Recently, educational systems have placed inquiry-based professional-development learning-communities (IPDCs) in the center of teachers' professional-development as effective ways to enhance and transform learning and teaching. Scholars theorize that involvement in contexts that apply active educational research in IPDCs offers opportunities for exploring authentic professional dilemmas, for implementing research findings in relevant classroom contexts, and for teachers' professional growth (Koichu & Pinto, 2018; Krainer, 2005; Robutti et al., 2016; Taylor, 2017). 

However, repeatedly mentioned gaps between theory and practice indicate that teachers' enculturation in IPDCs may not be smooth (Jaworski & Goodchild, 2006; Labaree, 2003; Pallas, 2001). Although in IPDCs, teachers and educational researchers engage in collaborative research in the shared domain of interests, they originate in different fields of practice and have different knowledge-structures and different epistemological beliefs about the nature of knowledge, meaning, and certainty (Hofer & Pintrich, 1997; Labaree, 2003). Epistemic differences between teachers and researchers can lead to epistemic tensions as part of teachers' enculturation into educational research (Labaree, 2003; Pallas, 2001). Particularly, examining challenges that teachers face when involved in academic research, Labaree (2003) identifies four dimensions of epistemic differences between teachers and researchers, suggesting that research-oriented teachers should be less normative, personal, particular, and experimental, and adopt a more analytical, intellectual, universal, and theoretical cultural orientation. In IPDCs, where the boundaries between teaching and inquiring are crossed, epistemic tensions are inevitable and play a central role in shaping teachers' identities as teacher-inquirers (Labaree, 2003). According to Heider's Balance Theory, rising tensions motivate individuals' actions to achieve cognitive and emotional balance and maintain consistency and harmony between their attitudes and others' attitudes (Heider, 1958; Crandall et al., 2007). Therefore, epistemic tensions may either act as pitfalls or as springboards for teachers' professional development. 

So far, studies have primarily targeted the impact of teachers' participation in IPDCs on their knowledge and practice and have neglected teachers' perspectives struggling to develop teacher-inquirer identities (Jaworski et al., 2017). This study aimed at empirically examining the nature of various epistemic tensions encountered by teachers participating in an IPDC over one year, considering a possible connection between the dynamics of these tensions and teacher's participation paths in the community. We hoped that examining manifested epistemic tensions will allow a glimpse into what is tacitly occurring beneath the community's apparent activity.

Specifically, in our study, we addressed the following two research questions: (1) What characterizes the epistemic tensions that arise at the various stages of the research cycle conducted in IPDC? (2) How do patterns of participation in IPDC reflect teachers' attempts to balance the epistemic tensions they experience? 

We identified and analyzed teachers' epistemic tensions expressed in the community discourse in light of Heider's Balance Theory. We define tensions as expressions of gaps among community participants, such as conflicting opinions, miscommunication, or disrespectful speech accompanied by negative emotions such as anger, frustration, anxiety, helplessness, dissatisfaction, and distrust. Epistemic tensions are referred to as tensions rooted in epistemic differences between teachers and researchers. 

Our findings revealed tensions derived from teachers' and researchers' epistemic differences in all four dimensions mentioned by Labaree (2003). An additional source of epistemic tensions was revealed as some teachers, expecting research to be conducted in a positivist approach, were tensed by the qualitative approach in the reality of IPDC. 

Findings indicate that epistemic tensions act as powerful generators of inclusionary and exclusionary actions shaping community members' participation patterns. While downplaying epistemic tensions can evoke individual actions destructive to the community's existence and act as pitfalls to developing a teacher-inquirer identity, awareness of and timely addressing the tensions can become a springboard for community development and teachers' professional growth.

The study was conducted in the context of a mathematics-teacher IPDC called TRAIL (Teacher-Researcher Alliance for Investigating Learning). Koichu and Pinto (2018) present TRAIL-IPDC as an organizational framework where mathematics-teachers and mathematics-education researchers can collaborate in inquiring about their partially-overlapping domains and find a mutual interest in the learning opportunities revealed by their partnership. In particular, TRAIL-IPDC relies on the mutual learning of mathematics-teachers and mathematics-education researchers through inquiring into both mathematics teaching and educational-research practices. In this research's particular context, TRAIL-IPDC solicited participants' collaboration throughout the entire research process, from the formulation of research questions, through the construction, validation, and implementation of data collection tools, up to collective reflection and data analysis. In our study, the participants were 11 mathematics-teachers engaged in a 60-hour TRAIL-IPDC at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel during the 2018-2019 scholar year. Three educational-researchers, two of whom are authors of this paper, led the community. Data were collected from the video-recordings of 10 four-hour long face-to-face meetings and two four-hour long online community meetings. Complementary data were gathered from the transcripts of individual semi-structured interviews conducted with the participating teachers after concluding the community's annual activity. The meetings included discussions of stages, principles, and methodology of educational research by attending to past studies and through short lectures by the community leaders and invited experts. These discussions and lectures preceded the teachers' actual involvement in developing task sequences and data-collection procedures and implementing them in their classrooms. The participant teachers' research goals, questions, methods, and inquiry principles were openly negotiated in the community. Although teachers pursued inquiry that suited their particular school contexts, they focused on tasks that evoked classroom discussions and provided opportunities for achieving predefined pedagogical goals. Thus, their inquiry accommodated a common organizational framework, namely, theories concerned with active learning, knowledge acquirement, and knowledge agency (Rasmussen & Stephan, 2008; Schwarz, Dreyfus & Hershkowitz, 2009; Tabach, Hershkowitz, Rasmussen & Dreyfus, 2014). Based on the premise that tensions arising in various contexts in the community discourse are expressions of affective or cognitive imbalance of the involved individual members, we scrutinized all transcripts in a thematic search for epistemic-tensions matching our operational definition. Data analysis consisted of categorizing and mapping the identified epistemic-tensions according to the community activity's research stages. Additionally, teachers' participation paths and their expressed ways of dealing with epistemic tensions were considered and analyzed concurrently with the dynamics of these tensions.

Our findings empirically reinforce Labaree's (2003) four theoretical dimensions by documenting epistemic tensions derived in each dimension. Also, our findings revealed another source of epistemic tensions rooted in the research-paradigm. These findings expand the role of epistemic tensions, from the context of teachers studying for an academic degree to practicing teachers involved in research within a professional development setting. Mapping epistemic tensions across research stages revealed a surprising order of occurrences. At the first stage, epistemic tensions relating to the research paradigm (i.e., positivist vs. qualitative) were very dominant, whereas epistemic tensions rooted in teacher-researcher differences were hardly noticeable. However, as the community progressed, paradigmatic epistemic tensions faded out, while epistemic tensions rooted in teacher-researcher differences increased. The decline in paradigmatic epistemic tensions can be understood, as it was concurrent with the leaving of three community teachers who were positivistic-oriented. The sharp increase in epistemic tensions rooted in teacher-researcher differences of the kind introduced by Labaree (2003) became particularly evident when the collected classroom-data were discussed and reflected upon. This finding implies that the disappearance of paradigmatic tensions enabled teachers to become more central to the community research and thus empowered them to express epistemic tensions inherent in teachers' actual research involvement. Findings indicate that while epistemic tensions can act as potential pitfalls, they can also serve as teachers' professional development catalysts. Awareness of epistemic tensions and knowledge about efficient ways of bridging the gaps is essential for IPDCs to thrive. Educational researchers leading IPDCs need to be tolerant and sensitive to the traits teachers bring into the community and understand that enculturation takes time. Epistemic tensions should be wisely used to identify promising directions for actions that promote professional growth. In this specific IPDC openly addressing epistemic differences seemed to ease teachers' struggle to develop their identity as teacher-inquirers.

Crandall, C. S., Silvia, P. J., N'Gbala, A. N., Tsang, J. A., & Dawson, K. (2007). Balance theory, unit relations, and attribution: The underlying integrity of Heiderian theory. Review of General Psychology, 11(1), 12-30. https://doi.org/10.1037/1089-2680.11.1.12 Heider, F. (1958). The psychology of interpersonal relations. New York: Wiley. https://doi.org/10.1037/10628-000 Hofer, B. K., & Pintrich, P. R. (1997). The development of epistemological theories: Beliefs about knowledge and knowing and their relation to learning. Review of educational research, 67(1), 88-140.‏ https://doi.org/10.3102/00346543067001088 Jaworski, B., & Goodchild, S. (2006). Inquiry community in an activity theory frame. In Proceedings of the 30th Conference of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education. 3, 353-360.‏ Koichu, B., & Pinto, A. (2018). Developing Education Research Competencies in Mathematics Teachers Through TRAIL: Teacher-Researcher Alliance for Investigating Learning. Canadian Journal of Science, Mathematics and Technology Education, 18 (1), 68-85. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42330-018-0006-3 Krainer, K. (2005). What is "good" mathematics teaching, and how can research inform practice and policy? Editorial. Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education, 8(1), 75-81. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10857-005-4766-0 Labaree, D. F. (2003). The peculiar problems of preparing educational researchers. Educational researcher, 32(4), 13-22.‏ https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X032004013 Pallas, A. M. (2001). Preparing education doctoral students for epistemological diversity. Educational researcher, 30(5), 1-6.‏ https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X030005006 Rasmussen, C., & Stephan, M. (2008). A methodology for Documenting Collective Activity. In A. E. Kelly, R. A. Lesh, & J. Y. Baek (Eds.), Handbook of design research methods in education: Innovations in science, technology, engineering and mathematics learning and teaching, 195–215. New York, NY: Routledge. Robutti, O., Cusi, A., Clark-Wilson, A., Jaworski, B., Chapman, O., Esteley, C., Goos, M., Isoda, M., & Joubert, M. (2016). ICME international survey on teachers working and learning through collaboration: June 2016. ZDM, 48(5), 651-690.‏ https://doi.org/10.1007/s11858-016-0797-5 Schwarz, B., Dreyfus, T., & Hershkowitz, R. (Eds.). (2009). Transformation of knowledge through classroom interaction. Routledge.‏ https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203879276 Tabach, M., Hershkowitz, R., Rasmussen, C., & Dreyfus, T. (2014). Knowledge shifts and knowledge agents in the classroom. The Journal of Mathematical Behavior, 33, 192-208.‏ https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmathb.2013.12.001 Taylor, L. A. (2017). How teachers become teacher researchers: Narrative as a tool for teacher identity construction. Teaching and Teacher Education, 61, 16-25. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2016.09.008