Cultural policies are intricately linked to the didactic dimension, as soon as transmission of knowledge, arts and technologies belong to a specific institution such as a school that distances itself from the social practices of production and assigns the roles of teacher and “taught” to a specific knowledge (Thévenaz, 2007). From a vygotskian point of view, read and writing practices are cognitive tools for human development (Vygotski, 1931/1978). In school, writing practices have a specific status and a tradition of teaching/learning practices that have been studied more intensely than what has been done in regard to artistic education (Brossard, 1997; Freedman & al., 1987; Lahire, 1993). Moreover, despite this tradition, except for literary works, writing is not considered necessary to enjoy or to produce works of art. For example: musical scores are mostly banned from the curriculum or the pedagogical activities developed by cultural institutions (Mili & Rickenmann, 2006). Nevertheless, during our research on school practices in art education, we found many uses of writing: dictations, documentary research, homework or written questions. Their analysis remains to be done. The presence of these different kinds of writing practices in the classroom during art lessons lead us to a few questions: Do these forms and practices of writing fit in a tradition inherited from other academic disciplines? What is their influence on the content of art education? What are the relationships that can be established between these practices and other extra-curricular practices (eg solfeggio)? Our interest resides in the relationship existing between oral and written traditions and their role in art education in school. For us, artistic education does not consist of an uninterrupted set of oral exchanges, observations and “hearings” to which could be added a series of performances (concerts, exhibitions)… without written record of any kind. On the contrary, in the social practice of arts there are all kinds of texts and practices of writing (posters, programs, journals ....) (Rickenmann, 2006).

Our work is based on the analysis from a "clinic of the teaching-learning processes" methodology (Leutenegger, 1999), to link up different sources of information: -- Transcriptons of the videos of art education lessons -- different kind of traces produced by the teacher and students (dictations, written learning tasks, texts of documentary research of students, musical scores, pictures, etc..) -- Interviews with the teachers (before and after the lessons) This various sources of information are interpreted with the "didactic model of joint action" (Sensevy, Mercier & Leutenegger, 2007).

The goal of this paper is to analyse the didactic functions of the different writing uses found in a few teaching/learning art education sequences. From this description, we will show how writing practices help or hinder the construction of an educational content consisting in an artistic object or knowledge content (melodic theme, orchestration, style).