In our study, we highlight the notion that researchers’ and practitioners’ mutual knowledge production may have consequences for both university and school practices. To be able do this, we turn to previous didactical research built on pragmatism, namely, the cooperative engineering and the didactic modeling approaches (cf. Hamza et al., 2018; Olin et al., 2018; Sensevy et al., 2013). The aim of the paper to describe and discuss challenges in collaborative didactical research We combine this line of didactical research with theories, methodologies and results from the field of action research (Almqvist et al., 2017; Olin et al. 2019; Olin et al. 2021). Action research contributes to this in many ways, but especially in its interest in changes of practices and what is at stake for the participants in collaborative work (cf. Edwards-Groves et al., 2016). The combination of these approaches makes it possible to study teachers’ and school leaders’ practices. The empirical material analyzed in this study is produced in a research and development project in a municipality in the southern part of Swedish. The project centers on school development and it is based on teachers’ didactical dilemmas. In the very center of the work are didactical dilemmas identified and described by practitioners. The study indicates that the researchers and practitioners who are participating in the development dialogues mutually contribute to the construction of knowledge. In didactical development dialogues, teachers and researcher contribute with new ways of understanding and dealing with didactical dilemmas (Almqvist et al. 2019). However, in the analysis of the dialogues, we have found four challenges that will be described and discussed in the presentation: First of all, we have found that didactical knowledge and praxis development based on both science and proven experience is not easily formulated in traditional ways. Secondly, participation and dialogue are crucial for the collaborative work but also challenging to achieve. A third challenge concerns issues of recognition and professional growth for all participants, both teachers and researchers. Lastly, we have found challenges concerning how to disseminate results and how to create communicative spaces for the kind of knowledge produced in this kind of research.

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