In this symposium we will present some of the results from an international research project called “Teaching traditions and learning. Comparative didactic analyses of science education and physical education and health in Sweden, Switzerland and France”. During the period 2013-2018 researcher from three countries have participated in the project. The aims of the project are (1) to identify teaching traditions – manners of teaching that many teachers use – within subjects and to analyze the pros and cons of each of the traditions regarding learning, and (2) to use the research findings to design learning activities together with teachers, in order to develop and consolidate professional tools and conceptual frameworks with which teachers are able to improve their teaching in accordance with certain purposes and values.
The project is built on a comparative didactic approach (cf. Caillot, 2007; Ligozat et al., 2015; Mercier et al, 2002). Studies in comparative didactics are productive in that they contribute with knowledge about different ways of teaching and learning of specific subject content (Caillot, 2007). The differences and similarities identified in the studies help to describe teaching and learning in each school subject more precisely and thereby generate new knowledge about different school subjects (cf. Forest et al., 2018; Marty et al, 2018).
In order to maximize the findings of different teaching traditions we make comparative investigations in four subjects (biology, chemistry, physics and physical education and health) in four countries (France, Sweden and Switzerland), within these four subjects between the three countries and between these four subjects and between countries. We perform studies from a pragmatic perspective on teaching and learning in the field of comparative didactics of surveys, texts, interviews and observation.
The theoretical background for in the project is built on French and Nordic traditions of didactics inspired by Dewey and Wittgenstein among others. More specifically, we use the concepts habits and teaching traditions in order to describe and discuss teachers’ privileging of educational goals, content and manners of teaching (cf. Lundqvist, 2012). Furthermore, we use the research results in our work together with teachers to contribute to professional development (i.e. Le Brun et al, 2018), a line of work that has led us to studies about recognition between participants (Olin, 201; cf. Groves et al 2016).
In the first part of this double symposium we present the theoretical and methodological point of departure for the project, and we especially focus on how these have been used and developed in the research process. First, starting from a comparative didactics tradition, we have developed a model for doing research together with teachers called Didactic development dialogue. Secondly in studies of meanings making in classroom practice, studies of the role of organizing purposes and selection have been done in the project. Thirdly, models for and reasoning about collaboration between teachers and researchers and challenges that it entails have been developed and used.
In the second part we present results from further empirical work on teaching traditions and learning. It consists of a study about the relation between teaching traditions and teaching practice in a comparison between teaching in Sweden and Switzerland, a study about how teaching traditions are enacted in practice and, finally, a study about how teachers’ changed behavior and self-regulation is constituted when teaching traditions is challenged.

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