Back to schooling: Challenging implicit routines and change

Engestrom and others have suggested that major barriers towards school change are rooted in the hidden, implicit aspects of daily school life that are taken for granted. These constitute the school's taken-for-granted routines, which mold teachers' affordances and constraints within the school, without their awareness. The present paper provides insight into the processes that afford the exposure of taken-for-granted school behavior and the emergence of alternative pedagogical context. It portrays the nature of a participative edge community that serves as a fertile ground for the initiation of such processes, and analyzes the change in the tools-boundary objects-that were instrumental in the emergence of teachers' professional development. This process of schooling conveys the intertwining nature of school change and professional development as complementary processes that form an inseparable duality.