This workshop is a follow-up to the work started during ECER 2023 in Glasgow, on clinical methods for research in education and particularly on monographic writing. 

This workshop focuses on a clinical research method centred on the analysis of professional practices in education and training. The monographic method will be briefly presented, in comparison with other research methods involving group writing (Stamenova and Hinshelwood, 2018; Orsenigo and Ulivieri-Stiozzi, 2018; Rustin, 2019).  

The method we will use is inspired by works conducted in the ‘Institutional Pedagogy’ current (Vasquez & Oury, 1967), that authors of the proposal both practice since a few decades. The leaders of the device proposed during the workshop have been conducting this type of working group for more than twenty years with different publics in the field of education and training. 

In this field, to write and to read monographs in group situations is a way to analyze the unconscious psychic processes potentially at work in professional situations and in educational relationships. The aim of those analysis is both to train professionals to take into account what is happening on a subjective level during educational situations and also to provide data for research focusing on psychical processes in the same field of education and training. 

• In the first step, after a brief introduction to the workshop, the leaders will submit a monograph to the participants. This text will be read aloud and followed by a short time for understanding questions only, without comments at that stage. 

• In the second step, each participant will be invited to write her/his reflections and/or associative thoughts, from her/his reception of the monograph with any possible links with her/his own experience as researcher and/or teacher. 

• In the third step, the individual writings produced at step 2 will be openly discussed in one or two group(s). Wherever possible, we will arrange two groups of no more than eight participants each. 

• In the fourth step, the participants will be invited to write short comments in small groups. The comments will be written up together in a common document which will be shared with the participants after the workshop. 

The workshop will end with a closing session during which each participant will be able to say a few words about their experience. 

Our analyses will focus mainly on the transferential issues at work in this kind of working group. The group is a place of transference, both onto the group leaders and between the participants. We consider the monographic writing group as a mediated device (Brun et alii, 2013) where the monograph – a written narrative of a lived professional experience – is a mediator object. This mediating object, in its concrete materiality, is also the object of transfers. A discussion period will be dedicated for evoking these transfers in the group with the participants. 

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Brun, A., Chouvier, B. et Roussillon, R. (dir.) (2013). Manuel des médiations thérapeutiques. Dunod. Orsenigo, J. et Ulivieri-Stiozzi, S. (2018). La Clinica della formazione in Italia. Cliopsy, 20, 23-37 Oury, F. & Vasquez, A. (1967). Vers une pédagogie institutionnelle. Maspero. Rustin, M. (2019). Researching the Unconscious. Principles of Psychoanalytic Method. Routledge. Stamenova, K. & Hinshelwood, R. D. (2018). Methods of Research into the Unconscious. Applying Psychoanalytic Ideas to Social Science. Routledge.