This paper focuses on the difficulties encountered by migrants and “pioneers” (people who chose a professional path where their own gender is in a minority) as perceived by vocational schools’ teachers. Our aim here is to gain knowledge of teacher’s awareness and consideration about this topic, and this for a better understanding of their attitudes and practices towards these minorities. What are the difficulties perceived and how do teachers understand them? What are the subjacent logics, the social representations, which underlie what they see and say? Considering two different kinds of minorities (migrants and “pioneers”) by mutual clarification should enable us to get a more comprehensive picture of the social relations taking place in the classroom. Evidence from national (Tree) and international (Pisa 2000, 2006) surveys, as well as from other studies (Haeberlin et al., 2004; Imdorf, 2007) shows that in Switzerland, a migrant background negatively influences pupils outcomes, as well as their school-to-work transition. Foreigner ratios in Swiss vocational schools is higher than in high schools (OFS, 2009), and even strongly higher when considering some occupational fields, commonly described as “academically less demanding” (e.g. construction or hairdressing, which are our research fields). At the same time, a gendered hierarchy of knowledge (Mosconi, 1994; 2005) is still existing, and also extends to the VET sector (Haeberlin et al., 2004; Croisier, 2002; Borkowski, 2001): while co-education is now the norm in compulsory school, dual VET programs in Switzerland remain extremely gender-biased (Borkowski, 2001; Hoeckel et al., 2009). VET “pioneers” may be challenged by very specific situations, both in classroom and workplace settings, and some studies show that they have a higher ratio of dropouts (Stalder & Schmid, 2006). Dual VET students spend most of their time in very diverse workplace settings (little companies to big corporations), so that the role of vocational schools is to guarantee a common base of knowledge and practice. To assure this, it is important for the students to be integrated in the learning group that can be seen as a social context as defined by situated learning theorists (Greeno, 1997). In this paper, we focus on the perceptions and representations teachers have of minorities’ disadvantages. By perception we mean the difficulties they notice in their daily activities in the classroom, what they see and tell to be a difficulty or a lack, in our case, for migrants and/or pioneers. We use then the concept of representation in a sociological way, intended as a tool, a key to read reality, a way to think, feel and act (Moscovici, 2000). Indeed perceptions and representations are strongly related, as they influence each other by different processes (e.g. categorisation, naturalisation, internalization; Bourdieu, 1980; Tajfel & Wilkes, 1963). Finally, perceptions and representations are both determined by primary and secondary socialisation, by society’s dominant norms, by people’s habitus (Bourdieu, 1980), or by a given community of practice (Lave &Wenger, 1991). They can also be influenced by contingencies (e.g. migratory flows, political issues) and their media coverage.

The results presented here are based on semi-structured interviews conducted with experts (N=9), vocational school teachers and staff (N=18) and on-site observations in classrooms. Teachers’ interviews and on-site observations were conducted in three different vocational schools in the fields of hairdressing and painting, which are gendered and characterised by considerable cultural diversity. Teacher interviews were fully transcribed and a qualitative thematic content analysis is now being conducted (Access database) with deductive and inductive approaches. Observations were analysed using an analysis grid, and experts’ interviews gave us a better understanding of the context and structures implemented for the integration of cultural diversity and gender.

Analysing the interviews, we observed a recurrence in the structure of teachers’ discourse that unfolds itself in three phases: 1) denial of minorities’ specific difficulties at school (norm of equality); 2) mention of specific cases where students with minority profiles encounter difficulties (individualisation of difficulties, often through the notion of “temper”); 3) based on these “cases”, validation of ethnic or gender stereotypes (generalisation and naturalisation of specificities). Minorities’ difficulties are “essentialised” and therefore no more considered as contingencies that have to be taken into account by the teachers and the school. This structure is particularly striking when considering what is said about students coming from the Balkans (i.e. one of the last migratory flows in Switzerland). What we found revealing is that the “essentialisation” step is very common in the discourse of teachers who have no academic background and a less in-depth pedagogical training (technical branches’ teachers), and is quasi-absent from the discourse of teachers who have knowledge over social, economical and structural factors underlying immigration or gender status, or any longitudinal glance. In our presentation we intend to illustrate and discuss our results, and to show how teachers’ perceptions and representations of minorities influence everyday life and future of the latter.