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‪This article aims to contribute to thinking on the prerequisites for setting up collaborative studies by comparing the process and results of a survey conducted in the context of a “Lieu d’éducation Associé” (LéA) with two of the theoretical assumptions which ensure successful collaboration between researchers and practitioners. The unique configuration of the “Gérer Professionnellement les Situations” (Professional Situations Analysis) process in LéAs, which is designed to guarantee symmetrical roles among its members and cross-fertilisation between experiential knowledge and scientific knowledge, is in fact, put to the test by the co-writing process and the final written document produced by the group. The article highlights a series of obstacles which hamper the establishment of a research community: geographic distance, the researcher/trainer’s stance and the juxtaposition of a research and training approach. It also examines the effects of this distance between theory and practice by analysing the final written document through the prism of reflexivity employed by practitioners. Paradoxically, the writing provides evidence of double – technical and critical – reflexivity and the development of action-based knowledge which calls into question the process’s conceptual assumptions and, more generally, the mediations which are intended to foster the “secondarisation” of the discourse.‪