The research presented in the symposium is part of a large European research project built on a comparative didactics approach (cf. Ligozat et al 2015) with the overall ambition to search for and analyze different teaching traditions in order to optimize the possibility to find effective and fruitful teaching approaches. One of the aims in the project is to use and develop didactic knowledge and concepts in cooperation with teachers (cf. Almqvist et al. 2016, Sensevy et al 2013, Wickman 2015). In this process, the researchers and teachers are engaged in a mutual process of recognition where they contribute with their respective competences and perspectives (Olin et al. 2016). But, this is also a transactional process, which means that the participants and their contributions are shaped in dialogue with each other and become something else than if they would have performed the work separately (cf. Sensevy et al 2013). Recognizing the Other (Ricoeur 2005) is also changing one’s own perspectives.

The aim of the symposium is to investigate and discuss how mutual recognition is constituted and how this is influencing transactional processes of collaboration. We use three empirical examples of research- and development for illustration, analysis and discussion. As a theoretical lens we use the concept of recognition to study transactions regarding both the individual-collective dimension (Honneth 2012) and also to highlight how responsibilities and agency (Ricoeur 2005) gets played out in the processes.

First, the idea of didactic modelling or inquiry emphasizes researchers and teachers as crucial actors in development of disciplinary knowledge about teaching (Wickman 2015). However, how this may occur is not an uncontested area of knowledge, and depends on underlying views of theory and practice as well as how professional learning may be framed (Hemsley-Brown & Sharp 2003; Opfer & Pedder 2011). In the first case study, we present ways for researchers and teachers to collaborate in dialogue and discuss how written as well as oral dialogue may nurture and/or constrain didactic development and professional learning.

The second empirical example is devoted to the presentation of Cooperative Engineering, a specific kind of design-based research, which relies on different research traditions to foster curricular co-design (cf. Sensevy et al. 2013). In the case study, focused on a research project aimed at building a whole year curriculum in arithmetic at elementary school, we present empirical findings relating to the unfolding of a specific dialogue between teachers and researchers. Through a methodology that we outline in some aspects, we show how a cooperative epistemic relationship is built between the participants in the co-design process, and we draw various epistemological consequences from this kind of transactional perspective.

Third, providing cooperating teachers, teacher educators and researchers with a theoretical framework as an analytical tool to collectively perform an analysis task raises some interesting issues regarding recognition, transaction and co-construction of knowledge. In the case study, we illustrate how the participants in a Participatory Action Research (cf. Chevalier & Buckles 2013) bring different types of identity and knowledge into the recognition and transactional processes, and how knowledge concerning pedagogical supervision is co-constructed.

In sum, the main interest in the research project is to analyze teaching to be able to improve it, but to be able to reach this goal a substantial aspect seems to be how cooperation and transactions between researchers and teachers evolve. By involving ourselves in three different ways of conducting such transactional processes, and paying specific attention to how it gets done and what the consequences are, we want to contribute with knowledge on this specific part of didactical research.

Almqvist, J., Hamza, K & Olin, A. (2016). Didactical investigations for professional development. Paper presented at ECER 2016, Dublin. Chevalier, J.M. & Buckles, D.J. (2013). Participatory Action Research. Theory and Methods for Engaged Inquiry. London: Routledge. Hemsley-Brown, J., & Sharp, C. (2003). The use of research to improve professional practice: A systematic review of the literature. Oxford Review of Education, 29, 449–471. Honneth, A. (2012). The I in We: Studies in the Theory of Recognition (Translated by Joseph Ganal). Cambridge: Polity. Ligozat, F., Amade-Escot, C. & Östman, L. (2015). Beyond subject specific approaches of teaching and learning: Comparative didactics? Interchange, 46(4), 313-321. Olin, A., Karlberg-Granlund, G., & Furu, E. (2016). Facilitating Democratic Professional Development: Exploring the Double Role of being an Academic Action Researcher. Educational Action Research, DOI:10.1080/09650792.2016.1197141 Opfer, D. V., & Pedder, D. (2011). Conceptualizing teacher professional learning. Review of Educational Research, 81, 376–407. Ricoeur, P. (2005). The Course of Recognition (Translated by David Pellauer). Cambridge, Mass: Harvard UP. Sensevy, G., Forest, D., Quilio, S. & Morales, G. (2013). Cooperative engineering as a specific design-based research. ZDM, The International Journal on Mathematics Education, 45(7), 1031-1043 Wickman, P.-O. (2015). Teaching learning progressions: An international perspective. In N. G. Lederman & S. K. Abell (Eds.), Handbook of Research on Science Education (2nd ed., pp. 145-163). New York: Routledge.