Modern teaching methods to the rescue of schooling for all
Traditional teaching methods, characterised by an authoritative relationship and the principle of the teacher who dispenses knowledge to a pupil supposed to be ready to receive it, today seems unsuitable for mass education. The young people now entering secondary education come from a family environment that has not prepared them for the "role of pupil" and who are more exposed to school failure. To face the challenge presented by the democratisation of schooling, French "education experts" are proposing some innovative approaches.
Educational methods, that "practical theory" - neither art nor science but a "programme of action", as sociologist Emile Durkheim defined it - outlines responses to problems raised by the democratisation of schooling undertaken in France since immediately after the war and which gathered pace in the 1980s and 1990s, with the government’s stated aim of bringing 80% of young people in each year group up to the Baccalauréat.
Faced with the problems posed by mass education, current educational theories place "the pupil at the centre of the educational system" - a principle also enshrined in the Education law of 1989 - and recommend starting from the child’s own centres of interest to put him in a position to learn1. In recent years this approach has been translated in France by introducing children’s literature in the primary school and supervised individual work at the high school - in the form of completing a project on a subject that interests the pupil - or by using new technologies. All these are ways designed to reconcile young people with learning.
These mediating approaches also attempt to fight boredom at school, which expresses itself not only in lack of interest - one of the principal causes of academic failure - but also in violence. According to the Swiss educational historian, Charles Magnin, the boredom of pupils today results from the loss of the meaning of education in society: "School is no longer necessarily legitimate. Today, knowledge is perceived as above all functional and immediately usable." While school alone cannot reinforce the social value of education, it is, on the other hand, in a position to restore meaning to academic knowledge.
The promotion of the interdisciplinary approach - so praised by the sociologist Edgar Morin2 and adopted especially in the context of introductory courses at secondary school - seeks to combat the partitioning of subjects and the increased specialis ation of knowledge, stressing their interdependence. For example, the interdisciplinary nature of mathematics and the experimental sciences (physics and biology) makes it possible not only to work with common tools (calculation) but to break away from an abstract approach to mathematics by showing its practical uses.
One leading source of innovative ideas about ways to change state schooling, "differentiated teaching", developed in the 1970s by Louis Legrand, a researcher at the French national institute of educational research (INRP, see box), aims to adapt teaching methods to the different types of pupils, in order to increase equality of opportunity and reduce school failure, still largely determined by social inequalities (see article pp. 20-21). In this respect this modern method of teaching champions the guiding of students’ work through tutorials or advice on methodology - which has been partly taken up with the creation of support groups in high schools - so that the school can be "its own resource", to use the expression coined by Philippe Meirieu, professor of educational sciences, considered to be the French expert on educational methods. This is to ensure that pupils from privileged backgrounds are not the only ones to benefit from additional support, especially through private lessons.
In order to make allowance for the biological rhythms and developmental stages of the child highlighted by the Swiss psychologist, Jean Piaget, a policy of arranging school timetables has been developed which has lightened the working day of pupils in primary schools since 1980, and in secondary schools from the 1990s.
Another aspect now called into question is the organisation of pupils into fixed and predetermined classes. Differentiated education suggests replacing this system by large groups of three or four classes, divided, depending on pupils’ needs, into groups of different sizes. These groups would be temporary, not only to allow for progress made by young people in the learning process, but also to avoid locking them up in a stigmatising group (the slow-learners group). This arrangement implies, moreover, new school timetables. Lastly, it entails training teachers in educational culture, team working and their new responsibilities for the all-round education of pupils. A thorough overhaul of their training has begun with the university institutes of education (IUFM, see box) and the revision of school timetables is continuing.
These proposals, some of which have not yet been implemented in practice, profoundly call into question the way schools are organised and the conception of the teacher’s role, no longer centred only on the transmission of a body of knowledge, but also incorporating pupil guidance and their education in the broad sense, in other words, their socialisation. This definition of the teacher’s job and their duties at school is not unanimously accepted, but it is, and has been for several years, behind an increasing number of successful experimental pilot schemes.
Set up in 1991, the university institutes of education (IUFM), given the task of making teaching training more professional, now number 29 and have 89,277 students.
These public establishments prepare students for the competitive recruitment examination for primary and secondary teachers as well as their initial training. From now on, primary school teachers - who have become simply school teachers - and secondary school teachers receive training which is in part the same. This combines subject knowledge with theoretical and practical teaching skills and includes "supervised work experience" in the classroom.
The IUFMs also support teachers throughout their careers through in-service training. They contribute to educational research and new teaching methods. Lastly, they provide expertise and advice in the training of teaching staff in a number of foreign countries.
Each year Cécile Ladjali, a teacher of French in Seine-Saint-Denis (Paris suburbs), produces a collective work with her pupils: a collection of poems1 or a tragedy2, to help them get to grips with French language and literature.
Trying to democratise access to high culture, this passionately committed arts graduate, qualified for university teaching, refuses to allow her pupils - who are working towards a technical Baccalauréat - to be locked into a ghetto of any kind, whether cultural or linguistic. Recommending demanding methods of teaching, she introduces reputedly difficult classical works to young people from working-class backgrounds and, for the most part, of foreign origin.
To do this, she adapts her teaching methods. Because "you can’t write if you haven’t read very much", she brings boxes of books to each class and suggests reading appropriate for the tastes and abilities of each pupil. She guides her pupils in writing and re-writing their work. In the end, publication or performance of their work gives it value and proves their right to access to culture and creative activities. Testament to this is the recognition of George Steiner, a Cambridge professor (England), who has agreed to write the preface to the poetry collection Murmures [Murmurings]. Eloge de la transmission: Du maître à l’élève, [In praise of passing down from teacher to pupil] is a book of conversations between Cécile Ladjali and George Steiner, published by Albin Michel at the beginning of the 2003 academic year; which tells the story of this determination to reconcile Republican elitism and the creativity of educationalists.
With an annual budget of 15 million euros, the French National Institute for Educational Research (INRP) employs 280 people, including 80 researchers. This body, which moved its headquarters to Lyon in 2003, has been responsible for the development of educational research since its creation in 1976. The main focus of its current work - learning processes and situations, changes in the educational system and the building of knowledge, the teaching profession - reflect its concern with meeting society’s expectations of the education system. The INRP works with 1,650 teachers in secondary schools, high schools and primary schools to ensure that its research reflects as closely as possible what is happening on the ground. It collaborates with the IUFMs and French and foreign universities.
With its library (600,000 volumes), its publications department (45 titles a year and 8 journals) and the national museum of Education opened in Rouen in 1980, it has a conservation and information role. Lastly, it assists with the training of researchers in education with the universities and the IUFMs and selects and distributes French and foreign publications in France.
• Deux Voix pour une école [Two Voices for One School], by Philippe Meirieu & Xavier Darcos, pub. Desclée de Brouwer, Paris, 2003.
• L’Affectivité à l’école, éducation et formation [Affectivity in school, education and training] by Gaëlle Espinosa, pub. PUF, Paris, 2003.
• L’Ennui à l’école [Boredom at School] edited by Aliette Armel, pub. Albin Michel, Paris, 2003.
• L’Enfant et ses rythmes, pourquoi il faut changer l’école [The Child and his Rhythms, why school must change] by Professor Testu, pub. Calmann-Lévy, Paris, 2001.
• Métier d’élève et sens du travail scolaire [The Pupil’s Job and the Meaning of Schoolwork] by Philippe Perrenoud, pub. ESF, Paris, 2000.
• Les Différenciations de la pédagogie [The Differentiations of Educational Methods] by Louis Legrand, pub. PUF, Paris, 1995.
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