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...

Our publication policy is moving in three directions. Firstly, the team's research is arriving at a stage of maturation where we can envisage the publication of works presenting, on the one hand, a summary of the results produced by the analysis of the activity of education professionals and, on the other, the theoretical and methodological presuppositions of basic research on the ground. A second aim is to publish articles in high level journals and in the English language. A third direction will endeavour to disseminate research findings in a form which can be appropriated by the professionals concerned. More...

ERGAPE's main goal will be to have its work recognised in an international context. To this end, existing relationships with foreign laboratories will be strengthened, particularly through exchanges or postings of research lecturers and students. A thesis co-supervision is underway (Célia Ducros with F. Yvon from CRIFPE at the UDM). Other cooperative initiatives are to be confirmed (especially with UCL) and extended within an interdisciplinary perspective, particularly as regards job analysis (psychology, ergonomics, sociology of work). An effort to publish our work in English will be required in order to make it known outside the French-speaking world of education. Our participation and responsibilities in international networks are currently limited by the size of the team, but will be defined in accordance with future recruitment. Links and continuity are being established through theses co-supervision. A doctoral theses director (HDR) has recently been supported in this context. More...

How have changes in the management and organisation of the work of staff in schools affected the school as an educational form? How have transformations of teachers' and pupils' workplaces redefined the contours of the teaching profession and the role of the pupil. More...

Our work examines the development of professional experience generated by a specific methodological framework for analysing activities carried out in different contexts, both individual and collective. We also consider the renormalisation processes that education professionals employ within these 'environments'. 
Changes caused by prescriptive requirements can impact upon professionalism when this collides with the way in which teachers envisage their professional activities. The key question lies in determining to what extent this affects the conceptual frameworks of the profession and its job areas. We also need to question the significance of the term 'new professionalisms' or 'emerging professionalisms' in a context of job insecurity. More...

Job analysis has always considered an examination of the activities undertaken at work to be a prerequisite for professional training, both in terms of identifying problems or needs and also defining training content. It is from this perspective that the ERGAPE team will contribute to the development of the professional knowledge 'transmission/appropriation process', whether in a professional situation (between experienced teachers, mentors and novices) or in a training centre situation (analysis of practices, simulation, etc.). The idea is to account for the way in which the ergonomics of the activity question the relationship between knowledge formalised in SHS, which is supposed to equip us to reflect upon professional practices, and 'indigenous' or professional knowledge. In the context of teacher training, students are just as foreign to these fields of knowledge, which nevertheless set out the boundaries of their future profession. Understanding the complex links between these two kinds of knowledge - links that teacher training has difficulty forging - is an important issue in education sciences. A central preoccupation, from this point of view, is the way in which we take into account the knowledge produced by activity analysis in training design. More...

Most of the proposed research will be aligned with this observatory and thus adhere to ergonomic methods of intervention. The aim of this is both epistemic and transformative and is part of establishing an 'operating framework'. Firstly, knowledge must be produced on the real work of education professionals operating in various workplaces, at the request and with the assistance of professionals who are striving to provide, maintain or rebuild meaning in the work they carry out to meet these new requirements.
The observatory is considered a 'living laboratory' for the study of professional activities undergoing a process of construction. From our cultural-historical perspective, we aim to identify, in this construction, the historical traces making up the activities studied as the emerging traits of its current (re)structuring. Here the scientific challenge - and the difficulty - lies in successfully identifying, from these potentially structuring events, contingencies related to the diversity of situations. The full interest of an analysis of this kind of activity which, for years, has been conducted by indirect methods, comes through in its ability to take into account the contradictions, tradeoffs and dilemmas that professionals face. These can be renewed and become institutionalised in the design and organisation of these new work situations. This observatory will be a place where difficulties encountered can be diagnosed and contradictions overcome (or not) by the teaching staff and executive committees of the Ambition Success Networks.
An evaluation will then be carried out of the impact of this research and involvement in terms of transforming work situations and the professional development of those involved. Cooperation between practitioners and researchers and constant consultation with professionals will be essential to this process. This way of testing the methods used to evaluate research and its social efficiency is almost unique. We are aware of some minor influence of scientific knowledge on educational policies and the pedagogical practices of teachers and those working in education at a senior level. This is very limited, however, because these individuals have not necessarily identified with the results of research thus far. The approach proposed here is an alternative to this recurring criticism. Firstly, because these results come in response to a request from interested parties who are an integral part of the research. Secondly, because their ownership is reflected on a practical level through transformations of educational tools or projects which are collectively validated, including by those further up the hierarchy. Here, we are at the crux of the downward prescription/upward prescription dichotomy and the renormalisation activities developed by work collectives. It would appear that this 'local proximity' reduces the gap between social demand and its scientific handling, as well as the time difference between the 'results' and their 'application'. This will require further analysis. More...