Thinking In Groups The Decision Making In Situation Within Teacher Training

Author(s):

Arnaud Dubois(presenting / submitting)Patrick Geffard(presenting)

Conference:

ECER 2016

Network:

10. Teacher Education Research

Format:

Paper

Session Information

10 SES 03 A, Teacher Professional Learning: Collaboration, Communication and Partnership

Paper Session

Time:

2016-08-23

17:15-18:45

Room:

NM-G107

Chair:

David Morris

Contribution

The proposal comes under Research Network number 10 on “Teacher Education Research” and also under Research Network number 32 on “Organizational Education”.

One of the origins of the research regarding this proposal is the creation in the 90^th, by one of the author, of a Teacher Training Seminar at the “Pädagogische Hoschule” in Karlsruhe university, Germany. In this seminar dedicated to secondary schools teachers in training, a work on their subjective involvement (Penot, 1994) in the professional situation was proposed to the students. Along with this training, a correspondence between a class in a French elementary school and a class of a German middle school was organized. A more or less informal network had been set up during two years, involving academics in charge of the seminar, students, elementary or secondary schools teachers and their pupils. This partnership work and the organization of the training were inspired by previous cooperative practices of the two academics, based on the work of the French pedagogue Célestin Freinet, more specifically the correspondence (initiated by Freinet in 1926), and also to the practice of the institutions of the institutional pedagogy (Vasquez, Oury, 1967).

More recently, the authors of this proposal, both senior lecturers in French universities, have organized training courses for beginning teachers. Using the already mentioned methods, and more recent works of authors forming part of the same approach (Imbert, 2005; Laffitte, 2006), each has established a group device for the development of professional practice aimed to students who are in their professional debuts.

Four groups of trainee teachers are involved in our research. First, a group of future teachers of elementary school corresponding with a group of future education advisors in secondary schools and, secondly, a group of undergraduate degree students corresponding with another group of future education advisors. The teachers in training from elementary school and the future school advisors are in a part-time professional situation, in the form of internships during their training. Some are working in groups with pupils, others, the education advisors, are in a group situation too, but with other professionals (teachers, administrative staff, etc.). All are required to take decisions in their professional practice, whether in situation or after a time of reflection. The question that regularly arises for these professional beginners is how to articulate their understanding of the institutional demand with what they subjectively feel in the situation?

The working devices in groups and partnerships established in our courses are designed to help young professionals to find adequate answers both on a personal level and towards the institutions in which they work. But those same devices are also the opportunity to collect materials to produce a theoretical reflection on the processes involved in their use.

The concepts at stake in our work (affect, Green, 2002; didactic transference, Blanchard-Laville, 2001; resonance phenomenas, Blanchard-Laville, 2013; maternal reverie, Bion, 1962) are now partially influenced by the cooperation conducted in a network Erasmus+ which started in 2014 and involves researchers of five European universities (Institute of Education, University of London; Università di Milano Biccoca ; Université du Luxembourg, Université Paris 8; Université Paris Ouest). The network is in the phase of a “strategic partnership”, first step in the project of an European Master. The network main theme is “Crisis of the contemporary educations within the European societies” and one of the subtheme in link with our proposal is the question of “the subjective appropriation of the professional position”. A part of our attention will focus on how a work in partnership may lead to some advancement in the way we use our theoretical references.

Method

The research material consists in an exchange of letters between two groups of education professionals during their training. We collected as part of this correspondence ten epistolary exchanges, each consisting of six letters sent between March and May 2015. This corpus consists of micro-monographs (Dubois, 2011 & 2015) written by trainees in initial vocational training. Those texts, coming from situations lived in the classroom, are narratives written on an individual basis by each student and worked in a group apparatus in a second time. In a third time, the texts produced in group have been sent to another group of students in the second university. Therefore, each group of this second university received a text and engaged a reflexion within its own group device. The work made in the second group device became another text sent to the group in the first university as an answer to what they had received. We will propose a longitudinal analysis of this corpus, centred on the issue of decisions making in a professional situation. Beginning teachers are required to take multiple decisions during their professional experience. In our groups, we try to implement a groupal psychic working, in deferred action, over such decisions. Then, we will more particularly focus on the analysis of the effects produced on two corresponding students, called Eve and Kathrin in the paper. The method we use in our work is the clinical approach, psychoanalytically oriented, implemented in the field of education and training. In the context of this proposal, it should be noted that the term "clinic" is to be taken in the sense of attention to mental processes convened in regular professional situations. This approach is used in the framework of the research because it “is able to identify, from singular cases, the mental mechanisms or the psychic systems developed in the situations studied and therefore able to detect them as potentially active in any situation coming under the same category” (Blanchard-Laville et al, 2005). Specifically, it is the conscious and unconscious processes (in the Freudian sense) occurring during the decision making in professional situations that are the focus of our research.

Expected Outcomes

The research on which this proposal is made is still in progress, but, nevertheless, the communication shall broach the preliminary findings. The analysis of the material collected shall enable to formulate the first hypotheses on the impact of the group devices on the decision making in the professional situations met by teachers in training. We defend the idea that the work undertaken in those training devices can produce effects on the ability of the trainees to make the most appropriate decisions in their professional contexts. The analysis of the micro-monograph written by a student, called here Eve, teacher in primary school in France, and his epistollary exchanges with "Kathrin", student in the other university, will give us occasion to clarify the function of the work in a partnership for the growth of professional creativity. In the French institutional context, teachers are now trained to reproduce gestures and professional practices prescribed in accordance with a competency framework for teachers (BOEN, 2013). The analysis of the epistolary exchanges between teachers in training allows us to spot gradual changes in the practical discourses, which seem to inflect representations of "good practices" which appear to often be injunctions rather than effective advices. We'll make a link between those early hypotheses and A. Honneth's propositions on self-reification (2005). For Honneth, the reification attitude is possible for the individual both in his relationship to others (objectification of the other) and to himself. It seems that the group devices implemented in teacher training can help lessen this dimension of self-reification, provided they hold the possibility to develop the ability of thinking (Bion, 1965). Such a training could promote the gradual construction of a professional position for teachers, in order to enable them to be able to make adequate decisions, to deal with the unexpected they regularly encounter.

References

Bion, W.R. (1997). Taming Wild Thoughts. London: Karnac. Bion, W.R. (1965). Transformations. Change from Learning to Growth. London: Heinemann. Bion, W.R. (1962). Learning from Experience. London: Karnac. Blanchard-Laville, C. (2013). Au risque d’enseigner. Paris: PUF. Blanchard-Laville, C. Chaussecourte, P. Hatchuel, F. Pechberty, B. (2005). Recherches cliniques d’orientation psychanalytique dans le champ de l’éducation et de la formation. Revue Française de Pédagogie, 151, 111-162. Bulletin officiel de l’Éducation Nationale (2013). Référentiel de compétences pour professeurs, professeurs documentalistes et conseillers principaux d'éducation. http://www.education.gouv.fr/pid25535/bulletin_officiel.html?cid_bo=73066 Dubois, A. (2011). Des premières monographies du courant psychanalytique de la pédagogie institutionnelle à la formation des enseignants aujourd’hui. Thèse de doctorat. Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense. Dubois, A. (2015). Écrire des monographies : une modalité d’analyse clinique de situations d’enseignement pour les enseignants débutants. Dans A.-C. Giust-Ollivier et F. Oualid (dir.) Les groupes d'analyse des pratiques (p. 243-266). Toulouse : Érès. Dubois, A. et Geffard, P. (2015). Fernand Oury, les groupes de la classe coopérative et l’approche psychanalytique (1955-1958). Cliopsy, 14, 183-195 Dubois, A., Geffard, P. (2013). Monographies et approche clinique d’orientation psychanalytique en sciences de l’éducation. Communication dans le symposium Réflexions épistémologiques actuelles à propos des recherches cliniques d’orientation psychanalytique en sciences de l’éducation, Congrès international d’actualité de la recherche en éducation et formation, AREF, Montpellier. Freinet, C. (1964). Les techniques Freinet de l’École moderne. Paris: Armand Colin Geffard, P. (2014). Le groupe de pairs de la pédagogie institutionnelle : un espace psychique partagé ? Revue de psychothérapie psychanalytique de groupe, 62, 183-195 Geffard, P. (2010). Geschichte der Institutionellen Pädagogik, ein kurzer Abriss. Fragen und Versuche, 131, 54-58. Geffard, P. (2010). Le tissage des liens professionnels dans la classe coopérative. Dynamiques psychiques en classe et en groupe de praticiens de la pédagogie institutionnelle. Thèse de doctorat. Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense. Green, A. (2002). Idées directrices pour une psychanalyse contemporaine. Paris : PUF. Honneth, A. (2005). La réification. Petit traité de Théorie critique. Paris : Gallimard. Imbert, F. (2005). L’inconscient dans la classe : Transferts et contre-transferts. Paris : ESF. Laffitte René & VPI (2006). Essais de pédagogie institutionnelle. Nîmes : Champ social. Oury, F. et Vasquez, A. (1967). Vers une pédagogie institutionnelle. Paris: Maspero. Penot, B. (1994). L’implication subjective de l’analyste est-elle soluble dans le contre-transfert ? Revue française de psychanalyse, LVIII, 1593-1596.

Author Information

Arnaud Dubois (presenting / submitting)

Cergy Pontoise University

Paris

Patrick Geffard (presenting)

Paris 8 University

Educational Sciences