The work of teachers can be characterised through cross analysis of the activities (of pupils and teachers), on the one hand, and the tasks (for, or produced by, the teacher; for, or self-assigned by, the pupil...), on the other. In this characterisation, we examine teachers' strategies and the organisational methods they design, develop and implement. We also look at effectiveness, which can be measured through pupil commitment, the completion of the proposed tasks or the learning achieved by the pupils. The results of this analysis have direct implications for the characterisation of teacher professionalism, as well as implications for professional teacher training organisations.
The relationship between the progress of the research conducted by the team and the organisation of initial and continuing professional training for teachers in the subject areas in question results from a construct expressed in the models of the Masters concerned. More...

An analysis of the relationship between task and activity in the context of scientific, technological and vocational teaching allows us to question the breakdown of academic disciplines, their interdependence and also their degree of independence. Often, ideological distinctions between academic disciplines as they are organised - for example, the distinction between physical and chemical sciences, life and earth sciences, technology or even the role of academic guidance based on the performance of students in general school subjects, strongly determine the choice of career paths available to children. These are increasingly being questioned in the context of educational policies.
This teaching is poorly adapted to the current context, as evidenced by the predominance of major societal debates on issues related to the development of science and technology, the disaffection of scientific, technological or professional studies, permanent shifts in the relationship between diplomas, qualifications and employment, etc. This teaching is also subject to more or less chaotic developments that demonstrate an unprecedented crisis. This manifests itself in the very low number of candidates and hesitation in curricula which oscillate between references to 'hard' academic knowledge, deemed inaccessible, and education aimed more at understanding societal issues arising from the development of science and technology. Through, for example, an analysis of changes in this teaching, such as 'hands-on' operation, the integrated teaching of science and technology, the investigation, project or competence-based approach... the whole concept of educational institutions is being examined, both in relation to institutions based on academic disciplines or curricular organisations.
The team's work contributes to analysing the development of educational institutions, especially in terms of the continuities and discontinuities that characterise pupils' educational pathways. For example, our contributions to the study of the impact of gender in the analysis of learning situations provide a unique perspective on how the school, studied through the interactions between the teacher, pupils and knowledge, creates differentiations on a social, gendered and cultural level... These observations can illuminate choices made in terms of the directions and organisation of teacher training institutions. More...

The study of the process of transmission/appropriation of knowledge, competence or skills is central to the work carried out by the Gestepro team. For us, this is centred upon scientific, technological and vocational knowledge within the field of education in particular, through an analysis of the activities of teachers and pupils and the interactions they generate.
In particular, this orientation implies an enhancement of our knowledge of the processes of transmission and acquisition of scientific, technological or vocational knowledge, firstly, through the analysis of tasks and their status (prescribed, perceived, actual...) and, secondly, the activities that these tasks generate in the subjects in question. This includes examining the links and dynamics induced in the light of the effectiveness of the processes involved: the effectiveness of a learning tool and the impact of situations on the organisation of teaching.
The idea is also to examine to what extent the instrumentation of activities in this teaching generates a specificity of the teaching-learning process for these disciplines. More...

The overall aim of the research conducted by the team is to characterise educational or training organisations to shed light upon their determinants and assess their effectiveness, or to predict and measure their effects. We will examine the tools and behaviours implemented by teachers through teaching situations in order to organise study conditions, on the one hand, and the activities developed by the pupils to achieve the work and tasks assigned by the teacher, on the other. These contexts will be the main focal areas in which the specific subjects of our research will be drawn out. Our work thus generally has a two-fold approach. The first focus is on the pupils, with the aim of improving study and training conditions. The second focus is on teacher training, with the aim of better understanding needs. This research also has a dual perspective: descriptive and explanatory research on current realities on the ground, as well as the study of possibilities introduced through experimentation with situations deriving from the research.
More specifically, the Gestepro team is engaged in research aiming to investigate the role of semiotic or material instruments (graphic intermediaries, artifacts) used in the work of teachers and pupils. This is considered from the point of view of teaching-learning processes at work. These studies are carried out at different stages in the general education curriculum (primary, middle and high school), as well as higher education and also vocational training. This work also involves several areas of science education (physical sciences, life and earth sciences) and technology teaching (technology in middle schools, the science of information and communication technology in high schools) and several specialist areas of professional training in universities (e.g. the training of professionally-orientated undergraduate and Masters students in electrical engineering or the training of architects and/or designers). Most of this research is also the subject of scientific cooperation as part of regional, national and/or international research projects.
Teaching and learning phenomena are viewed through the staging and development of objects of knowledge or, more specifically, the construction and handling of artifacts. There is a tension which springs from the relationship between the objects handled and the construction of meanings concerning these objects. This can shed light on the strategies developed by teachers when organising their teaching, as well as those developed by pupils to organise their activities in the context of the tools proposed. Specialised symbolic languages often play a decisive and dominant role in this process. From this perspective, the conditions for the organisation of teaching situations, especially when they call for materials, machines or devices to be brought to the fore, can have a direct impact on the effectiveness of the teaching-learning process.
As an entry point, the team's work places specific emphasis on the analysis of study conditions, in particular the factors affecting the knowledge appropriation process. These include the way content is structured, the level of development of instructions, the complexity of the tasks, the way statements are formulated, the ease with which pupils can understand the tools and the degree of congruity of documents. Examining the appropriation process goes hand in hand with questioning the process of transmission and, therefore, the role of the teacher. This entry point can be considered in terms of the study of the teacher's professional actions or in terms of the study of the interactions formed in the classroom between teachers, pupils and knowledge. Here, the teacher plays the role of a conductor who is given a score written by other individuals and is in charge of setting this score to music. The third type of study goes beyond a descriptive and explanatory stance to adopt a more predictive stance, proposing work derived from a form of didactic engineering. The idea here is to study the way in which transmission and appropriation of a specific type of knowledge is organised. The impact of a change in one of the active factors in this organisation can be observed in relation to this particular form of organisation and to the overall economy of the system. The elaboration of teaching devices which put new modalities or different arrangements of this organisation to the test falls within this category. These new initiatives include distance learning, the use of remote resources, models, software simulation, etc.
These studies lead to empirical experiments, the results of which are processed quantitatively and qualitatively. In doing this, we favour the structuring of tasks as a way of analysing teaching situations.

• This includes the tasks that the pupils must complete, as well as the tasks entrusted to the teacher (both categories are necessarily different and distinct). These tasks have various meanings within the process of didactic transposition. Firstly, the specific organisation of the knowledge they exhibit (an expression of the logic of the discipline). Secondly, their organisation and transcription for educational purposes (expression of the logic of the teacher). Thirdly, the educational institution's perception of the modes of acquiring such knowledge (an expression of the logic of learning). Instead of reinforcing each other, or coming together, these three approaches are often competing. Thus, the tasks given to pupils are often beset with contradictions or conflicts between what the institution advises, what the teacher does to comply with the requirements and the pupils' understanding of what the institution and the teacher expect of them. Analysing the tasks at work on these different levels, as well as the actual activities associated with them, are of interest in drawing out these elements of competition and looking at the organisation of education in a different way.
• This activity is part of a study of the implementation of a task by the subject. Analysing this activity brings out the distance between the prescribed task and the task actually performed. In this sense, it allows us to question the effectiveness of the organisational methods proposed, distinguishing between their immediate effects (which are not, specifically, permanent in character) and their medium and long-term effects (the sustainable development of a form of representation, overcoming barriers, knowledge retention, transfer effects, etc.).

This experimental approach allows us to characterise discontinuities, inconsistencies, misunderstandings, breakdowns and barriers. We thus encounter different tasks which take radically different forms even when operating adjacently. The task prescribed by the teacher, for example, is certainly a different task from the one perceived by the pupil and, finally, the actual task that will be self-assigned. Similarly, the activity of the subject is not necessarily deployed to perform the task, but is part of the interaction between the protagonists and the social environment of the educational situation. In fact, it is more a question of defining an analytical framework to look at the way this type of situation works.
The intersection of these two levels of analysis, task and activity, allows us to characterise the interactions between three concurrent kinds of logic, which can also be competing or conflicting: the logic of the discipline, the logic of the teacher and the logic of the pupil. In fact, we are really only interested in the tension between these different kinds of logics in the classroom. We are trying to observe and analyse the effects produced by this tension. The task appears as a concentrated expression of a whole set of values, models, elements of theories and knowledge that underpin the corpus of knowledge to which we are referring and identify a single teacher from the population of teaching staff as a whole. Task analysis is thus significant for the implementation of an education programme in the particular context of a specific class. It is also significant for the activities it induces among the pupils. The transition to a consideration of real-life experience involves implementing an analysis of pupil activity. The way pupils understand the task, the way they organise their activities and direct their actions, what they take into account and what they do not even see... These considerations often allow us to better understand why and in what ways the learning processes drawn upon do not produce the desired effects. From this perspective, we can identify the difficulties faced by pupils. These are both intrinsic (linked to the knowledge) and extrinsic (linked to the tools). We can examine the way these are handled - the strategies adopted and the planning of various actions. The intersection between task and activity thus allows us to instantiate the pupil activities within the characteristic elements of the tasks. We can thus evaluate the difficulties encountered by the pupil and identify which of these are inherent to the context (the formulation of the task and the conditions for completing it, the organisation of study conditions, etc.) and which of these are caused by obstacles embedded in the very content of the learning in question. More...

A monthly seminar, alternating with the team seminar, will assist doctoral and Masters 2 students with their research on a bibliographical, conceptual and methodological level. They will be offered support in producing scientific texts (articles, posters) for publications and seminar communications. They will participate in the ERGAPE team's annual study days, during which they will present the progress of their work. More...

One of ERGAPE's specific characteristics is the development of the methodological framework of 'self- confrontation' to analyse the development of activities in a working environment. We can demonstrate the effects of this methodological framework as the initiator of a 'developmental' process related to the collective and individual changes it creates. This allows us to reflect upon training devices, drawing upon job analysis. The implementation of this methodological framework does not, however, exclude the use of other methods which are also used by the team: a) socio-genetic analysis and archiving methods to study prescriptive texts b) direct methods (observations, interviews, etc.) and indirect methods used in SHS to build and compare cases. More...

Themes
Suggested topics for Masters and PhD students correspond to the team's two programmes: firstly, the work of education professionals in educational establishments and, secondly, the education professions and professional training. More...

On a national level, the team is participating in the INRP project to create an online training platform for newly qualified teachers (néop@ss), monitoring the coordination of RARs ('Ambition Success Networks') with the observatory and examining the continuing training of teachers and educational advisors. More...

In view of the new PRES and the SFR project on education and training, the team will participate in the programme 'educational policies, local area and school trajectories', which essentially brings together sociologists, particularly through the development of the following area of focus: Analysis of teachers' work, in the 'Ambition Success Networks' (RAR) and also focus on the way pupils with special educational needs are handled in mainstream schools. More...

Disseminating the results of the team's work within the professional environment plays an important role in the team's activities. Our work is, in general, well received, whatever the categories of staff concerned (educational management and headteachers, consultants, teachers, etc.) or level of education. However, the team hopes to develop special reflection on the conditions for the dissemination of results. The aim of this will be to reduce the gap between the results, on the one hand, and professional and social needs, on the other (see observatory, above).
Research has been conducted within 'sensitive' areas with the active participation of interested teachers. Firstly, this has established how, and under what conditions, the study of the expertise of experienced teachers can be drawn upon and developed for the benefit of the environment concerned. Secondly, the position of the school council has been considered as a developer environment for the tools and practices of the trade, raising the possibility for tensions and dilemmas not settled by the profession to be debated through self-confrontation. Accordingly, a project for the continuing training of French teachers in Brazil has been selected by the Scientific Committee of the AUF (Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie). This has been designed in the form of practical action for the transfer of scientific, methodological and technical knowledge for the benefit of researchers faced with acute social demand. This cooperation should, in return, allow us to test the findings acquired through several years of scientific activity. More...