In France, incarceration represents a time when inmates are isolated from the outside world and they deal with the resources available in prison. The Penitentiary Code of May 1, 2022 insists on the fact that "[every convicted person is obliged to carry out at least one of the activities offered to him]" (Article L411-1). Among these activities there is the teaching, the result of collaboration between the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of National Education since the agreement of January 19, 1995. The teaching provided in prisons is part of a perspective of lifelong education, an inalienable right of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which states that "[everyone has the right to education]" (Article 26). The French prison population is mainly composed of poor young men with an educational level below the average of the population (Combessie, 2018). The obligation to provide primary education in all prisons for all inmates makes this activity more attractive since it is part of the main mission of the sentence of deprivation of liberty: the insertion or reintegration of persons placed under judicial authority (Article L1 of the Penitentiary Code, 2022). The time spent in prison can be an opportunity to make up for the shortcomings of initial education, especially because 67.8% of incarcerated persons have a level below the baccalaureate and 52.5% are serving a sentence of more than two years (Ministry of Justice, 2021). Thus, education appears to be a means for prisoners to educate themselves but also to demonstrate a desire to reintegrate into their prison pathway.

People serving a prison sentence in France have a particular relationship with education. The illiteracy rate in the closed environment is about 12% on average, whereas it is 7% in the overall population (Heraud & Marmonier-Lechat, 2021). Concerning the educational program offered, 53% of the penal population attending school is trained in basic skills, 16% of which are devoted to learning French correctly (Heraud & Marmonier-Lechat, 2021). This population is characterized as a priority need group that requires special attention.

In France, as in many other countries, teaching in prison is not the subject of much research. We are particularly interested of the professionals who teach in a closed environment, but also in the teaching itself and the meaning that professionals give to it. The professional subgroup of prison teachers represents 0.2% of the total number of teachers in France (Heraud & Soigneux, 2020). These teachers in the margins (Kherroubi, Millet & Thin, 2018) intervene punctually or full-time basis within prison establishments. Teaching in prison is a voluntary process, there is no systematic assignment possible, especially since the penitentiary institution seems to be an impediment to the proper conduct of teaching with the security and disciplinary logics it imposes (Salane, 2013). In particular, it would seem that reorientation in difficult contexts allows professionals to focus on the transmission of knowledge (Maroy, 2006). Moreover, these teachers on the margins of the institution also seem to present a logic of global educational action (Kherroubi, Millet & Thin, 2018) with the consideration of various dimensions, particularly social, adjoining teaching.

We can ask whether this teaching activity represents a resource for incarcerated people, both in terms of the activity itself and through the teachers practicing in prison. We hypothesize that teaching is a resource that takes different forms for adult prisoners. We also suggest that teachers are essential resources for people in prison. In this presentation, we will show the benefits to teachers and prisoners of this closed instruction. We will present our first results showing that teachers are resource persons for inmates and how they find a particular interest in this atypical environment.

In the context of our thesis, our research work is based on a mixed methodology to make the data from this small population actionable and assertive by various methods (Aguilera & Chevalier, 2021). First, we conducted a four-week observation period in three prisons in the Bourgogne Franche-Comté region. The observation period was sometimes participatory, sometimes semi-participatory with informal interviews with teachers. Indeed, we sometimes participated in activities with the prisoners in order to blend in with the froup as much as possible, wich of course created opportunities to talk with the inmates. Whenever possible, we stood back to observe the class group and the teacher. We followed different professionals, temporary employees, referents or managers. We were mainly in contact with adult male detainees, but also with minor males for whom, in the prison context, it is more difficult to introduce a person who is not a member of the service without having him actively participate in the smooth running of the session. During this period of observation and these numerous exchanges, we kept a logbook recounting all the events that took place during the days. In a second phase, we conducted 24 semi-directive interviews by phone call over a period of one and a half years with professionals teaching in prisons throughout France. In a third and final stage, a survey was distributed nationally from May 2022 to February 2023 in order to refine the qualitative results and to globalize them. This questionnaire was distributed by the national education director to all the prisons in metropolitan France and in the overseas territories. This survey made it possible to collect quantitative data, in particular to understand the professional trajectories but also to draw up a sociological profile of these teachers. Indeed, as there is very little statistical data on this underrepresented population, it was necessary to have sociological data for our research. We currently have 139 complete responses and 307 responses in total for a total population whose numbers we do not know but estimated at 740.3 full-time equivalents (Heraud & Marmonier-Lechat, 2021), including 1264 temporary teachers in the year 2020-2021. We are beginning to process the data from this questionnaire in an exploratory manner to support our qualitative fieldwork and discourse analysis data. Currently, we are using Jamovi and R software to process our quantitative data as well as Nvivo to analyze the discourse from our interviews.

Prison teaching activity is seen by adult prisoners as a resource, used strategically and sometimes in a roundabout way, but one that helps to meet various individual needs. It can be a source of instruction or advantage in the prison journey. On the other hand, education itself remains a valuable resource for all incarcerated individuals seeking to obtain academic skills or enroll in a degree program. Teaching in prison allows inmates to occupy time in a meaningful way while learning or filling in previous gaps. Teachers also represent a human resource, they take on a coaching and mentoring role that is beneficial to prisoners wishing to interact with professionals from outside the prison administration. However, we found that the impact of their activity is limited and varies according to the various contexts, both material and human. The proportion of prison teachers with long experience in special education is very high, especially since the prison environment has recently required a specific contest for the specialized public or equivalent. Paradoxically, these prison teachers have a great deal of pedagogical freedom despite the constraints of the prison institution. Indeed, this subgroup of professionals declares an emancipation from the ordinary environment and its ministerial injunctions related to evaluation and school programs. The motivations of these teachers are mainly intrinsic and correlated to the meaning they give to their activity. This voluntary distancing from the ordinary environment in order to obtain a higher sense of social utility increases the satisfaction of these teachers since the activity is in harmony with their values and expectations. The links created by the teachers and the learners in the classrooms allow the inmates to reconnect with a public, individualized and adapted education in order to best accompany them in their reintegration project.

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