This article documents the use of professional conversation as a method of participatory research to question, inform and innovate assessment practices used in tertiary settings. Utilising a professional conversations model, four tertiary educators engaged in a 6-month long email conversation designed to explore our individual and collective sense-making around use of a specific mode of assessment relating to sport pedagogy-related teacher and coach education courses. Justification for use of a professional conversations model is presented, along with participants’ experiences of engaging in this participatory method of data capture. A brief summary of participants’ post-conversation views on PASS is included, as well as recommendations relating to the utility of using a professional conversations model as a participatory research method.