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Teaching Resources in Early School Grades: A Comparative Approach to the Teacher’s Interpretative Space in Three Subject Areas

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Abstract

As a research field for studying the conditions of knowledge diffusion in teaching and learning, French-speaking Didactiques strongly rely upon the concept of knowledge transposition for characterizing the relationships between the knowledge built and used in “out of school” activities, the knowledge to be taught in the curriculum texts, and the knowledge effectively taught in the classroom. This paper explores the knowledge content and the learning epistemologies resulting from the transposition process by comparing teaching resources provided for the early grades (age 5–6) of primary school classrooms in western (French-speaking) Switzerland. We examined teaching resources from three subject areas: French language, mathematics, and science. The purposes of this study were two-fold: (i) to identify the early formation of subject areas in activities done with young students; and (ii) to uncover the implicit learning theories underpinning the patterns of teacher-student actions, according to the resources’ designers. We found that a comparative approach to analysing teaching resources from different subject areas enabled us to trace the continuities and discontinuities in the teacher’s interpretative space, defined by the textual description of the curriculum.

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Notes

  1. Until 2010, grade 1 and 2 (4–5 and 5–6 years old) used to be labelled as pre-school grades and were not compulsory. Nevertheless, these grades were attended massively in most states of western Switzerland.

  2. All citations from documents written in French have been translated by the authors.

  3. The Western Swiss study plan (Plan d’étude romand) is set up by the “Conférence Intercantonale des Directeurs de l’Instruction Publique (CIIP)”. It is available online: http://www.plandetudes.ch/

  4. Le bricolage de Spot. Activité de lecture-écriture 2H (Français I), cahier n 43, Service du Français, Département de l’instruction publique, Genève.

  5. Maison de Pailles. Mathématiques, 1–2H, Livre de l’enseignant, Département de l’instruction publique, Genève.

  6. Pas n’ importe où! Sciences de la nature, 1–2H, Moyens d’enseignement romands http://www.plandetudes.ch

  7. The portfolios were collected from several teachers involved in a collaborative research network “Réseau Maison des Petits” (2005–2009). This network is co-funded by the Geneva Departement of Public Instruction and the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences at the University of Geneva.

  8. In contrast, the new western Swiss Study plan (2010) does not contain any specific discourses on the general learning epistemologies. However, since most of the standard teaching resources remain in use, the teachers’ practices may be continuous.

  9. A full praxeology in Chevallard’s words (Chevallard and Sensevy 2014).

  10. It took a long time for human societies to organise communication into genres of texts and types of discourses (Bronckart 1997).

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Alain Mercier (Aix-Marseille Université, France) for his helpful comments on this paper.

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  1. Faculté de Psychologie et des Sciences de l’Education, Université de Genève, Uni-MAIL – Boulevard du Pont d’Arve 40, Geneva, 1205, Switzerland

    Florence Ligozat & Francia Leutenegger

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  1. Florence Ligozat
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Correspondence to Florence Ligozat.

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Ligozat, F., Leutenegger, F. Teaching Resources in Early School Grades: A Comparative Approach to the Teacher’s Interpretative Space in Three Subject Areas. Interchange 46, 345–367 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10780-015-9265-3

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