account the complete design of the PD strategy we will discuss in what ways exploring and enacting the formative potential of the constructed PK and experience can promote individual and collective professional learning, fostering sustainable change. Furthermore, it will be discussed if and how this situated experience could develop as a model of bottom-up approach to PD.

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