La Structure Fédérative d’Études et de Recherches en Éducation de Provence (SFERE-Provence, FED4238), créée en 2012, est sous la tutelle de l’Université d’Aix-Marseille et partenaire de l’Université de Nice-Sophia Antipolis. Elle fédère 18 unités de recherche dans les secteurs de l’enseignement, l’éducation et la formation. Plus...

Better monitoring of students on Masters 1 and 2 courses, especially with a narrower framework when it comes to the choice of research topics, is a condition for improving the quality of research projects. Masters pathways with a specialisation in the teaching, education and training Professions should be developed in a complementary manner, with pooled resources. Masters studies carried out within the education sciences department should allow us to improve the quality of and specification guidelines for students' research projects. This includes projects rooted in the work of the team, that of the research group or, more generally, developed in the context of the study of scientific, technological and vocational teaching. More...

The fourteen theses currently underway should be completed by the beginning of the next contract (2012-2015). The team is very much in demand when it comes to developing co-supervision with foreign universities. Our position in this regard is currently somewhat cautious, but it would be very desirable to strengthen this dimension, with a view to boosting our partnerships. More...

Supervision of students is currently a weak point for the team, due to the departure of two out of the three professors on the team. We need to recruit two new professors as soon as possible (one specialising in vocational education, the other in the teaching of materials science). Eventually, we will need to recruit professors specialising in the teaching of life and earth sciences and information and communication technology.
Developing our supervision skills also means that our current lecturers should be able to progress to being research directors as quickly as possible. Four of them are likely to do so within a reasonably short timeframe; the other four should be able to consider such a perspective towards the end of the next quadrennium. To overcome this supervision deficit within the team, a system of co-management has been set up to involve the four lecturers who are close to qualifying as research directors. Not only does this co-management process introduce a quantitative approach to supervision, but it also aims to develop and strengthen the collegiate nature of this activity, so that highly individualised monitoring can take place with controlled guidance in terms of the directions of the research. More...

Our research conducted in the fields of science, technology and vocational education, according to these specific approaches (including the understanding of teaching and learning in these areas through the process of analysing the activities of teachers, pupils and their interactions) translates into a strong commitment to several international projects, including European programmes (for example the Framework Programmes for Research and Technological Development). We currently have two projects submitted to the European Union:

• The DPCoP project (University Training Network as a tool for the Development of Common Practices in Teacher Training for the Vocational sector): the challenge is to create a common higher education space in the region to favour the least valued and more vulnerable areas as well as to organise teacher training in the technological and vocational sectors. The aim is to increase the level of culture and qualifications among the active population, in the medium and long term, and to reduce social inequalities by boosting the quality of education in the region and combating the isolation of certain groups through forging networks between different institutions involved in the development of vocational training.
• Project proposed in the context of the Alfa programmes. Requested budget: €985,000. Project coordinated by Provence University (IUFM and UMR ADEF). Partners: Polytechnic Institute - Higher School of Education, Porto (Portugal); Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia, Av. Honorio Delgado 430, Urb. Ingeniería, S.M.P. Lima – Peru; Universidad Pedagógica de El Salvador, Diagonal Dr. Arturo Romero y 25 Avenida Norte. San Salvador. El Salvador; Universidad de Concepción, Concepción, Chili; Universidad Nacional de rio Negro, Belgrano 526 Viedma Río Negro 8500, Argentina
• Projet PISTE (Providing Innovations in Science and Technology Education): The aim of this project is to promote, increase and strengthen science and technology teaching in Europe, using research conducted by different partners. This enhanced through innovation in terms of teaching methods and teacher training to implement these methods. According with the Rocard’s report (2007), it is clear that developing science and technology education (STE) for all is a real challenge for European Union if we consider the global aims of competitiveness, scientific renewal, equal access and democratisation of studies’ access. Reinforcing innovation, scientific research and development potential suppose a massive generalisation of science and technology education. Indeed, these both educations must be considered as complementary through the specific studied objects, the diversity of methods and approaches, and the different offered ways to understand our relations with our contemporary world. In this project, we examine this question of relationships between science and technology education and the possible complementarities as implemented at school, for the general education levels.

Project submitted in the context of the EU's FP7 programme. Requested budget: €2,150,000. Project coordinated by Provence University (IUFM and the ADEF research group). Partners: Institut National de Recherche Pédagogique (France), KaHo Sint-Lieven (Belgium), Arteveldehogeschool Ghent University College (Belgium), Maine University (France), Technische Universität Braunschweig (Germany), University of Koblenz-Landau (Germany), University of Patras (Greece), Università Statale di Milano-Bicocca (Italy), Linköpings Universitet CETIS (Sweden), Tel-Aviv University (Israel), Birmingham City University (England), Universitad de Barcelona (Spain), University of Jyvaskyla (Finland), University of Glasgow (Scotland). More...

The team wishes to extend and strengthen its scientific collaborations within national networks (ARDIST, Visa, International Conference on Scientific and Technical Culture), both on a European and international level (World Council Associations for Technology Education, Pupils Attitude Towards Technology, International Design and Technology Association, Primary Technology Education, International Organisation for Science and Technology Education, Réseau Francophone de Robotique Pédagogique, Mediterranean Network of Scientific and Technological Education, etc.).
This participation in numerous networks boosts establishment to establishment collaboration in the context of agreements or research protocols, including the mobility of researchers or students. This remains relatively limited, since the majority of these individuals exercise a profession and find it difficult to get the time off from their professional obligations.
The team is also very involved in support networks for the development of scientific, technological and vocational teaching in southern countries, particularly in Latin America, Africa and Asia. Support is given for the establishment of research laboratories and in structuring courses at Masters and doctorate level (including through joint supervision). The team's goal is to strengthen this support, making it more structured and increasingly more reliable in the context of major international projects (UNESCO, World Bank, AUF, etc.). With this in mind, we envisage the creation of a UNESCO Chair. More...

The team's commitment to the project for collaboration within educational research organised at a regional level provides a first level of collaboration with research teams dealing with similar themes. In particular, this includes issues related to the dissemination of scientific knowledge or the role of artefacts in the knowledge transmission and acquisition process. It also covers issues related to the role of the norms, symbols and language procedures involved in these processes. Finally, it considers the social dimensions related to a high or low valuation of educational knowledge organised in scientific, technological or vocational teaching. More...

The team is involved in several activities to draw upon and disseminate research results: (i) Provence University's cultural space (ESCUP) organises sessions for scientific presentations to be made to middle and high school pupils. Several team members are involved in designing, setting up and running these events; (ii) participation in 'hands-on' initiatives and 'integrated science and technology teaching', in collaboration with the Academy of Sciences (the team is part of a project to create a regional resource centre on the initiative of the Academy of Sciences in the context of a major loan); (iii) participation in collections of work on teaching, textbooks, teaching and training resources or books designed to make subjects accessible to primary and middle school pupils, in collaboration with publishers (Scéren, Delagrave, Nathan, Hachette, etc.) or producers (Jeulin, Technologie Service, etc.); (iv) participation in networks and professional associations of teachers in relevant disciplines (Pagestec, union of physicists, European society for technology education, etc.) involving contributions to the organisation of events such as summer schools, seminars or conferences open to a wide audience of teachers. More...

The Gestepro team's publishing activities have developed significantly during this contract, especially with regard to publications in international journals and, in particular, the English-speaking world, along with works published by major English-language scientific publishers. This result is linked, on the one hand, to the originality of the approach developed in terms of research into scientific, technological or vocational education and, on the other, an improvement in the team's skills in writing articles for such publications. Working with an established translator has made a significant contribution to the qualitative and quantitative improvement of publications. Nevertheless, French-language publications have not been forgotten and team members continue to publish articles in major French-language scientific journals within the field.
This effort should be continued with a view to significantly improving the team's international reputation and developing the dissemination of its work within the international community of research into scientific, technological and vocational education. We need to rise to the real challenge of continuing our efforts to disseminate our work based on the original approach developed by the team. More...

The three research programmes currently underway are guiding the research of our team members. Much of this work is carried out in collaboration with teams external to the ADEF research group, in the context of cooperative projects on a national and international level.

•     Role of graphic intermediaries in structuring scientific and technological thinking through educational activities: building meanings based on academic tasks necessarily exceeds the implementation of (educational) techniques for completing the task. Structured symbolic languages (diagrams, drawings, plans, organigrams, flowcharts, etc.) can be used as aids for structuring activities, but their use in teaching may, under certain conditions, be identified as a barrier to learning. An artifact-based approach, with issues linked to instruments (with the corollaries instrumentation and instrumentalisation) provides the elements of a conceptual framework being built for these particular situations
•     The role of teaching tools (pedagogical materials, textbooks, maquettes, reduced models, computer simulations, etc.) in the teaching and learning process in science and technology education: scientific, technological and vocational teaching often draws upon teaching devices intended to represent an external reality in the classroom. The development of these devices is based on more or less explicit choices about the references used, the constraints selected and the knowledge brought to the fore. Analysing these choices allows us to put together observation grids for situations arising from the use of these tools in a classroom and approach the issue of performance, either from a descriptive and explanatory perspective or from a predictive and remedial perspective. In this sense, the idea is either to analyse the impact of existing tools, or to design new devices through a form of didactic engineering.
•     Development of knowledge for teaching based on social practices: the constant reference to practices in vocational education, as well as in some dimensions of technological and scientific education, is examined based on the description of these practices. The choices made in terms of the description methodologies, preferred organisations and descriptors employed have a direct impact on the implementation of these practices in textual form - the way they take shape in reference tools for teaching and, subsequently, in the process of developing tasks given to pupils. The researchers involved in this programme propose an analysis of the process of didactic transposition at work, particularly through epistemological delimitations and didactic organisations established in the knowledge transmission and appropriation process. More...