This study has its point of departure and empirical material from a Swedish-Danish EU-Interreg project, Øresundsklassrummet. The project has its focus on “young people´s participation in the sustainable society of the future”, and has been working during about two years with 30 teachers, eight classes and 250 students on secondary level in Köbenhavn, Malmö and Lund. Our article is concentrated on how the teachers and researchers have been working together in mutual participation in what we call “lärcirklar/laeringscirkler” (learning groups) for professional development. This is something innovative developed in this project.

Overarching for the learning in this project has been “education for sustainable development”. As researchers we have during two years followed the teaching work by the teachers. After this period the teachers and researchers continued together for about half a year with workshops on reflection and writing on their experiences of the years with the students´ learning processes.

The research question is: What does it mean for the teachers´ professional development and professional norms, to continuously reflect on and in their educational practice in a professional group together with researchers?

Our theoretical framework is following theories within modern sociology of law where the relations between law and society is the main focus of the research (Rommetveit 1955, Elster 1992, Therborn 2002). In our sociology of law-perspective, we use norms as a means of exploring the relation between legal norms, professional norms and actions to study schools´ implementation of education for sustainable development (Wickenberg 1999, Hydén & Svensson 2008, Leo, 2010, Persson 2010).

Donald Schön (1983) makes a difference between ”reflection in action” and ”reflection on action”.  The first meaning the thinking made in the moment of action and the other the reflections made afterwards and hence also before forthcoming lessons. In this project the reflective groups (learning circles) were set up to be sessions for ”reflection on action”. Teachers working in reflective and professional groups  support the creation or maintenance of professional norms that guide actions in teaching.

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