Research conducted by the UNESCO Chair aims to improve our understanding of interactions between pupils, teachers and knowledge, given that access to knowledge is geared around organisation that is specific to teaching science, technology and professional vocations, especially using technical and educational resources, whether for simulation, producing mock-ups, modelling, computer-assisted experimentation or virtual worlds. This understanding is achieved further to the analysis of stakeholder activity based on theories of activity, whether this involves instrumental genesis or Artefact Mediation. This input brings to light the role of resources in real contexts as implemented in classes by teachers. The results, which have been published many times, help to achieve enhanced understanding of school setups to transmit and acquire scientific, technological and professional knowledge and, furthermore, to look at teacher training organisations in a different light by re-examining the relations between taking this referential knowledge on board and teaching the same. The UNESCO Chair project mainly focusses on this second point and financial backing obtained via the European programme Erasmus Mundus Stettin is expected to reinforce training for teachers, trainers and researchers for the institutions belonging to the network to enhance their capacity for organisation within their research units and teacher training institute. This project aims to:
- gain a better understanding of interactions between pupils, teachers and knowledge in scientific, technological and professional fields,
- develop research and teacher training facilities in order to improve the quality and effectiveness of resources for scientific, technological and professional training,
- contribute to reinforcing ties between Education for All and professional training by developing North-South and South-South relations,
- organise and develop research projects in scientific, technological and professional education and teacher training in these fields.
This project aims to coordinate partner research programmes and organise the necessary resources.
The Gestepro team at the EA 4671 ADEF research unit in partnership with LIREFTP (interdisciplinary laboratory for research in education and technological and professional training), Cheikh Anta Diop University, ENSETP, Dakar (Senegal), has from the outset been developing a highly innovative approach to research in scientific, technological and professional education based on an approach centred on the analysis of activity in teaching situations. Traditionally, research on instruction in academic disciplines has been geared around input that is curricular (how the school organises what needs to be taught), social (opportunity to teach various subjects), sociological (conceptions and representations of players regarding such knowledge) etc. Some less mainstream research is focussing on difficulties encountered by pupils in various courses and how to help them overcome these. By examining the understanding of interactions which develop between teacher activity and that of pupils, the work conducted by the team opens up new perspectives on relations and the tension generated between the logic of what is being taught, the teacher's educational dynamic and the pupils' learning dynamics. This interactive approach highlights issues such as the effectiveness of schools in particular subjects as well as the efficiency of the teaching resources implemented. The methodologies forged help to ponder these issues of effectiveness and efficiency with regard to understanding habitual organisations – what can be achieved in a teaching establishment given its institutional setup – or improvement of these organisations – what can be achieved by developing this or that condition of institutional setup.
In this sense, research in scientific, technological and professional education falls within research in education as developed at the University of Aix-Marseille especially via the FED 4238 SFERE-Provence research federation associating ten laboratories in the PACA region (nine AMU and one I3DL, at the university of Nice-Sophia Antipolis) and contribute to the development of one of the avenues of this federation which aims to model teacher activity. This structuring, along with the UNESCO Chair, makes this research centre a benchmark in France, Europe and internationally.