In this proposition, we compare different uses and imaginations for an open tool : Transana. It’s a software for qualitative analyses of video and audio data, developed at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Center for Education Research. We compare the uses of this tool in three projects of research, one of these projects belonging to the field of media education, and the two other belonging to the field of foreign languages. These last two projects of research are still in progress and we focus, for them, on the expected use of Transana and the distance between first results and prior expectations.

One project focuses on the cultural dimension of the teaching and learning of a foreign culture. We will question the use of a tool like Transana in order to elicit how teachers integrate culture in their foreign language lessons. As culture is very elusive and abstract, is it possible, for instance, to show the recurrence of the development of cultural references? And how is it possible with that kind of transcribing software?

The second project concentrates on the English teaching and learning situations in a bilingual class and an ordinary class in a public primary school in Thailand. The English lesson in the bilingual program is taught by an English native speaker teacher. In spite of the ordinary program, the English lesson is taught by a Thai teacher. This presentation will precisely be based on the English lesson in the bilingual class. So, what is the teaching method of the native speaker in the foreign language class for Thai learners? How do teachers introduce the learning contents? How can we characterize learning activities?

The third research is closed. It’s about students in French lower-secondary classes (Grade 8 and 9) who received a newspaper every day and wrote press articles on line. This study also used a cooperative didactics design to better describe and understand the knowledge that had been actually implemented. We have chosen this form of design to differentiate ourselves from the classical pattern denounced by Chevallard, in mathematics, as early as 1985, as Leutenegger (1999) underlined it: «Study the world as-it-should-be to the detriment of the study of world-as-it-is». We’ll study the different uses of Transana with the teachers, in the analysis of this design, and also with students.

In order to describe didactical situations, we refer to the « joint action» theory in didactics (Sensevy, Mercier & Schubauer-Leoni, 2000; Sensevy & Mercier 2007).

Time scales and amount of data will be very central in our analysis.

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