ED Sociétés, Politique, Santé Publique
Diffusion and reception of reforms in educational institutions: the case of teachers' collective work in secondary education.
by Christophe DELAVERGNE (Laboratoire Cultures et Diffusion des Savoirs)
The defense will take place at 13h30 - Amphithéâtre Denigès Université de Bordeaux, site Victoire, 3 ter place de la Victoire, 33076, Bordeaux
in front of the jury composed of
- Bernard SARRAZY - Professeur émérite - Université de Bordeaux - Directeur de these
- Xavier PONS - Professeur des universités - Université de Lyon 1 - Rapporteur
- Nicolas SEMBEL - Professeur des universités - Université d'Aix-Marseille - Rapporteur
- Christophe ROINE - Professeur des universités - Université de Bordeaux - Examinateur
- Dominique BODIN - Professeur des universités - Université Paris-Est-Créteil - Examinateur
- Gwénaël LEFEUVRE - Maître de conférences - Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès - Examinateur
Since the end of the 1980s and the first moves to devolve public action, teamwork has become a key element of institutional directives (Dupriez, 2015). In line with the development of the new public management, this injunction to 'work as a team' has also appeared in many areas of the public sector (universities, hospitals, etc.). In education, teamwork is a mean of mediating between the institutional framework drawn up at national level and the specific local features of teaching contexts, which is supposed to create a dynamic and to build coherence into the educational project of schools. However, although it is part of the political project and widely supported by secondary school teachers, it is difficult to observe in practice in their day-to-day work. This observation is the starting point of this thesis, which proposes an examination of how the injunctions addressed to teachers to work together are disseminated within the educational noosphere in order to understand the basis for the significant variability in the ways by which teachers invest in collective practices. More broadly, this observation ties in with the issue of the coupling between educational policies and practices of actors in the school system, which has already been documented (Fassia-Recrosio and Bataille, 2019). The aim of this thesis is to propose a hybrid model for analyzing the relationships between policy and practice. At the crossroads of theories relating to the modelling of complex systems, the sociology of public action and anthropo-didactics, the purpose of thesis is to conduct a cross-analysis of the conditions by which prescriptions for collective work are diffused - by supervisory staff - and the conditions by which they are received by teachers. This thesis clearly reveals combinations of logics - including convictions about the pedagogical stakes of collective work (axiological logic), dispositions linked to career advancement and training (identity logic) or the epistemological particularities of the taught knowledge (disciplinary logic). These combinations provide the framework for describing reception conditions of the ministerial injunctions, and shed light on the different ways in which teachers engage in collective practices. The analysis of these combinations allows to highlight specific modes of interaction (convergence, divergence, interdependence) between the various actors of the school system, and to account for specific configurations that favor or constrain the development of collective dynamics. The ecosystem of professionals and the resolutely dynamic nature of practical logics appear to be central dimensions in the understanding of the driving forces behind the heterogeneous and evolving commitment of teachers within work collectives. In addition, a series of structural factors have been highlighted through the perceptions of school actors, providing information about the culture of the school institution: bureaucratic, vertical and centralized management of educational action, undermining the autonomy displayed at local level, hierarchical structuring of professional relationships, discontinuity of policy orientations, lack of support over time, etc. These factors hinder the local development of sustainable collective dynamics and deepen the gap between teachers, middle management and central administration. At the end of this work, however, a number of perspectives for are outlined for thinking the emergence of intermediary methods for collective regulation of professional practices in a more forward-looking way.