We analyse two foundational social problems regarding early childhood education. The first, in the late nineteenth century, is infant mortality, a social problem that constituted the historical legitimation for the first crèches. The second, the prevention of school failure, is very topical today. By analysing these examples in their historicity, taking into account social, political, economical and scientific contexts, it becomes clear that early childhood education can contribute to the individualisation and decontextualisation of social problems. Yet acknowledging this also means (...) opening windows of new opportunities, as far as the construction of social problems remains an open debate in which disagreement rather than consensus is fostered. (shrink)

The structural reforms of the education system in France (1959, 1963, and 1975) were part both of a global process of democratisation of education launched after the Second World War and of a larger modernisation project in which knowledge producers (experts, scholars and consultants) played a crucial role. Instead of a national approach or a world system approach to education reforms I propose a neo-Weberian glocal perspective that focuses on knowledge producers as a status group, education discourse structuration and education (...) global networks; this perspective integrates national contexts and their peculiarities in the analysis without losing sight of the global forces. Global education networks centered in international organisations-such as UNESCO and the OECD-in which French knowledge-producers were largely involved, adopted a discourse inspired by the American school model that was adopted by scholars in different countries. The reformist network, in which scholars, experts and policy makers participated, enhanced reformist discourse structuration in the knowledge-production institutions (universities and national institutes) around social problems such as 'technological and scientific lag', 'inequality of opportunity', and 'disenchantment from the education system, thus, fostering transformations of the French education system. (shrink)

The different situations encountered by a professional make up the frame of the analysis of the working activity. These situations are analyzed as learning potentiality and as development of the workers and learners . We hypothesize that different situations are to be mobilized to rethink a personal and professional route whose finality is learning and development of the worker . These situations have to be thinking like a set of opportunities to learn and to grow, in other words, as carriers (...) of formative experiences situations. These encounter of situations could taking sens by a dialogical process or dialectic established between different situations. To support this thesis, we propose to identify and characterize these carriers learning and development situations. To do this, we propose to appeal to the experiential posture of these different situations , especially some of them , which are considered to be representative and often iconic vocational training , that is to say training period. Les différentes situations rencontrées par un professionnel constituent le cadre d’analyse de l’activité du travail. Ces situations sont à analyser comme des potentialités d’apprentissage et de développement d’un sujet travailleur et apprenant. Nous faisons l’hypothèse que différentes situations sont à mobiliser pour penser autrement un parcours personnel et professionnel dont la finalité serait l’apprentissage et le développement du sujet. Les situations seraient ainsi pensées comme un ensemble d’occasions d’apprendre et de se développer, autrement dit, comme des situations porteuses d’expériences formatrices. Cette rencontre de situations prendrait sens selon un processus dialogique voire dialectique institué entre les différentes situations. Pour soutenir cette thèse, nous proposons d’identifier et de caractériser ces situations porteuses d’apprentissage et de développement. Pour ce faire, nous proposons de convoquer la posture expérientielle de ces différentes situations, en particulier certaines d’entre elles, dont on considère qu’elles sont représentatives et souvent emblématiques des formations professionnelles, c’est-à-dire les stages. (shrink)

ArgumentThis article focuses on a problematic character of communication in science. Two solutions are compared: paradigm-based science and the semiotic solution developed in the arts and social sciences. There are several parallels between the latter approach and Marxist dialectics. A third, original, approach to solving communication problems is proposed; it can be labeled “transactional.” It represents a version of the semiotic solution with particular emphasis on interactions, both face-to-face and depersonalized, and the imperative of negotiating and finding compromises. Communication problems (...) existing at two registers of interactions, face-to-face and depersonalized, are differentiated; freedom is interpreted as the capacity to change the registers at will. An in-depth case study of the Coase theorem in economic sciences and legal studies illustrates key points in the proposed analysis. (shrink)

Parental involvement and teacher perceptions of parental involvement in the education of children were studied in relation to level of parental education and pupil achievement. A questionnaire was administered to 218 parents and 60 teachers. Correlational analyses and paired?sample analyses showed teacher perceptions to be weakly related to parental reports of their own involvement and to operate at a different level. Regression analyses and analyses of variance showed teacher perceptions of parental involvement to affect pupil achievement more strongly than parental (...) reports. The results suggest that teacher perceptions of parents may be stereotyped and that such stereotypes can clearly affect academic results. (shrink)

? This article is reproduced by kind permission of the author and O.E.C.D. (Paris) who are publishing the material in the series Studies in the Learning Sciences (Paris, O.E.C.D., 1975).

Résumé: L’école républicaine « à la française » se donnait officiellement pour objectif de former le citoyen. Elle a connu de multiples réformes durant ces dernières décennies, et on perçoit mieux aujourd’hui sa transformation (d’ores et déjà bien avancée) en une école d’inspiration néolibérale visant la fabrication d’individus aptes à s’incorporer dans la machine économique. La façon dont l’école publique et laïque s’acquittait de ses missions principales se voit ainsi malmenée, ce qui se traduit par des zones de tension, tant (...) au niveau idéologique que sur le terrain. Abstract: Republican schooling «à la française» was officially meant to educate the citizen. It has known a number of reforms in recent decades. The neo-liberalization transformation of the French education system is now well advanced and one can see more clearly that schooling is being designed to produce individuals formatted for the economic machine. The former process by which the state schools (which are non-denominational schools) used to achieve their main missions is being shaken, and this causes tensions both on an ideological level and in schools. (shrink)

Abstract The Marxian vulgate, which long dominated the historiography of the French Revolution, and which was broadly accepted in the social sciences, is no longer sustainable. But newer attempts to frame the issue of class in entirely linguistic terms, producing the claim that France had no bourgeoisie because few people explicitly described themselves as ?bourgeois,? are not entirely convincing. The Revolution brought into being, and helped to sustain, a new social group: the ?state bourgeoisie,? which defined itself by its education (...) and by state service, and which was socially cohesive and exclusive. Thus, the Revolution can be seen as ?bourgeois? not in the sense of having been caused by a rising bourgeoisie, but in the sense that it caused one to rise. (shrink)

This article takes up a text that Rancière published shortly after The Ignorant School Master appeared in French, 'École, production, égalité'[School, Production, Equality] (1988), in which he sketched the school as being preeminently the place of equality. In this vein, and opposed to the story of the school as the place where inequality is reproduced and therefore in need of reform, the article wants to recount the story of the school as the invention of a site of equality and as (...) primordially a public space. Inspired by Rancière, we indicate first how the actual (international and national) policy story about the school and the organizational technologies that accompany it install and legitimate profound inequalities, which consequently can no longer be questioned (and become 'invisible'). Second, the article recasts and rethinks different manifestations of equality and of 'public-ness' in school education and, finally, indicates various ways in which these manifestations are neutralized or immunized in actual discourses and educational technologies. (shrink)