This presentation is structured in three parts. In the first part, we present a specific form of design-based research, Cooperative Engineering (Joffredo-Le Brun et al. 20017), and we identify its main features, by comparing it to other forms of research in which teachers and researchers work together, as Action Research (Townsend 2013), Lesson Studies (Elliot 2015), Participatory Design Based Research (Severance et al. 2016), Cultural-Historical Activity Theory Approach (O. Neil 2016). In the second part of the presentation, we focus on the specific dialogue that unfolds through Cooperative Engineering work. We present a research project, Arithmetic and Comprehension at Elementary School (ACE), which is devoted to the co-design of a whole year curriculum in arithmetic. Then we give some emblematic examples of the dialogue through which the ACE co-design process has been carried out, which we analyze within the frame of the Joint Action Theory in Didactics (i.e. Sensevy 2011; Sensevy et al. 2015; Ligozat & Leutenegger 2015). In doing so, we emphasize the using of some methodological devices, Hybrid Audio Picture Text Systems (HAPTS), that are multi-modal systems grounded in study films of classroom practice, whose various parts are thought of in reciprocal annotation. We consider such devices as augmenters of engineering dialogue, as instruments for the ascent from the abstract to the concrete. Their essential role is to provide teachers and researchers with a common background, which foster a shared way of carrying out the problem solving process. In the last part of our presentation, we rely on the previous exposed empirical findings to document in what ways the mutual recognition between the participants in the engineering dialogue enable them to enact transactions that reshape the relationship between teachers and researchers. We elaborate on some consequences of this reshaping. We first show how this relationship can be seen as a cooperative epistemic relationship in which the division of epistemic labor is diluted. We then argue that this kind of cooperative process could call for a radical change in the traditional conception of what is an can a teacher, what is and can a researcher. We contend that cooperative engineering brings a new light not only to the teacher's stance and profession, but also to the researcher's stance and profession. We conclude the presentation by sketching how and why the current epistemology of educational research, and, moreover, of science of culture, has to be reconstructed.

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