This paper presents research from a Danish large-scale and collaborative initiative (2019-2023) for systematically developing teacher education entitled: ‘Teacher education as a laboratory for developing excellent teaching and education’ (in short LULAB) (Nielsen & Jensen, 2021). The context is a large integrated 4-year professional bachelor program with teacher education at four addresses in Denmark. In the LULAB-initiative teacher educators and student teachers are, in collaboration with teachers and school students from partner-schools, experimenting with developing, analysing, and sharing new teaching approaches in teacher education. This is organized in multiple LULAB projects with for example 2-3 teacher educators and a class of student teachers in each project, and with structured possibilities for sharing knowledge and peer-feedback across projects. Hence, LULAB is an organisational and professional-pedagogical initiative organised as professional inquiry (Boyd & White, 2017). Each LULAB-project is approached as an interactive arena for co-creation for teaching and learning implying a deeper level of involvement of the student teachers than ‘just’ engagement (Bovill, 2020). The student teachers can in theory be involved in a continuum of roles ranging from co-navigators in deciding and moving project activities forward to genuine co-designers (Bovill, 2020).

Summing up there is at the organisational level an intention of both supporting teacher educators’ professional agency (Priestley, Biesta, Robinson, 2015; Vähäsantanen et al., 2019), and students teachers’ patterns of participation pointing forward to their future role of developing schooling as professional teachers. In relation to the latter Darling-Hammond (2006) emphasise in the context of preparing teachers for a changing world that student teachers must be engaged in a mutual transformation agenda even with all the struggle and messiness that implies.

Previous reports from the first part of the sequential research with a survey approach adapting the 3-dimensional model of agency in working life contexts (Vähäsantanen et al., 2019) concluded that teacher educators involved in LULAB-projects do experience new possibilities for collaboration and influence in their working life compared with teacher educators not involved in LULAB projects, indicating an effect on their professional agency (authors, 2021), however with a need for more in depth knowledge about the collaboration among teacher educators and the positioning of the student teachers in specific cases of LULAB-projects. Furthermore, there is a need for more knowledge about the wider implementation and institutionalisation in the organisation including insight into how the initiative is supported at the managerial level and how this impacts the organizational spaces for professional inquiry. A transformative and critical perspective must according to Cranton (2011) widen the perspective on professional inqury to include critical reflection and critical questioning of not only individuals’ practice, but also the institutional norms and expectations that inform and constrain the professional learning. The LULAB-projects may thus be managed ranging from a New Public Management (NMP) inspired approach of controlled experiments searching for ‘best practices’ to a more generative governance approach of developing capacity among the professionals pointing forward to ‘next practices’ (Ansell & Torfing, 2014; Torfing & Ansell, 2021). 

The research questions are: 

• In what ways does participation in the LULAB professional inquiry projects contribute to teacher educators’ experience of practicing and developing agency related to educational development?  
• What kinds of practices of participation and cooperation related to educational development do the LULAB professional inquiry projects enable for student teachers?
• What possibilities and challenges are seen related to a wider institutionalization in the teacher education organization of approaches and practices of participation and cooperation from the LULAB professional inquiry projects? 

The research is a sequential mixed method design (Creswell & Clark, 2018) with previously reported survey-data (teacher educators). The multiple case-studies (Yin, 2018) include both teacher educators and student teachers. Cases are sampled to represent a variety including LULAB-projects where the context of the professional inquiry is the teaching and learning of concrete subjects in teacher education and projects of a more generic or transdisciplinary character. All LULAB-projects include to a various degree local schools, but the choice has been to include among the cases also projects with external collaborative partner institutions beyond schools. 1) The first case is a LULAB-project experimenting with ‘aesthetic learning processes’ at teacher education, museums and at schools. Two teacher educators and their classes in the pedagogical subjects at respectively first and second year of the integrated four years program are involved. The student teachers are observing and interviewing during activities at the museums, planning and trying out approaches with school students at placement shools and later sharing their experiences with peers and the campus, in public workshops and in writing. 2) The second case refers to two small LULAB-projects at the same institution and with similar designs where student teachers in the subjects of respectively History and German (foreign language) are experimenting in a microteaching format teaching invited students from local schools in the outdoor environment and at a local historical museum. Later at campus they are analyzing their experiences to be used in progression in the planning for a school placement period. 3) In the third case, teacher educators and student teachers are co-designing meaningful course activities at campus using a new theoretical and research-based model illustrating dimensions of knowledge in teacher education (Nielsen & Lund, 2020). The aim is to support the meta-reflection on (own) professional learning. The primary data-sources are semi-structured qualitative group interviews (Kvale & Brinkmann, 2009) following two aligned interview-guides for respectively teacher educators and student teachers. Additional data sources are project descriptions and other artifacts produced within the cases, and observation notes from participation in project-activities, for example when knowledge is shared with other LULAB-projects. Data to answer RQ3 includes also interviews with leaders from the teacher education organisation, more will follow about this at the conference. Case-data sources are analyzed both within each case and across cases (Yin, 2018) in repeated cycles of reflexive thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006; Braun, Clarke, Hayfield, & Terry, 2018).

A first theme is about teacher educators’ experience of practicing and developing agency through what they call genuine co-creation. A next theme is `next practices versus best practices´. The professional inquiry approach is experienced by the teacher educators to provide bottom-up possibilities for taking ownership. This is elaborated in contrast to a previous tendency for NPM-inspired top-down management, where they refer to sharing best practices that should make the planning for peers more effective. They see it as motivating (Ryan & Deci, 2017) that they are now to a higher degree positioned as competent and with a level of autonomy. The professional inquiry approach is however not without challenges, in relation to sharing approaches and involving colleagues and other student teachers in continual processes. The teacher educators are in nearly all LULAB-projects the primary initiative takers, but the student teachers anyway refer to new practices of participation and cooperation. They like being invited into the machine room of teacher education. In case 1 they highlight positively that they are positioned as experts in a specific area though they are novices at the first years of teacher education. They emphasize this also in a second-order perspective as an inspiration for their future profession as teachers in terms of developing teaching in general and as an inspiration for how to position school students in experimenting and aesthetic processes. Student teachers from case 1 however also raise (strategic) concerns that the involvement (over long time) takes time from other important things in teacher education. Student teachers in case 2 highlight hands-on with research-based approaches to outdoor teaching and the authenticity. In the continuum from Bovill (2020) student teachers in case 3 are positioned most towards the co-designing approach. Student teachers from the other cases are however also involved in moving project activities forward.

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