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This paper addresses the subject of the semiosis process in the transactions between teachers and students about the knowledge at stake in science education. We present a conceptualisation of these transactions as a joint action between students and teachers. This conceptualisation enables us to understand the semiosis process as it unfolds during teaching-learning situations as the semiosis of both the didactic contract and the didactic milieu. We analyse this semiosis in a case study of earth science education at 5th grade, which comprised two subsequent teaching sessions delivered by the same teacher. Our results give an account of the contract-milieu semiosis under the description of different semiotic modes (speech, gestures, stance, gaze, writings, modellings and proxemics). We also define the generic and specific dimensions of semiosis in relation to the knowledge at stake. Finally, we evaluate the relevance of the teaching practice we observed in terms of its staging of a relationship between the semiosis of didactic contracts and didactic milieus.

This paper describes some elements of a specific kind of design-based research, cooperative engineering. In the first part of the paper, we argue that cooperative engineering can be analyzed through a joint action framework. We first present some conceptual tools that the Joint Action Theory in Didactics proposes in order to understand didactic and cooperative action. The second part of the paper is devoted to cooperative engineering, a research process that gathers teachers and researchers through a common project. We first give some root principles of this kind of research endeavor. Then we focus on a specific cooperative engineering, Arithmetic and Comprehension at Elementary School, which aims towards building a mathematics curriculum at first and second grades. After a general description of the research project, we analyze one of its core components, the engineering dialogue. We show how this joint action between teachers, researchers, and teachers and researchers, enables the cooperative engineering team to build and rebuild the curriculum in an iterative way.