What adaptations of French elementary teachers to “educations for”?
The “educations for” confront the French school crisis and legitimacy of school knowledge, diversification of tasks, introduction to social partnership and expanded functions, interdisciplinary and values. The teaching function is modified, and is likely to lead to loss of benchmarks in exercise of the profession. To understand what happens, we study teachers’ reactions facing “educations for” (environment, sustainable development and/or heritage) projects. They have in common to be initiated by the political associations and take shape through a formalized partnership within schools. The methodology is based on surveys of participating teachers about their professional approaches and social representations. We explain the different teaching strategies (we have identified four − the activist, the acceptor, the resigned, the resistant) linked with different social contexts, and explain how professional uncertainty induced by the project is modified. The teachers’ functions can then be perceived imbalance and tensioning, or find meaning in a new social commitment.