Devolution and Autonomy in Education E-Book
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Allowing learners to take some responsibility may seem obvious yet what is actually afforded to them, and how this process works, remains difficult to grasp. It is therefore essential to study the real objects of devolution and the roles played by the subjects involved. Devolution and Autonomy in Education questions the concept of devolution, introduced into the field of education in the 1980s from disciplinary didactics, and described in Guy Brousseau's Theory of Didactical Situations in Mathematics as: the act by which the teacher makes the student take responsibility for a learning situation (adidactic) or problem and accepts the consequences of this transfer. The book revisits this concept through a variety of subject areas (mathematics, French, physical education, life sciences, digital learning, play) and educational domains (teaching, training, facilitation). Using these intersecting perspectives, this book also examines the purpose and timeline of the core process for thinking about autonomy and empowerment in education.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021
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Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Foreword
Introduction
PART 1: Didactics and Devolution: Specificities of Disciplines and Audiences
1 Potential of Peer-to-Peer Research and Proof Situations in Mathematics Classes and Devolutions
1.1. Introduction
1.2. Characteristics of PRP situations
1.3. Potential of PRP situations and management of devolution processes
1.4. Two examples of analysis of problems with potentials
1.5. Conclusion
1.6. Appendix: solution to the rectangle problem
1.7. References
2 Some Comparative Analysis of Mathematics and Experimental Science
2.1. Introduction
2.2. Didactics of mathematics, didactics of science: contrasting epistemological choices
2.3. Devolution versus appropriation
2.4. Investigative approach, a devolution process?
2.5. Specificity of scientific learning
2.6. Conclusion: what is the outcome of the redeployment of the subject?
2.7. References
3 Double Devolution of Action in Physical Education
3.1. Introduction
3.2. The current state of the notion of devolution in didactic writings in PE
3.3. The “veiled” presence of a double devolution of action in PE didactics
3.4. An “adaptive” backdrop in the didactic concepts of PE
3.5. An adoptive and organological perspective for the double devolution of action in physical education
3.6. From adaptation to adoption “by the double”; a few examples
3.7. Conclusion
3.8. References
4 Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in Education: An Issue that is Still Relevant Today
4.1. Introduction
4.2. Theoretical framework, devolution and digital in schools
4.3. Research field and methodology
4.4. Analysis of results
4.5. Conclusion
4.6. References
5 Reflection on the Devolution of Knowledge in French Kindergarten Teaching: Worksheets
5.1. Introduction
5.2. Contextualization and issues
5.3. Theoretical framework of the devolution of knowledge in kindergarten and the use of worksheets
5.4. Theoretical framework of devolution in French teaching
5.5. Analysis and discussion
5.6. Conclusion
5.7. References
6 Between a Willingness to Adapt and Real Devolution, what Material Works for which Form of Learning? A Case Study in a Localized Unit for Inclusive Education (Ulis)
6.1. Introduction
6.2. Theoretical frameworks
6.3. Methodology
6.4. Case study: Mathieu, teacher specializing in Ulis
6.5. Analysis and discussion
6.6. References
PART 2: Devolution Beyond Disciplinary Didactics
7 Before “Devolution”
7.1. Introduction
7.2. Preliminary remarks
7.3. Michel de Montaigne
7.4. Alain
7.5. Conclusion
7.6. References
8 Devolution and Problematization Among Trainee School Teachers: What Kind of Appropriation is There?
8.1. Introduction
8.2. Theoretical framework
8.3. Some results from the appropriation of this approach and these devolutions among new school teachers
8.4. Conclusion and discussion
8.5. References
9 Professional Writing as a Complex Space in Devolution
9.1. Introduction
9.2. Devolving a storytelling space–time
9.3. Developing fiction writing
9.4. Devolving the text as a space for mutual understanding
9.5. Storytelling as the devolution of a professional teaching space
9.6. Conclusion
9.7. References
10 The Subject Area: Devolving One’s Own Trials
10.1. Devolving oneself
10.2. Trials as a subject area
10.3. Devolving your own trials: the passionate subject and the good teacher
10.4. Teaching about trials, maintaining the passion
10.5. References
11 A Game to Play and a Game Played: A Devolution “Under Influences”
11.1. Introduction
11.2. Thèque: a game to be played in extracurricular activity periods
11.3. A theoretical framework for thinking about the devolution of a game and the associated methodological approach
11.4. Jules’ influence on devolved games
11.5. Conclusion: towards a theory of game devolution
11.6. References
List of Authors
Index
End User License Agreement
List of Illustrations
Chapter 1
Figure 1.1. The rectangle problem: how many rectangles are there in this rectang...
Chapter 6
Figure 6.1. Thinking about the transmission of knowledge from teaching/learning ...
Figure 6.2.
Geometric figure to be reproduced (session 1)
Figure 6.3.
Pupil productions (session 1)
Figure 6.4.
Pupil worksheet
Chapter 8
Figure 8.1. Problematization diamond and devolutions (from Fabre and Musquer (20...
Chapter 9
Figure 9.1. A complex space of devolution. For a color version of this figure, s...
Chapter 11
Figure 11.1. Example of a spatial organization of the game of thèque3. For a col...
List of Tables
Chapter 1
Table 1.1.
The rectangle problem has 36 solutions
Chapter 6
Table 6.1.
Session synopsis
Chapter 8
Table 8.1. Function of the different deviations from the phases of problematizat...
Table 8.2. Discourse/reasoning of students related to the different devolutions ...
Table 8.3.
Three trends in terms of ownership of the various devolutions
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Foreword
Introduction
Begin Reading
List of Authors
Index
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Education Set
coordinated by Angela Barthes and Anne-Laure Le Guern
Volume 9
Devolution and Autonomy in Education
Edited by
Pablo Buznic-Bourgeacq
First published 2021 in Great Britain and the United States by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms and licenses issued by the CLA. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside these terms should be sent to the publishers at the undermentioned address:
ISTE Ltd27-37 St George’s RoadLondon SW19 4EUUK
www.iste.co.uk
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.111 River StreetHoboken, NJ 07030USA
www.wiley.com
© ISTE Ltd 2021
The rights of Pablo Buznic-Bourgeacq to be identified as the author of this work have been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2021936092
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication
Data A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-78630-698-2
ForewordThe Devolution Process within the Framework of the Theory of Didactical Situations
The concept of devolution, introduced by Brousseau (1982), is at the heart of the theory of didactical situations in mathematics, which itself has called for some research observations in didactics of mathematics, particularly in France, since the 1970s. I will then come back to the concept of “devolution”, which leads us to introduce a fundamental distinction between situational knowledge and institutional knowledge and to characterize the process of devolution. We will then be able to question the roles of the teacher, as well as of the student before concluding on the implications for the disciplines.
Some observations on the didactics of mathematics and theory of didactical situations
The term “didactics” refers to many points of view that depend on the history of research communities in different disciplinary didactics. In didactics of mathematics, a broad anthropological point of view prevails (Sarrazy 2005), which is reflected, for example, in the following definitions:
[…] the didactics of mathematics [is] the science of studying and helping to study (questions of) mathematics (Bosch and Chevallard 1999, p. 79).
It is the science of the specific conditions regarding the diffusion of mathematical knowledge necessary for human occupations (broad sense) (Brousseau 2003, p. 2).
Both of these definitions consider the didactics of mathematics a “normal” science (Kuhn 1970) that includes both foundational and applied research (International Council for Science 2004). Its object of study is specified, and it specifically concerns mathematics; however nothing refers to school or teaching, which represent institutional and historical choices concerning only part of the diffusion of mathematical knowledge or the study of it. In the continuation of the previous quotation, Brousseau, when he specifies the “restricted meaning”, indicates a “teaching” institution but assigns to it a meaning that is not necessarily that conferred on it by contemporary usage (employee in national education).
The didactics of mathematics deals (in a restricted sense) with the conditions where an institution considered a “teaching” institution attempts (mandated if necessary by another institution) to modify the knowledge of another “taught” institution when the latter is not able to do so autonomously and does not necessarily feel the need to do so. A didactic project is a social project to enable a subject or an institution to appropriate knowledge that has been or is in the process of being created. Teaching includes all the actions that seek to achieve this didactic project (Brousseau 2003, p. 2).
In this quotation, a very important point that will be developed is that the “taught institution” does not necessarily feel the need to change its knowledge and is not able to do so autonomously. As I am only interested here in one teaching institution, the school, I will speak of students and teachers.
The concept of devolution
Brousseau borrows the term devolution from legal vocabulary, formed from the Latin devolere (Medieval Latin), which means “to roll up and down”. In use today in political and administrative language, this expression is usually applied to the movement of transferring power from one jurisdiction, or even from the controlling authority, over the actions and resources associated with these responsibilities. Although inspired by the legal terminology applied to civil matters (law of succession), this concept used in the sphere of public affairs is generally used to refer to a top–down approach to subsidiarity, a subject that is now closely regulated in all rule of law regimes.
In his glossary, Guy Brousseau considers devolution a process that he defines as follows:
The process by which the teacher manages to place the student as a simple actant in adidactic situation […]. In this way, the teacher seeks to ensure that the student’s action is produced and justified only by the needs of the milieu and by his or her knowledge, and not by the interpretation of the teacher’s didactic procedures. For the teacher, devolution consists not only of proposing a situation to the student that should provoke in him or her an activity that has not been agreed previously, but also in making him or her feel responsible for obtaining the proposed result, and in accepting the idea that the solution depends only on the exercise of the knowledge he or she already possesses. The student accepts responsibility under conditions that an adult would not accept, because if there is a problem and then knowledge is created, it is because there is doubt and ignorance first. This is why devolution creates responsibility, but not guilt in the event of failure (see paradox of devolution). Devolution is the counterpart to institutionalization. These are the two didactic interventions of the teacher in the “pupil – milieu – knowledge” situation. It is an important sui generis element of the didactic contract (Brousseau 2003, p. 5)1.
He completes this definition in the article “le paradoxe de la dévolution”:
The teacher has a social obligation to teach everything necessary about knowledge. The student – especially when he or she is failing – asks the teacher to do so. So the more the teacher gives in to these requests and reveals what he or she wants, the more precisely the teacher tells the student what he or she needs to do, the more likely the student is to lose his or her chances of obtaining and objectively observing the learning that he or she is actually trying to achieve. This is the first paradox: it is not quite a contradiction, but knowledge and the project of teaching will have to advance behind a veil. This didactic contract thus puts the teacher before a real paradoxical injunction: everything he or she does to make the student produce the behaviors he or she expects, tends to deprive the latter of the conditions necessary for understanding and learning the targeted notion: if the teacher says what he or she wants, the student can no longer obtain it. However, the student is also faced with a paradoxical injunction: if he or she accepts that, according to the contract, the teacher teaches him or her the results, the student does not establish them himself or herself and therefore does not learn mathematics, does not master them. If, on the contrary, he or she refuses any information from the teacher, then the didactic relationship is broken. To learn implies, for him or her, that he or she accepts the didactic relationship but that he or she considers it provisional and tries to reject it (Brousseau 2003, p. 9).
In the following section, I will come back to some elements of these glossary articles, and first, I will attempt to characterize the terms “institutional knowledge” and “situational knowledge”, which Brousseau uses deliberately in the above articles.
Institutional knowledge and situational knowledge: a fundamental distinction
The distinction between institutional knowledge and situational knowledge exists in the philosophical field, in which it seems to have different delimitations depending on the authors, if we refer to a blog in which the subject appears (Juignet 2016):
The French term “connaissance” [situational knowledge] comes from the Old French “conoistre”, which dates back to the 11th century. The latter derives from the Latin cognescere and noscere, which means, at the same time, to learn, to know and to “know how”. Knowledge derives from the Latin sapere and sapio, which means to have taste, intelligence, prudence. In everyday language [in French], “connaissance” and “savoir” are more or less synonymous.
It is, however, interesting to distinguish the active process of production, which we shall call “situational knowledge” from its result, which we shall call “institutional knowledge” or “acquired knowledge”. It is a question of applying the difference between action and its result, which is tantamount to saying that the act of putting knowledge into action produces knowledge.
Situational knowledge implies an active relationship with the world that aims to represent and explain it. This activity generally combines action and reflection. There are various types of knowledge that are more or less effective, reliable and realistic.
Institutional knowledge is the corpus of accepted and transmitted notions, the organized set of information in a given field. Part of the institutional knowledge represents the world in a certain way and can be used for practical purposes. It only needs to be learned and is accumulated over generations, thus forming culture.
The distinction that is made within the framework of situation theory is close to this one, although some important points are specified.
In a situation, a subject is interacting with an milieu and is seeking to realize an issue, and to do so focuses on situational knowledge, which represents a balance between the subject and the milieu (Balacheff and Margolinas 2005; Margolinas 2014). In this sense, situational knowledge is not “in the subject” and not “in the milieu” either, it exists in the interaction between the two. In situations of action (Brousseau 1981), situational knowledge is a priori implicit and often not explainable. The different types of mathematical situations described by Brousseau aim to transform this situational knowledge by modifying the necessities of the situation, whether a formulation situation (formulation becomes necessary) or a validation situation (proof becomes necessary).
In a given institution, institutional knowledge results from a process of selection, explanation, formalization and legitimization, which, in written societies, is translated into a text: the “text of knowledge”. Institutional knowledge is related to the institutions that legitimize it.
As a result, situational knowledge in a situation is sometimes formulated, validated, formalized and legitimized and gives rise to institutional knowledge in a given institution, which is the epistemological and social process of institutionalization. However, institutional knowledge as such does not give direct power in a situation: in order to enable a subject to act, it must be transformed into situational knowledge in a situation. This is one aspect of the devolution process.
Devolution process
Situation theory has several aspects: a position of epistemological logic and a didactical engineering position, and more recently, a position of analyzing ordinary teaching and learning situations.
At the epistemological level, the project of situation theory is to describe mathematical knowledge through fundamental situations: “a situation schema capable of generating, through the interplay of didactic variables that determine it, the set of situations corresponding to a given knowledge” (Brousseau 2003, p. 3). It is therefore a question of representing institutional knowledge through situational knowledge in a situation (institutional knowledge → situational knowledge). In order to do this, it is necessary for this situational knowledge to “correspond” to a specific institutional knowledge. I propose then to say that this situational knowledge is appropriate to this institutional knowledge: the adjective “adequate” (the French “idoine”), often used by Yves Chevallard (Chevallard 2002), refers in fact to what is “specific to something”.
At the level of didactic engineering, the theory of situation’s project is to allow the empirical confrontation of theory (in particular, in terms of fundamental situations) with contingency and, in particular, to verify that the situational knowledge invested by students in adidactic situation constructed by engineering is appropriate to the institutional knowledge determined in advance.
Empirically, it is not simple: it is not enough to ask a teacher to respect a scenario, and this is how the incredible adventure of COREM (Salin and Greslard 1998) was born from the idea that it was necessary to implement quite exceptional experimental conditions, in an entire school (kindergarten– elementary), so that original situations could be experimented on. Part of the teacher’s work in this framework is, in particular, that of participating in the process of devolving an adidactic situation, that is, of committing the pupil to investing in a milieu in order to realize an issue that has been defined in advance. In these experimental conditions, the devolution process depends on the quality of the situations constructed by the engineering team, which must guarantee that everything has been done to ensure that the student can invest the proposed milieu and issue, and that the situational knowledge involved in the student–milieu interaction is an appropriate component of the knowledge to be taught.
Didactic engineering plays, for theory of situations, the role of phenomenotechnics (Bachelard 1934): it is not a goal in itself. Contrary to what is sometimes considered in a popularized version, it is not a “constructivist” theory, especially in a radical version of constructivism, of which Brousseau (2003, p. 5) clearly writes that it is condemned as a didactic model. Brousseau still considers both learning by adaptation (from situational knowledge to institutional knowledge) and learning by acculturation (from institutional knowledge to situational knowledge) (Bessot 2011).
In ordinary (non-experimental) situations, regardless of the teacher’s pedagogical orientation, teaching is more or less an adaptation/acculturation continuum. The most “active” lessons are aimed in fine at the acquisition of institutional knowledge, the most “formal” lessons are also aimed in fine at the implementation of situational knowledge in situations. In the rest of this text, by focusing on ordinary teaching situations, I do not prejudge the pedagogical considerations that lead the teacher to construct them. In any case, the processes of devolution (which we are particularly interested in here) and institutionalization are at play.
When ordinary teaching situations are observed, the conditions concerning the situations cannot be fully met, regardless of the professionalism, experience and commitment of the teacher and regardless of the quality of the resources on which he or she relies. Under ordinary conditions, the devolution process becomes more complicated because it is necessary not only to maintain the commitment of the students in a situation entirely determined in advance but also to regulate or even modify the situation itself so that it continues to correspond to the didactic project of the teacher. This raises the question of the criteria for such a “correspondence”.
The teacher’s role in the devolution process
The school institution defines the framework of the teacher’s action, according to modalities that differ from country to country. In France, these modalities are largely defined by official instructions, particularly school curricula, whereas textbooks are published freely by private publishers (Bruillard 2005). The official instructions give the teacher a list of knowledge to teach, sometimes accompanied by complements (curriculum guides) suggesting ways of teaching. In all cases, from such a list and even with some additional suggestions, the teacher is led to choose what, in daily situations, will be proposed to the student.
The teacher starts from the knowledge and must somehow allow the student to acquire situational knowledge that is appropriate to them (institutional knowledge → situational knowledge). The choices he or she makes, even before the meeting with the students, are part of the devolution process that affects both the teacher and the students. Contrary to the popularized form that the term “devolution” sometimes takes on, it is not a kind of tool at the teacher’s full disposal: the teacher too is subject to the vagaries of the choices imposed on him or her by the characteristics of the situations that he or she sets up in a more or less deliberate manner. In particular, even if we can broadly consider the teacher to be rather free in his (oral) speech, most of the time he or she cannot easily change in the course of the action neither the writings he or she has prepared beforehand (e.g. photocopies) nor the material he or she has prepared to put the students in situations, and even less his or her own didactic situational knowledge related to the knowledge to be taught. His leeway is thus very limited.
In the teacher’s action, what is usually called the “instruction” (the initial guidelines of the task pupils have to achieve) is only one of the tools that influence the process of devolution in a learning situation, a somewhat excessive power to act is granted to those instructions, as if the teacher could entirely constrain the action of the students. However, any human action, even if it results from a prescription, is always the object of an interpretation that transforms the prescription, an interpretation that, even if it actually causes the reality to deviate from the prescribed, is the mark of the subject’s investment in the situation (Clot 1999). Moreover, in the school context, especially in elementary school, the implementation of teaching situations involves objects, and, in particular, material objects, objects of the world that “evoke the uses and affects that [the pupil] already knows” (Laparra and Margolinas 2016, p. 176). The teacher’s efforts to create a situation in which the student encounters situational knowledge that is appropriate to institutional knowledge can be nullified by the students’ previous uses (academic or otherwise) of objects that the teacher has, sometimes by chance, used (e.g. see, in particular, Chapters 1 and 2).
The student’s role in the devolution process
“The student is well aware that the problem [situation] was chosen to help him/her acquire new knowledge” (Brousseau 1998, p. 59); however, the student does not know the teacher’s project, and, especially in elementary school, does not always know how to clearly identify the school subject concerned (Reuter 2007). Moreover, the student cannot know in advance the knowledge in question, which is one of the paradoxes of devolution:
The teacher has a social obligation to teach everything necessary about knowledge. The student – especially when he or she is failing – asks him or her to do so. So the more the teacher gives in to these requests and reveals what he or she wants, the more precisely he or she tells the student what he or she needs to do, the more likely the student is to lose his or her chances of obtaining and objectively observing the learning that he or she is actually trying to achieve (Brousseau 2003, p. 9).
One of student’s first roles in the devolution process is therefore to accept trusting the teacher, who is responsible for the situations he or she asks the student to invest.
The student is confronted with a milieu that he explores according to his previous situational knowledge. This interaction with the environment mobilizes or provokes the construction of situational knowledge whose nature depends on the actual situation. The student’s point of view is the opposite of the teacher’s: he or she must arrive at the institutional knowledge the teacher started with to create his or her teaching project, by constructing situational knowledge in a situation. However, numerous works (see, for example, Margolinas 2004; Coulange 2012; Clivaz 2014) show that very often the situations set up by the teacher lead some students:
– to invest a situation not foreseen and/or not observed and/or not favored by the teacher;
– to encounter useful but unrecognized situational knowledge that is not appropriate to the target knowledge;
– to find themselves in a gap with the knowledge encountered through institutionalization.
I insist on the fact that such situations are not “pathological” and it is undoubtedly their recognition and regulation rather than their avoidance that must be the object of our attention. Indeed, the student gives the teacher a part of his or her activity to see, which the teacher observes and interprets, based on his or her knowledge (Vignon 2014). The student thus informs the teacher, more or less voluntarily, about his or her own interpretation of the situation in place, which can help the teacher (Mercier 1998), when possible, to redirect the devolution of the programmed situation or at least to imagine a new future situation.
However, the clues which, for an external observer who is a tutor of mathematics, can be interpreted as the investment, by a student, of a situation installed by the teacher without the latter’s knowledge, or can be interpreted by the teacher as proof of inattention or of the academic or disciplinary difficulty of the same student, independent of the situation.
One of the student’s difficulties is that the situational knowledge that he or she actually encounters in a situation, the knowledge that he or she has managed to develop a little and that he or she would like the teacher to recognize and explain, is not always the knowledge that is institutionalized.
Open conclusion on the processes of devolution and institutionalization
Wondering about the devolution process thus leads to questioning the institutionalization process. These processes, when understood as a movement between institutional knowledge and situational knowledge (devolution: from institutional knowledge to situational knowledge; institutionalization: from situational knowledge to institutional knowledge) appear to be interdependent. The teacher, at the moment when he or she conceives a project of teaching, is led to install situations that summon situational knowledge (process of devolution); this situational knowledge, which is invested by the student, will be progressively transformed (formulated, validated, formalized, memorized, etc.) into knowledge in the institution of the class and finally be brought together with knowledge from other institutions (process of institutionalization).
This description might suggest that these are processes that flow smoothly, but this is generally not the case:
– The situations put in place more or less deliberately by the teacher and invested by students may not call upon a situational knowledge that is appropriate to the knowledge to be taught, in which case it causes a rupture for these students, in their expectation of legitimization of the situational knowledge they have invested during the situation.
– The situational knowledge used by students in situations, especially when they do not correspond to what the teacher has anticipated, may be ignored by the teacher who may believe that the student is not engaging any situational awareness (that he or she is inattentive, that he or she has not understood the instruction, etc.).
If these phenomena occurred only rarely and if they almost never involved the same students, it would have little effect. However, there seems to be a recurrence of phenomena that I have called “didactic bifurcations” (Margolinas 2005), which often involve students participating in the devolution process by investing in unforeseen situations (Margolinas and Thomazet 2004; Margolinas and Laparra 2008).
This observation leads us to reconsider knowledge. Indeed, there are many institutions and they all produce knowledge, but some is not recognized as such, in particular knowledge that strongly engages bodies in the co-presence of other bodies: the knowledge of orality (Laparra and Margolinas 2016). The didactic transposition (Chevallard 1985) studies and describes the transformations necessary for this knowledge to be considered, in another institution (the school institution), as knowledge to be taught, which is historically and socially constituted as “school disciplines”. The didactics of the disciplines were historically constituted with reference to the disciplines of secondary education, which was undoubtedly an initial necessity in order to affirm the specific character of the study of the transmission of each field of knowledge. However, knowledge, which is at the heart of the didactics of each “discipline”, is thus defined externally to the didactics, which is not a satisfactory solution at the epistemological level.
Concretely, by working for 15 years with a French language tutor (Marceline Laparra, CREM, University of Metz), several phenomena have come to light that lead to questioning of these disciplinary boundaries. In particular, we have shown (Margolinas 2010; Laparra and Margolinas 2016) that the enumeration, pointed out by Brousseau (1984) and characterized by Briand (1999), provides leads for the analysis of recurrent difficulties of students in a large number of school situations, particularly in French language classes. The fact that enumeration appears only marginally in official texts (in France, only once, in the 2015 Cycle 1 curriculum, in relation to numbers) and that it is associated only with counting, prevents teachers from conceiving a link between the differences they observe in student procedures for “organizing” their actions and the knowledge to be acquired. In order for the dual process of devolution and institutionalization to proceed satisfactorily, it is still necessary for institutional knowledge and situational knowledge to be identified, which is not always the case, and which has led us to speak of “transparent knowledge” (Margolinas and Laparra 2008) for knowledge that exists in an institution but that is not, at a given moment in the history of the school institution, visible to it.
In this foreword, I have shown, on the one hand, that devolution is not a phase but a process (Margolinas 1993), and, on the other hand, that this process is linked to the process of institutionalization. These processes, even if they have been the subject of studies since they were first highlighted in the early 1980s, are not yet sufficiently well known, and moreover, their study requires a reconsideration of knowledge. This book, opening up this consideration to various scientific fields and disciplines is therefore very relevant and topical.
Claire MARGOLINAS
ACTé Laboratory
Clermont Auvergne University
April 2021
References
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1
Article “devolution”.
IntroductionSubjects, Objects and Devolution: Didactic Variations on the Institution of Autonomy
1.1. Initiation: a major process for thinking about education today, yesterday and tomorrow
The concept of devolution was introduced into the field of education in the 1980s from disciplinary didactics, when these were constituted as scientific fields, and more particularly the didactics of mathematics, in order to describe the “act by which the teacher makes the student accept responsibility for a learning situation (adidactic) or a problem and himself or herself accepts the consequences of this transfer” (Brousseau 1988, p. 325). For more than 40 years, various uses of the concept have led to its heterogeneous diffusion and trivialization in the field of training, teaching and educational practices. Its success has led it to traverse decades and disciplines, amplifying the scope of study contexts and with it the variety of questions and practices that devolution processes can raise for researchers, trainers, teachers and, more generally, educational actors.
In the field of educational research, there is still a multiplicity of works conducted under the filter of the concept. The teaching of mathematics, the original source of the concept, still finds a robust support there for shedding light on the studies carried out (Sarrazy 2007; Matheron 2011; Prioret 2014). Other disciplinary courses take it up in order to study practices, for example in history (Cariou 2013), PE (physical education) (Thépaut and Léziart 2008) and technology (Andreucci Chatonay 2006); sometimes curricular dynamics, for example, in economics and management (Panissal and Brossais 2012); sometimes their own didactic science, for example, in French (Rosier 2005). Although it crosses disciplines, the concept of devolution also extends beyond them, for example, by leaving school subject teaching, or even leaving school, for example, by going to study the processes in question in the fields of sports training, special education, early childhood education (Le Paven et al. 2007) or teacher professional development (Sensevy et al. 2005).
The concept of devolution still appears to be particularly topical. Perhaps this is the sign of a form of heuristics that is never exhausted. What then makes it so relevant? What does it bring more than another concept? Moreover, what relevance does it have today, after having supported researchers for 40 years? Can its midlife crisis be constructive for educational researchers?
The need to leave some responsibility to the learners is obvious and shared today, as it has been for many philosophers of education and for many pedagogues and pedagogical movements in the past, long before the concept of devolution was introduced. Hubert Vincent shows this in greater detail in this book using as a basis the proposals of Montaigne and Alain. Moreover, we would probably find in almost all the actors and thinkers in education, affiliated with the qualifier “pedagogue”, an idea, a project or simply a sensitivity that evokes the process of devolution. It is not a question here of rewriting the history of pedagogy through the filter of the concept of devolution. However, by way of introduction, a brief but fulfilling stop can be envisaged. Indeed, an elegant connection was made by Alain Marchive between Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Guy Brousseau, going D’Émile à Gaël (Marchive 2006). The reader is invited to browse through this text and its sources, simply by including here a few excerpts from the writings of the two authors put in parallel.
As a result, when Jean-Jacques Rousseau writes “keep the child in the sole dependence of things, you will have followed the order of nature in the progress of his education” (Rousseau 1966, p. 101), or “do not give your pupil any verbal lesson; he should only receive experience from it” (Rousseau 1966, p. 110). Guy Brousseau emphasizes that it is necessary to “propose to Gaël suitable didactic situations where knowledge is not to be taken from discourse or from the teacher’s desire, but from a relationship with the environment” (Brousseau 1980, p. 124). Jean-Jacques Rousseau reminds us that it is not a question of letting the child construct knowledge according to his or her contingent encounters with the environment: “no doubt he should only do what he wants; but he should only want what you want him to do; he should not take a step unless you have foreseen it” (Rousseau 1966, p. 150). In contrast, Guy Brousseau affirms the resolutely active dimension of the teacher: “the teacher proposes a game, the didactic situation, i.e. the rules of the child’s interactions with a system – a problem situation” (Brousseau 1980, p. 126). Finally, when Jean-Jacques Rousseau emphasizes the tension inherent in this active posture of one subject aiming at the activity of another, he refers to the invisibility of the didactic intention (“he learns all the better as he sees nowhere the intention to instruct” (Rousseau 1966, p. 149)), Guy Brousseau subjects it to disguise: “knowledge and the project of teaching will have to advance under a mask” (Brousseau 1998, p. 73). With Émile and Gaël, Jean-Jacques and Guy, it seems that the subjects of devolution have been sharing their lives for a long time, even when the horizon of the transmission of knowledge seems to draw different paths for them.
It is then necessary to be able to take a step back to refine the understanding of the specific scientific and social stakes of the concept of devolution, as it has emerged in the didactic field; all the more so to characterize and valorize its contemporary stakes. These specific stakes seem to us to be strongly attached to the specific sensitivity of this didactic field. Generally speaking, it can be condensed into an importance attributed to the fields of knowledge specifically taught and can be found amongst almost all didacticians. This can be ascertained from the most notable evocations of this sensitivity, from the early years – “a responsibility with respect to the content of the discipline” (Martinand 1987, p. 24) – to the present day – “the importance of content and disciplines“ (Reuter 2019, p. 36), or even to the point of having a bit of fun with it collectively – “a passionate epistemological, cultural and political fetishism towards the discipline” (Chevallard 2007, p. 18), and then to put to work, with all the didacticians, epistemological rules, anthropological structures, social configurations, political games and psychic constructions that support these specificities. This attachment to the specificity of what is taught is in itself interesting to think about, in the continuity of pedagogical traditions inspired by questions of transmission, inasmuch as it is consubstantial with didactics and is thus evidence of a specific way of thinking about education and, in particular, autonomy. By extension, we can consider that in some way every didactic approach is part of a passionate attachment to normativity, and that the world of didactics begins where a subject will “use the normative power of something so that someone becomes, or more simply, is autonomous” (Buznic-Bourgeacq 2019, p. 241). It is by entering through norms, through institutions, through subjection, through the pre-existing objects of the world that autonomy will be made possible. Alain already said, as Hubert Vincent shows in this work, that the child should be forced to try or to take the initiative; a formula that is certainly paradoxical, and which condenses Guy Brousseau’s idea supported by the concept of devolution.
The didactician then finds their place and, in devolution, their specific stake: it is necessary to study in detail the transmitted objects and the actual activity of a subject engaged by these objects in order to make another subject happen. In other words, it is necessary to analyze precisely what is devolved, what the objects of devolution are, and it is necessary to closely study the activity of the subject being devolved and the objects that the tutor themself manipulates to deploy their activity of devolution jointly with those to whom it is addressed. This is what the present work proposes investigating in an original form.
1.2. Problematization; subjects and objects of devolution: educating and disciplining
1.2.1. Objects of devolution and disciplines
Since its introduction in didactics of mathematics, the concept of devolution has been given a variety of objects. Guy Brousseau, for example, envisaged it in the form of stages of devolution (Brousseau 1998): devolution of the rules of the game, the finality of the game, the cause and effect link, the anticipation of the solution, the formulation and so on (Brousseau 1998). If we set aside for a while the temporality underlying this diversity, we then find ourselves faced with the multiplicity of what can be devolved in a teaching relationship. We can then immediately see that “making people accept responsibility for a learning situation (adidactic) or a problem”, to use the original formula of devolution (Brousseau 1988, p. 325), is to make people accept many things, sometimes heterogeneous. Between accepting responsibility for the rules of the game for learning and responsibility for the formulation of knowledge, or even for the flavor of knowledge (Astolfi 2008), there is a world of difference. If we step outside the Brousseau-type frameworks and formulations, or even their mathematical background, the extent and polymorphism of what can be transferred under the responsibility of the learner becomes even more monumental. If only from an epistemological point of view, the object of devolution can navigate from the empirical sensitivity of the experimental scientist to the bodily sensation of the top athlete, from the controversial approach of the analytical philosopher to the creative attitude of the impressionist artist, from the political commitment of the critical sociologist to the meaningful listening of the psychoanalyst and so on. In order to better grasp the diversity of the objects of devolution, it would seem judicious to cross a few disciplines. This is what this book proposes, particularly in its first part, where researchers circumscribe the objects of devolution attached to specific disciplinary sensibilities. For example, Jean-Philippe Georget, from mathematics, recalls the place of debate and the social aspect of evidence in the discipline and shows that they can also be devolved. Faouzia Kalali moves from mathematics to the experimental sciences by precisely underlining the importance of devolving also the experimental in these disciplines and even further devolving what constitutes them: an attitude. Benjamin Delattre invites us, from PE and the crossed contribution of philosophy and physiology, to think about the devolution of a very original object: the double of the action inherent to human behaviors.
