By implementing strategies such as the Lisbon Agenda (2000 - 2010) and Europe 2020 (2010-2020), the European Union explicitly puts science education at the heart of economical development, and stresses scientific excellency as a means to economic growth. In this context, France has aimed to revalorize its science courses and careers in order to make them more attractive and to foster greater inclusion and diversity. Women, and students from the working classes or ethnic minorities are indeed particularly marginalized in science, especially in France where social equity is far below OECD average and has been degrading between 2003 and 2016 (OECD, 2015)

One of the way to translate the European initiative and to try to reduce the gap between students has been to promote and support partnerships between schools and the scientific world.

This paper accounts for one of those cooperations in order to analyze what goes on in classrooms when two different cultural groups — teachers and science mediators — work collaboratively. It provides insight into the reasons for success or failure of such practices and asks how and why difficulties emerge in this type of partnership.

We argue that partnerships between secondary school teachers and external specialists create unusual teaching situations that upset their roles in the classroom.The purpose of this paper is to offer a sociological analysis of conflicting relations between teachers and science mediators through the case study of a French collaborative science project in 6^th grade (11 and 12-years-old students).

An ethnographic approach allows us to render the conflict’s expression in the classroom and the justifications provided by the partners. This study uses a Bourdieusian framework by proceeding to an objectivating distanciation in order to give meaning to the plurality of judgments in the field created by the collaboration. The qualitative analysis, conducted by observations and interviews, aims to enlighten the contributors’ social positions and the partnership’s challenges.

Astolfi, J.-P., Develay, M. (eds.), 2002, La didactique des sciences (Science didactics), Paris, Presses Universitaires de France. Becker H., 1998, Tricks of the Trade, Chicago, The University of Chicago Press. Bourdieu P., 1997, Les usages sociaux de la science : Pour une sociologie clinique du champ (The social uses of science: For a clinical sociology of the field), Paris, INRA. Bourdieu P., 2001, Science de la science et réflexivité (Science of science and reflexivity), Raisons d’agir, Paris, Raisons d’agir. Devos-Prieur O., Loubet-Gauthier É., 2002, « L’incidence des modes de partenariat à l’école élémentaire sur la polyvalence des maîtres et sur les représentations des élèves du travail scolaire. (The impact of modes of partnership in elementary school on teachers’ versatility and pupils’ representations of school work)  » Kaddouri M. (eds.), Recherche et formation, 41, p. 153‑170. « Information Network on Education in Europe » (eds.), 2008, Levels of autonomy and responsibilities of teachers in Europe, Brussels, Eurydice. Lahire B., Joshua S., 1999, « Pour une didactique sociologique (For sociological didactics) », Éducation et Sociétés, 2, 4, p. 29‑56. Loquet M., Garnier A., Amade-Escot C., 2002, « Transmission des savoirs en activités physiques, sportives et artistiques dans des institutions différentes : enseignement scolaire, entraînement sportif, transmission chorégraphique (Transmission of knowledge in physical activities, sports and arts in different institutions: academic education, sports training, and choreographic transmission) », Revue française de pédagogie, 141, 1, p. 99‑109. Losego P., 2015, « Rapprocher la sociologie et les didactiques (Bringing sociology and didactic closer together) », Revue française de pédagogie, 3, 188, p. 5‑12. OECD, 2016, PISA 2015 Results in Focus, OECD Publishing, https://www.oecd.org/pisa/pisa-2015-results-in-focus.pdf