PurposeThe paper aims to examine how a professional development school-district (PDS-D) partnership, enacting an improvement science stance, collectively explored social-emotional learning (SEL) during collaboratively designed professional learning experiences.Design/methodology/approachThis qualitative study, guided by an improvement science orientation, enacted an iterative research design. Data sources consisted of anecdotal field notes and artifacts from 12 professional learning sessions. Using a constant comparative method, the authors applied an inductive thematic analysis to identify salient themes across data related to teacher wonderings and identified goals.FindingsThe paper illuminates teachers' voices while highlighting information gleaned from participant wonderings, their identified goals and how this information informed the iterative development of future professional learning experiences within a district-university partnership.Research limitations/implicationsDue to the chosen research approaches and limited number of participants, the research results may lack generalizability.Originality/valueThis paper provides original insight into collaborative development of recursive professional learning experiences within partnership spaces.