Multi-camera on-site video technology and post-lesson video stimulated interviews were used in a purposefully inclusive research design to generate a complex data set amenable to parallel analyses from several complementary theoretical perspectives. The paper reports the results of parallel analyses undertaken in the Causal Connections in Science Classrooms (CCSC) project, using analytical frameworks derived from positioning theory, variation theory, systemic functional linguistics, distributed cognition and representational theory, applied to the same nine-lesson sequence in a single science classroom during the teaching of a single topic: States of Matter. Each of the researchers participating in the CCSC project applied their own analytical perspective in order to select elements within the data source, thereby generating a distinct data set for each of the intended analyses. The research design promoted a form of reciprocal interrogation, where the analyses provided insights into classroom practice and the comparison of the analyses facilitated the reflexive interrogation of the selected theories, while also optimally anticipating the subsequent synthesis of the interpretive accounts generated by each analysis of the same setting for the purpose of informing instructional advocacy. This paper examines the capacity of such a multi-theoretic research design to inform both theory and practice.