This communication is rooted in the field of language didactics and introduces some elements of a cooperative engineering CLE (Cultures and Languages at School, led by Carole Le Hénaff, https://ife.ens-lyon.fr/portail-de-ressources/lea-reseau-langues-bretagne ), based on the Joint Action Theory in Didactics (JATD) (Sensevy, 2011; Morales et al., 2017; Sensevy & Bloor, 2020; Sensevy et al., 2013; Collectif Didactique Pour Enseigner [CDpE], 2024). The project is basically focused on nursery and early elementary school in France and centered on how cooperation between various members - teachers, researchers, students, and families can facilitate the understanding of a specific language due to cultural practices. By exploring plurilingual and pluricultural understanding, my work examines how language and some  elements of culture can be jointly taught and learned in inclusive educational settings.

Within the framework of JATD, which emphasizes the paradigm of Joint Action wherein the actions of others serve as a foundation for individual actions aimed at constructing, transmitting, and appropriating knowledge practices (CDpE, 2024), this project explores the co-construction of knowledge between different members of educational process. It facilitates the creation of  “common work” through “collective and cooperative action” in which translating, describing, and producing means of thinking and acting are central to building a  “shared understanding” (CDpE, 2024).

Cooperative engineering proposes a specific way of considering educational research, which rests on the following principle: a principle of symmetry. Teachers and researchers are both practitioners, but practitioners of different kind. In this model, both are considered equally capable of improving educational processes by proposing actions or conceptualizing practices within the design. Unlike the traditional didactic relationship, which is asymmetrical, the epistemic cooperative relationship emphasizes symmetry, fostering mutual contribution and shared skills between teachers and researchers in the cooperative process (Joffredo-Le Brun et al., 2018).

The case of CLE cooperative engineering primarily focuses on nursery schools’ students and their families. Its aim is to create educational situations that allow students to explore and understand languages and cultures within the school context. Families play a crucial role as “practical connoisseurs” (CDpE, 2019), bringing their experience in some cultural practices to the classroom. They are the practical connoisseurs of a work in a certain situation because they have practiced the art of doing things “in situation” (singing a specific song, cooking a specific recipe). These practices are then studied by the students, in order to understand how to experience them, how to speak them, in a specific language, in a specific culture (Le Henaff et al., 2024).

An exemplary case from the cooperative engineering CLE invites a father of a student of Kabyle origin to present a song in his native language to a class of young students. The father shared his personal story and the cultural significance of the song, explaining its popularity within his family and across his native country. During an interview with the cooperative engineering team (teacher, researcher and PHD student), he translated specific passages and highlighted moments in the song that held deep emotional resonance for him. Each practice in the CLE project embodies authenticity, rooted in rich life stories and cultural heritage, making it far more meaningful than a simple performance or routine activity.

As a result, by focusing on content that involves plurilingual and pluricultural comprehension activities, we aim to demonstrate a way of working towards a form of inclusive education reflecting on what defines human nature itself, and learning to better understand each other (Le Hénaff et al., 2022).

The methodology follows a cooperative engineering model, where researchers and teachers co-design activities (CdpE,2024), and families actively participate by sharing their traditions, languages, and lived experiences. The collected data consists of the use of hypermedia systems, Picture–Text–Audio Hybrid Systems (PTAHS), a methodological tool that enables the collection and analysis of multimodal data. A PTAHS as defined by Blocher and Lefeuvre (2017), is “a representational space where analog data (images), digital data (text), and analog-digital data (sound, video) coexist. The coexistence of analog, digital, and analog-digital data in a single space allows for an initial form of world representation. This recourse to a descriptive pluralism (Descombes, 1998) gives the PTAHS its essential function: to make a practice visible and understandable” (Blocher & Lefeuvre, 2017). This representational system offers a vision and understanding of a given situation by capturing it through a film. The film includes reciprocal annotations, where its components complement and illuminate one another (Blocher & Lefeuvre, 2017). The “study film” captures actions of “practical connoisseurs” in the research field. The filmed sessions are transcribed, summarized into synopses, and analyzed from a didactic perspective. The “didactic intrigue” (Sensevy, 2011a), which emerges from this analysis, highlights key concepts within the Joint Action Theory in Didactics (JATD) to provide a deeper understanding of the practices observed. During the analysis of practices, theoretical notions do not overshadow the practice itself, on the contrary, the aim is to go beyond theoretical postulates, which the empirical evidence challenges and resists during analysis (Le Hénaff & Messina, 2022). The recorded films serve as primary data, complemented by transcriptions. These transcriptions focus on the dynamic exchanges among teachers, researchers, family members or students, highlighting how cultural and linguistic elements can be introduced and understood. An example in the cooperative engineering Cultures and Languages at School highlights the practice of singing with the involvement of a Kabyle father. During an interview, the “practical connoisseur” shared his personal story and explained the significance of the song for him and his family. Later, he came to the classroom to sing it. These two activities were recorded and transcribed, serving as a concrete example of a study film. To transform it into a PTAHS, certain elements of the study film were collectively annotated by members of the cooperative engineering in the Celluloid application to “enhance the dialogue” between teachers and researchers. This example will be presented at the conference.

To conclude, the cooperative engineering CLE continues to explore how to create didactic conditions for a deeper understanding of both foreign and native languages, particularly through translation, music, gesture, etc. Through the example of the Kabyle father sharing a song that he is emotionally attached to, we observed how cultural practices can become a rich resource for building a classroom sequence. The use of the Hybrid Text-Image-Sound System (SHTIS) enabled a detailed analysis of these interactions, demonstrating how cooperative engineering can bridge the gap between theory and practice. The collective annotations and reflections made by teachers and researchers enriched the understanding of how cultural elements can resonate in a particular context. By involving families as “practical connoisseurs”, this approach not only strengthens family-school relationships but also provides students with opportunities to explore “different ways of doing the same thing” (Bazin, 2008). It also implicates a participatory environment where students are not only recipients but active participants in the educational process. In order to contribute to the elaboration of new forms of schooling, the JATD aims at theorizing a specific process of cooperative engineering (Sensevy et al. 2013), in which teachers and researchers jointly act to build classroom sequences. One of the goals of cooperative engineering is a call for a new methodological paradigm within JATD, where empirical facts and evidence are constructed through emblematic examples. This paradigm introduces an epistemology of paradigmatic analogy where knowledge advances through the creation, analysis, and elaboration of emblematic examples of practice. These emblematic examples will serve as reference points and frameworks for scientific inquiry, shaping and guiding the understanding of educational processes.

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