Since 2001, researches on the reduction of educational inequalities have been carried out in the French-speaking world by sociologists and educationalists belonging to the RESEIDA network. This work has helped to unify and consolidate a common and original approach that can be described as a relational and contextual approach to the production of inequalities and, more broadly, to school practices (Rochex & Crinon, 2011).

Such an approach consists in particular of analyzing the cognitive stakes of school tasks and the way pupils apprehend them. Thus, the term "secondarization" has been used to refer to the process of moving from one type of text (Bakhtin, 1984) to another, for example from a familiar register to a scientific register. Such a socio-historical perspective of language activities (Bernié, 2002, Jaubert, 2007) also makes it possible to say that individuals communicate to the audience how they position themselves with respect to particular discourse genre. Thus, disciplinary teaching can be perceived as a mean to integrate into a disciplinary discursive community (Jaubert, 2007). Allowing students to avoid misunderstandings by ensuring that they have access to the real learning issues therefore becomes a priority for reducing educational inequalities (Kahn, 2010).

To consider teaching in this way is fully in line with the goals of education for sustainable development (ESD). Indeed, such an education makes it possible to work Goal 4 of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development: « Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifefong learning opportunities for all ». It also helps to ensure that students identify correctly the key competencies for sustainability, namely the systems thinking competency, the anticipatory competency, the normative competency, the strategic competency, the collaboration competency, the critical thinking competency, the self-awareness competency and the integrated problem-solving competency (UNESCO, 2017).  

The research we have been conducting since 2015 is therefore aimed at highlighting the processes of “secondarization” in the teaching of the human and social sciences. It focuses on the following three research questions:

-       What are the modes of acting-talking-thinking (Jaubert, 2007) implemented in the observed geography (and history) lessons?

-       What skills does ESD work?

-       What is the influence of the research system on the professional development of teachers?

The chosen methodology is of the Lesson Study type (Miyakawa & Winslow, 2009, Lewis & Hurd, 2011). It aims to improve the learning of all students and to enable the professional development of teachers. More specifically, it is to collectively prepare a lesson (called a research lesson), to teach it under peer observation in a first class, to analyze it, then to teach it again in another class. The process can be repeated until the research lesson is satisfactory and can be disseminated. The interest of the approach consists in being able to reiterate the teaching of a lesson, which allows the group to vary possible parameters and thus to be better aware of the impact of the professional choices related to the learning of the students. It also allows to analyze in depth what students do (or do not do) when conducting activities. The group we are interested in in this communication has been working during 2016-2017. It consisted of two teacher-researchers, one assistant and two partner teachers. Twelve two-hour sessions were planned for the year and several types of data were collected: the research lessons were filmed and transcribed in full, the preparation sessions were filmed. We also collected the written preparations of the lessons, the documents produced by the students, the notes taken by the observers of the research lessons (via the LessonNote software) as well as various written productions of the participants. From the data from the research lessons, we first constructed a synopsis of each of them. These synopses constitute a first level of analysis, because they give an overview of the temporal division and the activities carried out.

The geography lesson being researched covered the production and consumption sector and worked on the following objectives (primary level, students aged 10-12): - Differentiation between a producer, a distributor and a consumer based on a production chain. - Identification of the scales concerned or to be taken into account according to the problematic (local, regional, national, continental and global). Our results highlight that certain tasks are more favorable than others to bring out a questioning on the production and consumption chain from a systemic perspective. They also show that when the teacher clearly announces the learning issue, it is easier for students to move from a first discourse register to a second discourse register. Finally, they highlight an effect on the professional development of teachers as they become aware of the importance of peer collaboration in order to make good didactic choices.

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