This study investigated differences and similarities in outcomes of analyses based on phenomenography and variation theory. We used the same data for both analyses to highlight the assumptions of each approach. Participants were 198 students (grades 7-9) who provided written answers to the question 'What is learning?'. The phenomenographic analysis identified qualitatively different categories representing different ways participants' conceptualised learning, separated by critical aspects that distinguished each category. This analysis found six categories, seeing learning as: extended skills, process, investment, feelings, object-knowledge, relationships, and feelings. The variation theory analysis identified aspects constituting the object of learning, with critical aspects being those not yet discerned by the learner. Aspects and features identified in this analysis were: learner (skills, abilities, pre-knowledge, attitudes), learning activities (brain, listen, repeat, practicing), learning source (teacher, school, learning materials, friends, Internet, places/persons outside school), content/object of learning (facts, information, activity), and outcomes (job, enhanced future, development, performance, widening knowledge). Aspects and features not yet discerned are critical, and must be made discernable for the learner to enhance their understanding. This use of critical aspects differs from phenomenography, in which critical aspects identified qualitatively different ways of seeing learning (i.e., categories of collective experiences). In variation theory, aspects (dimensions) and features (values of the dimension) relate to individuals' understanding in specific contexts (e.g., a school class). A major difference between phenomenography and variation theory is the perspective of collective-and individual-expressed discernments. In phenomenography, a person may belong to several categories, whereas in variation theory, the aspects an individual has discerned reflect the way that person understands the phenomenon. This means the outcome of variation theory can be used to design and test the outcome of instruction, whereas the outcome of phenomenography provides information about general assumptions of how a phenomenon can be discerned.

The aim of this article is to elucidate how teacher researchers use a theoretical framework as mediated tool to create boundaries in communities of research practices (CoRPs) and how this effects student learning. If, and in what way, knowledge developed in one practice can be used to inform the next is also examined. Two teacher researchers implemented two CoRPs each, one as internal participant and one as external participant. In total, 202 students, 22 teachers, 2 teacher researchers, and 1 researcher participated. The qualitative analysis is framed by Wenger's three boundary dimensions: engagement, imagination, and alignment. The results show that teachers' actions in the second practice, no matter if they were internal or external participants, are characterized by a higher degree of security and knowledge and the lessons implemented are more effective regarding the students' learning outcomes than in the first. The results show that knowledge develops in an interaction order regardless of the internal or external community order. The result from the first team informs the starting point for the second team, and knowledge boundaries are transferred by the teacher researcher from one CoRP to the other.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to report a case study that qualitatively describes and analyses teachers’ discussions when planning and evaluating lessons under supervision, and what is described is the focus on their reasoning, the activities decided upon and how they decided to assess the pupils’ learning outcomes when transforming formal curriculum objectives for English as a foreign language (EFL) into classroom instruction. The effect of this transformation, expressed in different ways of designing lessons, is evaluated by assessing the pupils’ learning outcomes. Design/methodology/approach – The content analysis is based on variation theory. An iteratively designed method, the learning study, is used and data from five teacher meetings in this iterative process is analysed. Findings – The analysis shows that the areas the teachers focus on initially are: implementation (activities); content; and pupils’ knowledge, prioritised in this order, even if they partly seem to be intertwined and handled as a whole, with the three different areas being put in the foreground or background during the learning-study process. In the later part of the process, the perspective has changed to a focus on: pupils’ knowledge; content; and implementation (activities). Originality/value – The findings in this paper suggest to teachers a way to implement a formal curriculum in a local context. The authors also argue for the importance of collective work in this process.

This paper aims to contribute to knowledge of education based on a non-dualistic perspective on learning, by considering how a variation theoretical perspective seeing learning as a merged phenomenon of the learner and the object to be learnt affects instruction. In this project, teachers' theoretical non-dualistic awareness was developed through the introduction of variation theory as a guiding principle during a school-based research project. Based on a non-dualistic epistemological standpoint, the analysis focuses on the characteristics of instruction and learning from an assumption that the learner and the content learned cannot be separated. The data used for the analysis is from an example of instruction on learning to communicate in a foreign language. The analysis aimed to answer the questions: How do teachers orientate learners, carry out teaching and consolidate learners' knowledge? And how does this non-dualistic standpoint affect assessment? The results show in what way teachers transform and enact the curriculum objectives in teaching activities based on the learners' perspectives, which in turn describes how they change their way of assessing the students' learning in line with the theoretical assumptions by testing context-situated video-recorded group assessment, which are individually analysed.