As the circulation of the learning discourse has been mainly analyzed at a macro-level (i.e. for its origins, institutional relays, consequences) it is rarely observed why individuals enthusiastically adopt it. In this communication, we would like to link the success of the “learning discourse” to its resonance with the authenticity ideal. By doing so, we would highlight one leverage of the learning discourse’s circulation: it touches the people.

This communication is taken out of a recently achieved phD about the circulation of the expressivist ideal within the field of pedagogical innovation. The expressivist ideal wish school could help individuals develop and express themselves in the scope of an “authenticity culture” (Taylor, 1992). This view is related to the shift from education to learning, because the personal growth induces pedagogical practices leaving more place for the student to decide – at least partly – about their learning, rather than being educated "without a word to say". We define these expressivist pedagogies with the help of Bernstein’s concepts of classification and framing. A softening of classifications means a reduction of the hierarchy between categories, for example between ages, disciplines or between types of knowledge (without an imposed hierarchy, the student can decide more). A softening of the framing induces more control of the student over different aspects: misbehavior management; selection of content to learn; choice of learning pace (Bernstein, 2000).

We will focus for this communication on the schools founders, since they are the ones with the most expressivist discourse. Through their discourses, we could spot a common tendency – overwhelming the pedagogical differences between them - for focusing on the authenticity ideal of children, in terms of finding his way, develop his personal skills, interests, and priorities, know better his strengths and needs. But what stroke us the most, was that these people promote this view not only for kids, but also also for themselves. The “authenticity through learning” discourse for kids was often related to a personal experience of this kind, most of time arriving late in their lives. These data allow us to propose a hypothesis about what could be one of the reasons for the “learnification of education”: people adopt this view because it suits their views of themselves, their way to see themselves as individual. This hypothesis is far from excluding external factors, like the influence of management discourse, and is also far from excluding consequences is terms of neoliberalism rise. But we would like here to promote a comprehensive approach by focusing more on the reasons why the people adop this discourse: because it somehow resonates with a personal view of themselves.

We use the concepts from sociology of engagement. The adoption of the « learning discourse » is analyzed as an engagement, a bifurcation. We observe what is the “fertile ground” to adopt such a discourse (Mathieu, 2010) (that is to say the competences and dispositions) but also what are the « ingredients » of this bifurcation (Bidart, 2006 p. 31) (that is to say the special events and triggers). Such an approach allows no to stick with the usual engagement’s narratives in terms of pure “indignation” (Jasper 1997), in order to focus more on the reasons of this sensitivity to the cause and the resources needed to transform this sensitivity to a concrete engagement. By doing so, we embedd in the literature about the “mobilization framings”. The strength of a framing to mobilize people can indeed be the result of its “salience” for the audience (Benford & Snow, 2010). We offer here a case study with the “learning framing” and the schools founders.

The school founders were interviewed through semi-structured interviews (20) and informal discussions also took place with some of them at the various events about education we attended (10). The twenty people interviewed represent twenty different schools: seven “schools without program, type Sudbury ” ; four “schools without program, type mixed” ; six schools “with a program, type mixed” ; three schools “with a program, type Montessori”. We favored on-site interviews, which allowed us to spent at least one day of observation in fourteen of these twenty schools. These observations helped identifying the different types of schools. The analysis of the interviews’ data occurred with an inductive in vivo coding, aiming at spotting the common categories and differences between the schools founders, in terms bothe of personal pathway and educational views. The analysis of biographic interviews requires vigilance with regard to the naturalization of the individual and with regard to the “reconstruction effect” (Grossetti, 2006), implying in particular to distinguish “opinion data” from “facts data” (Pharo, 1985). Vigilance with regard to reconstruction is heightened in the case of actors who, through their commitment, have developed "resources of subjectivity" and a reflexivity giving them a strong "disposition for biographical work" (Leclercq and Pagis, 2011). The founders of schools can also be used, by habit of "school marketing", to relay story-telling about their schools creations (Draelant & Dumay, 2011). This is the reason why we’ll use these biographic data not to explain the choice of the « learning discourse » with the facts told, but to reveal the current norms of people. Indeed, the actor always try to reinterpret their stories in order to make them coherent with their current norms. By doing so they tend to justify their present situation by a stabilized narrative mode unifying their career (Bidart, 2006). Finally, it should be noted that the subject of this research creates a bias in the weight given to the “learning discourse” within the biographic interviews of school founders: the choice of the private sector is a socially controversial choice; conversely, the expressive norm is socially valued. It is therefore probable that the “learning discourse” might be also used in order to compensate a feeling of lack of social legitimacy.

We observe that schools founders often mention a frustrated own schooling – even if most of the time successful-: frustrated to not have learnt what they wanted (i.e. social skills) and to have learnt things they didn’t care and never used. This is reinforced in the case of a first experience as a teacher, coming with thd feeling to “force” students and to prevent them for freely expressing. As a consequence, they describe their priorities for education in terms of self-development. Three priorities are spotted, tackling three ways to learn more freely: the development of personal skills for the children for flourishing; benevolence and a well-being in order to diminish constraint/violence; individualization in order to diminish pace pressure. We highlight the fact that this apparent freedom to learn is not always out of strategic views: development of personal skills is a competitive advantage on the job marker; well-being is a way to learn better; and individualization is a way to go further than the others. These discourses allow us to measure the salience of the “learning framing” within the education field. Schools founders tell about their transitions, needs to align spheres of their lives, and align actions with their thoughts. In doing so, they largely mobilize the theme of personal authenticity, of an empowering learning for themselves as well as for what they wish for children.

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