  In teacher professional development (PD), grouping teachers with varying
levels of experience can be a productive and empowering way to stimulate the
exchange and co-generation of content and pedagogical knowledge. However, less
experienced teachers can face socio-emotional risks when engaging in
collaborative science content reasoning tasks with more experienced colleagues
(Finkelstein, Jaber, & Dini, 2018), and these risks may impact the
collaborative experience of both parties and the learning environment in
teacher PD. This descriptive case study examines the process of productively
navigating socio-emotional risks and interpersonal tensions encountered by a
veteran and pre-service physics teacher during one episode of discussing
physics content. We use a single term, comfort-building, to encapsulate
discursive moves that result in increased feelings of comfort and safety by the
participants. Comfort-building includes moves that serve to mitigate social
risk, ease tension, and avoid discomfort, as well as those geared toward
finding common ground and co-navigating challenges. These moves can carve out
conversational space for teachers to more confidently face risks associated
with being accountable to the physics content knowledge and engage in
discipline-based conversations more deeply. The presented episode in this study
was followed by video-stimulated individual interviews to determine how
consciously the teachers connected their participation to explicit risk and
comfort. This case study highlights an affective dimension for consideration in
the continued study and facilitation of science teaching communities of
practice, especially ones that bring together teachers with a variety of
backgrounds and skill sets.
