Finland is a bilingual country with two official languages, Finnish and Swedish. Due to this, there are two paralell school-systems in each language. In Swedish-medium schools in Finland, bilingual students partake in the native-level Finnish (NaFi) syllabus. National evaluations regarding the learning outcomes in Finnish as the second national language, clearly show a need for developing the teaching of bilingual students in different educational stages (Nummela & Westerholm, 2020). The aim of the study is to explore how one native-level Finnish language teacher's language didactic knowledge is developed within the context of a language didactic development project.

The research questions are:

1. How do professional development practices and everyday learning practices affect the teacher's professional learning journey?

2. What is it that constrains and enables a teacher's didactic choices when she is part of a professional development context?

We use the theory of practice architectures (Kemmis et. al, 2014) and the theoretical framework developed by Salo et al. (2024) as a theoretical and analytical lens. The framework by Salo et al. (2024) deepens the understanding of professional learning both within and for practice. It conceptualizes professional learning as comprising three interconnected dimensions: everyday learning (EL), professional development (PD), and professional learning (PL).

The data consists of 14 audio recordings between the teacher and researcher: four VSR-dialogues, one initial and one concluding discussion about the collaboration and eight post-lesson reflections. During the VSR-dialogues, we viewed video-clips from the teachers NaFi-lessons (11) where we follow one and the same group from grades 7 and 8 during 1,5 academic year. VSR was used to support the teacher in recalling past actions and events (Nind, 2016). The action research collaboration in this study aligns with the Scandinavian model of PAR, where the teacher acts as the “insider” and the researcher acts as the “outsider” (Rönnerman et al., 2008).

The preliminary results show that the teacher develops from being uncertain and insecure related to their professional competence, to finding a sense of self and redefining their professional identity as a teacher. We can see that the teachers PL is interwoven with both her PD and EL practices. The research contributes to the European educational research field by providing an insight into how professional development practices and teachers' everyday learning practices play a role and affect their professional learning.

Kemmis, S., Wilkinson, J., Edwards-Groves, C., Hardy, I., Grootenboer, P.,& Bristol, L. (2014) Changing practices, changing education. Singapore: Springer. Nind, M. (2016) Introduction to video stimulated recall, reflection and dialogue. National Centre for Research Methods online learning resource. Available at https://www.ncrm.ac.uk/resources/online/all/?main&id=20428 [accessed: March 29, 2022] Nummela, Y. & Westerholm, A. (2020) ”Det är bra att börja i tid” – Undervisningen i finska i de svenskspråkiga skolorna (rapporter och utredningar 2020:5). Utbildningsstyrelsen. https://www.oph.fi/sites/default/files/documents/det_ar_bra_att_borja_i_tid.pdf Rönnerman, K., Salo, P., & Furu, E. M. (red.) (2008) Nurturing praxis: Action research and school-university partnership in a Nordic light. Sense Publishers. Salo, P., Francisco, S., & Olin Almqvist, A. (2024). Understanding professional learning in and for practice. Professional Development in Education, 50(3), 444–459. https://doi.org/10.1080/19415257.2024.2311108