Schön's notion of artistry of professional practice as defined in the notion of 'framing' offers a way to capture an essential process of the practitioner's learning in practice in professional development. In the process of interacting with the practical situation, the practitioner has to rely on his/her past experience and understanding to experimentally impose meaning on the situation in action (Furlong et al, 1988). This involves 'a constant proves of interpretation, action, reflection and adjustment' (ibid: 123) in action-learning cycles, which is important to teachers' development of expertise (Pang, 2005). Applying such a notion of teaching to understand the processes provided in the action-learning cycles inherent in the design of Learning Study carried out in Hong Kong, this paper aims to report on a Learning Study carried out in the context of English language teaching at primary level, in which four primary ELT teachers were involved in an Institute-school collaboration project. In the process of the Learning Study which consisted of 10 to 12 meetings, the teachers involved and the researcher contributed in a collaborative manner their experiences and understandings to the framing of the lesson in focus. While reporting on the stages of the Learning Study, and the effectiveness of learning of the topic in focus, the paper will focus particularly on how the teachers had benefited in such a process of collective framing in addressing the pedagogical problem in focus. Implications will be drawn on the use of Learning Study as a tool for expertise development in teaching.
