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The purpose of this paper is to add to the discussion about practitioner research in schools – by addressing mechanisms and systematic strategies based on theory in a research model, which enables the creation of knowledge products that enhance student learning and are sharable between teachers.

The research question is the following: Can a specific form of teachers’ research produce practice-based knowledge relevant beyond the borders of the local school context? This question is addressed through empirical examples from previously published papers on learning studies in natural sciences, mathematics and language.

This paper promotes the view that teachers in learning studies can create practical public knowledge relevant beyond their local context. The authors suggest that learning studies and variation theory can offer teachers mechanisms to create such public knowledge.

The paper proposes that teachers’ collaboration in professional learning communities, as in a learning study, not only has the capacity to increase students’ and teachers’ learning, but it can also be used to create practical public knowledge.

The purpose of this study is to explore whether the insights gained by teachers in a learning study can be shared by others and used to enhance other students’ learning.

An exploratory study analysed how four Mathematics teachers implemented the knowledge gained about student learning from a learning study about decimal numbers in their teaching. The teachers enacted two lessons with different conditions in terms of the knowledge identified about student learning in a total of eight classes in the fifth and sixth grades.

The findings indicate that, when the teachers enacted the knowledge in their lessons, students’ learning improved significantly as compared to when only some parts of this knowledge were enacted.

This suggests that teachers can produce knowledge that is also usable for other teachers and that enables better possibilities for student learning.

The study provides insights as to what extent findings from learning studies can be valuable for others.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on how the content of a single lesson that dealt with the addition and subtraction of negative numbers was handled in the interaction between students and a teacher in the 7th grade. The study is a follow‐up of a learning study and can be described as a teaching experiment. In total, four critical features for students’ learning were identified in the learning study.

In the new study, the teacher deliberately did not bring up all the critical features of the object of learning in one lesson. The aim was to see how different critical features made a difference for student learning.

The results show that a particular student's questions had an impact on the critical features that were brought up and hence on what it is possible to learn. In this lesson it was the students that opened some of the dimensions of variation for learning negative numbers.

The paper suggests that being aware of critical features could help the teacher in the interaction with the students and their questions.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the theoretical reflection on learning study as a research approach. The focus is on description and reflection on the methodology of learning study as paedeutic research. This research is for, not on, teachers, i.e. research into problems and challenges faced by teachers in their professional practice. Learning study as paedeutic research is about the content and processes of formation/Bildung in relation to specific learning objects. Its focus is on subject-specific ways of knowing as well as how such knowing is enabled through teaching.

The point of departure is a perspective on research approaches as practices, i.e. as activities with certain aims as well as ways of “making” knowledge. Based on a description of the knowledge machinery in a learning study, i.e. those mechanisms that together generate new knowledge, the knowledge claims that can be made are discussed together with the theoretical underpinning of the arguments. The knowledge machinery is described in relation to how it is organised around the delimitation and analysis of an object of Learning as well as designing and evaluating ways to make the critical aspects of this object of learning visible. As an epistemological underpinning, some aspects of pragmatic philosophical thinking regarding the relationship between theory and practice are outlined. Based on that the research process may be described as a development of means-ends relationships – from unconscious empirical relationships to conscious staging of internal and theoretical relations. Abduction is an important tool for this meaning-making.

Learning study can be described as a particularistic, theory-building research approach concerning the knowing of specific learning objects as well as how they can be taught and learnt. The knowledge that is generated in learning study is theoretical and describes aspects of the teaching and learning of specific objects of learning. The research process can be described in terms of specification where practice is gradually supplied with a more differentiated meaning. A learning study is organised around a specific object of learning that functions as an open and unfolding object of knowledge. It combines a practice-based development of theory with a theory-based development of practice.

The development of the thinking about learning study as research for, rather than on, teachers is paedeutical research. A contribution to reflection on the knowledge machinery and knowledge claims of such research.