This contribution will rely upon the Joint Action framework in Didactics (JAD) to characterize continuities and discontinuities in the process of construction of a shared reference in classroom transactions (Schubauer-Leoni et al, 2007; Ligozat et al, 2018; Marty et al, in press). Initially built as a tool for describing and understanding teaching and learning practices in different subjects and/or different contexts (Sensevy, 2011; Ligozat, 2023), the JAD framework combines an epistemological analysis of the contents at stake in the instructional tasks and a situated analysis of the meaning-making process generated in the enactment of tasks by the teacher and the students. This latter analysis is supported by a couple of generic concepts featuring the situation encountered by the classroom participants. (1) The milieu consists of the material and symbolic environment that the teacher or students acts upon, use, talk about, interpret, etc. For a given environment (seen by the observer), the milieu may be different for the teacher and the students or between students; each one can use different elements or give different meaning to the same element. (2) The didactic contract features the interdependent actions of the teacher and the students in the classroom. These actions are based on a system of habits, norms, and expectations. Most of the components of this system are played implicitly in the classroom transactions, unless one of the participants does not act according to them (breach in the didactic contract), and hence make the rules, norms and expectations visible in the “response” of the others. The contract and its evolution are rooted in the regularities of students’ and teacher’s behaviors (that are the studied classroom events) and their evolutions (Brousseau, 1997). Through the data provided, the articulation of both the epistemological features of the task and the situated meaning-making process that takes place in solving the tasks will be performed. Since didactic joint actions are not common actions, but interdependent lines of actions between the teacher and the students, it is possible to consider different participants’ perspectives in the process of building a shared reference. This allows to discuss certain criteria of teaching quality, such as the opportunities given to the students in participating to the knowledge content development and the consistency of the shared reference built, with respect to the expected learning outcomes of tasks.

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