In this presentation we draw on three projects from different countries where researchers and teaching practitioners (teachers, cooperating teachers) are engaged in collaborative ways of searching for and analyzing different teaching traditions in order to optimize the possibility to find fruitful teaching approaches. The collaborations are transactional processes, 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). Our main interest concerns the epistemological question about what kind of knowledge come out of those collaborative projects and how is it enabled through the transactional processes. Theoretically the concept of recognition is used to study transactions regarding both the individual-collective dimension (Honneth 2012) and also to highlight how responsibilities and agency (Ricoeur 2005) get played out in the processes. Two of the projects are based on participatory action research (Chevalier & Buckles, 2013) and the third project on cooperative engineering (Sensevy et al, 2013). In all three projects innovative ways of analyzing in researcher-practitioner collaborative groups have been developed. Transactional processes in those “inquiry collectives” are followed through reflective documentation by all participants. The result, the knowledge produced, takes shape in different ways, as texts and also as collective insights and practical performances. From the perspective of recognition three dimensions are foregrounded when describing the results. A common identification of issues that emerge from the teaching and learning practices that are being scrutinized seems to be one central aspect of knowledge creation. A second one is that everyone in the inquiry collective becomes aware of their own role in the transaction, a self-attestation to realize what knowledge contribution can be made available through one’s own unique knowledge and competence. The third dimension is the mutual recognition that rests on the assumption that the knowledge emerging from a researcher-practitioner inquiry collective goes beyond both educational research and practical knowledge. Everyone in the collective must take on responsibility to both act, let others act and to respond in appropriate ways to nurture the process of knowledge creation. To better understand both the transactional process in itself as well as what kind of knowledge this leads to, contributes to strengthening the didactical knowledge base and how it may be further developed in collaborations between researchers and teaching practitioners.

Chevalier, J.M. & Buckles, D.J. (2013). Participatory action research. Theory and methods for engaged inquiry. London and New York: Routledge. Honneth, A. (2012). The I in We: Studies in the Theory of Recognition (Translated by Joseph Ganal). Cambridge: Polity. 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.