The Schooling Experience of High Potential Teenage Students in Secondary School Heterogeneous Classes

Author(s):

Antoine Kattar(presenting / submitting)

Conference:

ECER 2017

Network:

04. Inclusive Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

04 SES 06 B, Social Inclusion for All

Paper Session

Time:

2017-08-23

15:30-17:00

Room:

W6.16

Chair:

Charlotte Riis Jensen

Contribution

Throughout my presentation I wish to impart information about the way high potential teenage students live their schooling experience when they are integrated in secondary school heterogeneous classes.

How do they qualify their current school environment? How do they describe what I call their identification issues?

What anxieties are at stake? How does the high potential teenage student internalize the way his/her parents, school and mainstream society perceive him/her?

What makes him/her feel uncomfortable in the reality if his/her surroundings and more particularly in a secondary school? To what extent may those surroundings collide with his/her own phantasmal fears?

Under which conditions can secondary schools meet those needs and foster the “growing up” through the process of empowerment and subjectivisation?

The subject areas, epistemological frameworks and researchers’ methodology are different. Some are specialized in teaching methods, others are development psychologists or clinical researchers in the field of psychoanalysis.

In France, identifying intellectually precocious children has become an important issue since the introduction of the ministerial circular recommending a specific care for the intellectually precocious schoolchildren (circular n°2007-158).

For this purpose, since the beginning of the 2013 school year, “every teacher welcoming in his class an intellectually precocious child has had at his disposal on EDUSCOL - a website controlled by the ministry of education - a training module dealing with this issue.”

This training module went on-line in September 2013 and it offers pedagogical resources and adjustments in order to favour the intellectually precocious child schooling in primary and secondary schools. However, adapting educational practices to the specific features of this particular group of intellectually precocious children requires that they should be well identified and as early as possible. This identification is not so easy due to the fact that the definition of an intellectually precocious child is not so clear. The aim of our research is to better understand the functioning of the intellectually precocious children and teenagers in a cognitive, psycho-affective, psycho-social and clinical perspective with a view to offer the children in trouble- or even children failing at school – an appropriate care.

To define my work in the team of this research, I am part of the current trend of the psychoanalytical clinical work in the field of Educational Psychology and Sciences(Claudine Blanchard-Laville et al, 2005).

Method

In order to collect my material, I set up a specific methodology: “the clinical interview in group with a research aim” (Kattar, 2012) involving small groups of identified high potential teenage schoolboys and girls. The group that was interviewed was composed of three boys and three girls who had already been identified with a high potential. At the time of the interview they were 12-13 years old and all in the same school. They formed a heterogeneous group in the way that all the participants shared the same characteristics of all being high potential boys or girls. In the framework of this research the interview was limited to the duration of a period in their school timetable. The experiment showed that a 42-45 minute interview was appropriate for the whole of the interviews that I had with those teenagers. They were not “real” groups but were made for the work necessary to do clinical research for which I was ready to get involved. It opened the door to a context that from the outset gathered “two generations” – the teenagers and the adult interviewer. The way it worked was the same as the way a clinical interview is conducted – as close as possible to the “free association”, which means that each associates to what the other says. The emphasis is put on the verbalization and does not require the use of any other mediation tools. In my presentation I will show some analysis extracts from one of the interviews I made in 2015. This analysis leads me to focus on the impact of the school surroundings (Kattar, 2016) on those teenage schoolboys and schoolgirls, on their identity building. More particularly this analysis focuses on the impact of peer relationships in the scaffolding of their teenage subjectivation process. To analyze the collected material I used two distinct methods. As for the first method and for the initial stage I chose to focus on the longitudinal dynamics of the interview so as to study it for itself building a sequential cutting that respects and highlights the evolution of the dynamics of the interview. Then, for the second stage, I analyzed the emotional tone the intersubjective processes inside each sequence, whenever it could be perceived. The second analysis procedure of the interviewees’ speeches concentrates on the peculiarity of the individual developments that six teenage schoolboys and schoolgirls could produce within the group interactions.

Expected Outcomes

We have been able to identify eight sequences that I will comment on during my presentation. The first incomplete results - coming from the more clinical analysis of the second sequence that I called “friendship ties” – show us that the process of the identity building of those teenagers becomes more complex because of the differences they can have with the peers and because of their emotional hypersensitivity that characterizes them. (Courtinat-Camps et al. 2011). Indeed, the family, the school and the non-established group constitute places for the teenage subjectivation. Beyond the change regarding the relationships with the parents, teenage also initiates important transformations in the social and relational adolescent whole world. The teenager seeks to develop close relationships with their peers sharing common feelings and getting involved in love relationships. Broadening and building their own social world, differentiating their relationships become realities and new imperatives. All this demands from him/her some adjustments so as to internalize the changes more easily and give them access to a form of maturity. Within a group the teenager finds back the possibility of freeing himself emotionally from the family environment and moving away temporarily from the oedipal issue. The intersubjective ties become inescapable to show the internal ties. The building of their identity remains within the scope of a relation with their own self where they try to become “somebody for themselves” and for “others” through a series of fundamental issues. In this context, the friend has become essential “for he/she will be this “transitional guide” between childhood and adulthood” (Gutton, 2015). For those high potential teenage students, this identity building becomes complex due to the fact that they belong to a minority group. This can sometimes lead them to implement adaptation strategies in order to minimize the effects linked to their difference.

References

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, p. 111-162. Bourdin, B., & Foussard, C. (2010). Les troubles spécifiques du langage. In C. Berzin (Ed.), Accueillir les élèves en situation de handicap. Repères : CRDP, Académie d’Amiens. Chapelier, J.-B. (2000). Émergence et transformation de la groupalité interne à l’adolescence, à partir des psychothérapies psychanalytiques de groupe. J.-B. Chapelier et al. Le lien groupal à l’adolescence. (pp. 1-55) Paris : Dunod. Chapelier, J.-.B. (2016). Actualité des psychothérapies de groupe à l’adolescence. Adolescence, 34. 9-16. Courtinat, A., de Léonardis, M., & Massé, L. (2009). Contextes de scolarisation et estime de soi chez des élèves à haut potentiel. Revue Québécoise de Psychologie, 30(1), 1-24. Courtinat-Camps, A., Villatte, A., Massé, L. & de Léonardis, M. (2011). « Qui suis-je ? » Diversité des représentations de soi chez des adolescent(e)s à haut potentiel intellectuel. Bulletin de Psychologie, Tome 64(4), n°514, 315Frenkel, S., & Bourdin, B. (2009). Verbal, visual and spatio-sequential short-term memory: Assessment of the storage capacities in children and teenagers with Down’s syndrome. Journal of Intellectual Disability Research. 53(2), 152-160.-328. Gutton, P. (2008). Le génie adolescent. Paris : Odile Jacob. Gutton, P. (2015). L’adolescence selon Modiano. Bègles : L’Esprit du Temps. Kattar, A. (2012). « Entretien clinique en groupe » à visée de recherche auprès d’adolescents, Cliopsy, 8, p.29-46. Kattar, A. (2016) Être élève-adolescent dans un environnement incertain. Entre « le familier et l’étranger ». Cliopsy. 15. 9-25. Kattar, A. (2016). Adolescent dans un environnement incertain. Une expérience libanaise. Paris : L’Harmattan. Kestemberg, É. (1999). L’adolescence à vif. Paris: PUF.

Author Information

Antoine Kattar (presenting / submitting)

Université de Picardie Jules Verne

Caref

Amiens

Search the ECER Programme

Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
Search for authors and in the respective field.
For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.