Research problematic

Instructional intervention : a research object under construction

The research problematic of the Crie and of the Canada Research Chair on Instructional Intervention is in direct relation with the Strategic Plan for Development in Research and Teaching of the University of Sherbrooke (2001), with the orientations of the Faculty of Education (1996) with the problematic of the doctorate in education (Ph.D.), centred on interrelations between research, teacher education and professional practices, and with the orientations of the Centre for Interuniversity Research in Teacher Education and the Teaching Profession (Crifpe) that the Crie is part of.

The research problematic deals with a fundamental question in education. Indeed, it is centred on instructional intervention in teaching and in professional pre-service and continuing education in teaching, and on the development of behaviours connected to it, according to an interdisciplinary approach or perspective. In this sense, the populations concerned by the works conducted by the CRIE are, on the one hand, practising teachers and all actors in the school milieu (pedagogical consultants, school principals, etc.) in their function of intervener with these teachers and, on the other hand, future teachers and all actors (university professors, sessional lecturers, practice teaching supervisors, associate teachers, etc.) acting in their capacity of intervener in their teacher education process.

By instructional intervention, we mean all completed actions posed by an educator (teacher, practice teacher, university professor, etc.) for the purpose of pursuing in a specific institutional context – the school institution – educational objectives socially determined, by putting in place the most adequate conditions possible to foster the implementation by pupils of appropriate learning processes. Instructional intervention in a school environment therefore includes all planning actions (pre-active phase) of actualization in the classroom (interactive phase) and of evaluation (post-active phase). Thus conceived, the intervention becomes a well thought out and reflective work of rationalization and prescription, a finalized action of regulation led by an actor (teacher) in a socially normed framework: “the logic of the intervention is [...] a logic of public action legitimized above all by public interest, as politically defined, for sure” (Couturier, 2001, p. 78). For Couturier “the intervention is a transformative praxis placing the legitimacy/project/ effective change axis as the central pivot of professional action” (Ibid., p. 80).

Instructional intervention is an existential and social praxis that integrates dialectically anticipation, practice and critical reflection; it is the link between curricular and didactical dimensions (link to knowledge1/to knowledges2/of knowledges3), psycho-pedagogical dimensions (link with pupils/to the pupil and organizational dimensions (link to teaching management as a link with classroom space, to time and organizational means), all anchored in a social spatiotemporally determined link.

Analysis of professional activity

In the research perspective that characterizes the Crie, practico-interactive, techno-scientific and socio-political poles of the intervention are considered (Nélisse, 1997). The practico-interactive pole, on which, above all, the Crie focuses its attention, considers on the one hand, the professional act as a professionality (Lang, 1999), whose professional activity is normatively governed and from the exterior and whose functioning modalities of the profession (social expectations professional activities) are specified by a code, by rules, etc. This aspect, in particular, refers to the absence of a professional order, to laws, regulations, orders, norms, etc., emanating from governments, from local authorities (school boards, for example, councils and school principals), from the union, etc. On the other hand, it does pay attention to the professional act. This one refers to the action itself of the professional, to the “professional act” re-appropriated, interpreted and applied. This professional act, which is prescribed, actualizes itself in an interaction that establishes itself between the intervening professional and one or some subjects. This act implies recourse to an intervention process (a methodological process) that actualizes this intervention and that acts, within school systems, as a mediating process exercised by an educator between the learning subject or subjects and the objects of knowledge. This action also implies a set of acts, gestures, operations, techniques used during the intervention process, emanating from/or enlightened by knowledges of various orders. Hence, the concept of circumdisciplinarity (Lenoir, 2000) which stresses that the professional act requires that teachers resort to homologous knowledges (didactical, pedagogical disciplinary, etc.), as well as to knowledges of experience, action, alterity etc., but also to their social practices, that we cannot ignore.

The intervention is indeed a praxis which takes into consideration the intentions pursued and social expectations (of the State, of the profession, of self, of subjects, of parents, of the union, etc.), as well as constraints arising from the context (social, cultural, economical, etc.) to lay down, in function with the competencies acquired and the quality of judgement of the practitioner, a set of acts judged beneficial to lead the designated subject or subjects toward an expected change. It is this second aspect of the practico-interactive pole that is studied at the Crie, as its object is the intervention properly stated (to plan, orient, implement, sustain, evaluate), meaning to say that the intervention in this instance is understood as the accomplishment of the complex whole of its dimensions, as an implementation of the relational process between the professional and one or more of her/his subjects. The intervention is thus conceived here both as the engagement of the teacher in a process of intervention (an interaction), involving a dynamic and interactive training device, meaning to say a set of means and resources that the he/she conceives, elaborates, uses and mobilizes, and makes available and accessible to one or more learning subjects, and the realization (implementation) of the action of intervention. Hence, the central importance of the concept of mediation that will be discussed later.

However, the works of the Crie are not exclusively focused on this dimension of the practico-interactive pole, for this one cannot be analyzed and understood inasmuch as it is enlightened by the other dimensions, belonging to this pole (the definition and characterization of the professional act from a normative and formal point of view) and to the two other poles.

Instructional intervention at the heart of social entities

The techno-scientific pole that arises from instrumental reason and management, is developed on the hinge of two discursive levels : that of statements that synthetically qualify the universe of exercise of a profession (for example, the exercise of the teaching profession, meaning to say the teaching practice [intervention], the exercise of the medical profession meaning to say medical practice [intervention]) and that of the implementation, structurization, formalization and categorization of professional acts, (for example, the intervention as a diagnosis, as an evaluative process, as a consultation for a file). It is at this level that competencies required to exercise a profession are defined. It is at this level that the scientific and technical discourse on professional intervention is developed, as well as the professional activity’s protocol. As for the socio-political pole, it is characterized by the greater or lesser influence exercised by the State on the practico-interactive pole and on the techno-scientific pole. It refers to socio-ideological perspectives and to directives emanating from the government that influence the conception and definition of the professional act and the competencies that define it. In this regard, Nélisse (1997) mentions a certain number of transformations that currently affect the notion of intervention and that lead to its generalized utilization by the State and by the professionals themselves, of progressive disengagement by the State, the recognition that the person is at the centre of services, a weakening in prestige of certain professions, etc. To this, let us add the growing influence of the pragmatic paradigm, research for improvement in social status (professionism), etc.

Thus defined, intervention inscribes itself, following Redjeb (1997) who was inspired by Habermas (1987) in three spaces (or “worlds”): the world of systems referring to teleological and strategic acting, the lived-in world referring to acting regulated by norms, the subjective world referring to dramaturgical acting. The teacher, as intervener in a school, participates in these three worlds : as a product and an actor– more or less constrained, more or less autonomous – with the school system and its first legitimacy that comes from its qualification by the State; he/she inscribes his/her action – more or less constrained, more or less autonomous – in daily experience; he/she participates as a subject, bearer of his /her professional identity, personality and a set of choices, in a relation with others.

Instructional intervention : aims and stakes

By following Couturier (2001), firstly, intervention as a determining system deploys itself around the axis of systems of intervention and refers to a world of systems that are situated exterior to and before professional praxis. It attests to an effort of rationalization of professional action, but is also “subject to the praxis of scientific, political and technocratic imperatives [...]. To intervene is therefore to answer the following question: what is the most effective and rational way of acting with regard to social demand? Professional practice thus seems to be the operational arm of the State, of science, and technique” (p. 85). From this first angle of approach, the works of the Crie inscribe themselves in a perspective of analysis of discourse that is external and prior to the discourse and practice of teachers (advice, discourse, reports emanating from the Ministry of Education, government commissions, curriculum, etc.).

Secondly, intervention as experienced during practice deploys itself around the axis of praxeological invariants and refers to the everyday world, with its rules, its norms and its constraints, as experienced by the intervener. “The praxeological invariants (Soulet, 1997) are the practical conditions for all interactive work. [...]. We speak here of know-how, of lending a hand, of habitus, [of routines] and of all practical exigencies for work effectiveness in relational professions. To intervene is thus to answer the following question: how to meet the practical exigencies on the occasion of a specific request? Professional practice thus appears as a habitus, and a professional ethos, in the sense attributed to it by Bourdieu (1980)” (Ibid., p. 85). Under this second angle of approach, the works of the Crie inscribe themselves in a perspective of analysis of teacher practice and their discourse on their practice as social representations.

Thirdly, intervention as mobilization of the “professional self”, as an engagement of the professional subject, deploys itself around the axis of practice and refers to a subjective world to praxis as mobilization of self in complex and purposeful activities (Ladrière, 1990), sometimes as a transformational project. It is a question, therefore, of the world of intentions and of projects, and, above all, of the meaning that any professional action takes in the framework of a relation between a user and a professional. To intervene is therefore to answer the question : what meaning does the professional have for her/his own action with regard to the existential request of a client? Professional practice therefore appears as a praxis, understood to be an ethical and reflective action, veritable existential engagement with a view to live together better” (Ibid., p. 85-86). Under this third angle of approach, the works of the Crie inscribe themselves in a perspective of analysis of aims pursued by teachers and of the practice implemented.

The concept of instructional intervention, that inscribes itself explicitly in the paradigm of complexity, is moreover indissociable from that of mediation, as already mentioned, for it implies a practical and regulatory interactivity among learning subjects, the prescribed and normative objects of knowledge (by the curriculum) and a socially mandated intervener (the teacher). Indeed, he/she carries within his/her self the idea of an action, in the framework of a relational profession that comes to modify a process or a system. To intervene is to come between, to interpose one’s self, to slide between, to introduce one’s self, with a view to resolve a problem (identified, meaning to say built) in another. It must therefore be recognized that any intervention constitutes an intrusion on the part of the intervener in the life of the human being concerned. The concept of mediation illuminates the fundamental interaction that establishes itself in this temporal space conceived by the teacher between the extrinsic mediator who appeals to the pedagogic-didactic and organizational dimensions, cognitive mediation, intrinsic to subjects, that assures the relation that they establish with the objects of knowledge. It is within the teacher education device that these two mediating processes meet each other and interact (Lenoir, 1993, 1996).

And we must equally be aware that in counterpart, the individual or group targeted does not automatically accept, a priori, the change desired from the exterior; he/she may submit proof of refusal, of reject, resistance, defence mechanisms, abandonment, etc. However, an intention of doing what is good, of improvement, of modification for the better, of consolidation, of progress, of amendment of comforting, assistance, of control, or protection, of rectification, of prevention, etc., normally animates the action. It is therefore not simply action, but pro-action (Guay, 1991), action directed, finalized, situating itself at the interface between one or more subjects and the aims pursued (subjective – personal – or institutional).

At the heart of the recourse to the concepts of intervention and mediation is the idea that the human being is essentially a being of praxis, meaning to say a social being capable of acting freely, in an autonomous manner, responsible, critical and creative, with a view toward individual and collective realization in the society he/she belongs to, and to transform the world (natural, human and social) in which he/she lives. As a consequence, the concept of mediation should, on the one hand, be grasped as much as radical opposition to the illusion of immediate awareness, reified, by which the object produced is invested with the very attributes of its relation to production, and to conceptions centred on sensitive immediacy (inductivism) rather, on the other hand, to holistic conceptions that prevent any distinguo. But it also implies another conception of the relation of the subject to knowledge. The learning process is grasped as a relation of objectivation which establishes itself between a subject and an object (or between a set of subjects and a set of objects), thus creating by the mere fact of identification of a segment of the real, as an object to be considered, a rupture between the two, rupture that did not exist in the immediacy of the indistinct social relation to the real. And this rupture thus established can only be surmounted by the implementation of an objective system of regulation, meaning to say, mediation (Lenoir, 1993). In this way, a cognitive process of objectivation establishes itself, because of a mediating system between a subject and an object of knowledge that it produces and that reproduces it in return. The rupture thus established is surmounted by the recourse to an objective system of regulation, psycho-genetically constituted in the sense advanced by Vygotsky. He emphasized the first social dimension, inter-psychical, of the development of psychic processes and he specifies that “the central fact of our psychology is the fact of mediation” (Vygotsky, in Wertsch, 1985, p. 139), stressing in that way the mediating function of language, of cognitive processes of production and mediation by tools of human action (for example, textbooks, ICT). Stated differently, the integration of knowledges as a result of learning (what the Americans call integrated knowledge) also implies an integration of the learning processes (an integrative approach), meaning to say recourse to mediating cognitive processes, that include the required learning processes (communicational, of conceptualization, experimental, of problem-solving, esthetical, etc.), integrative processes indispensable for an integration of knowledges, for integrative knowledge (Lenoir & Sauvé, 1998a, 1998b). We must however distinguish between cognitive mediation, intrinsic to the learning process and that is constitutive of it, and pedagogic-didactical mediation (including the organizational dimension) that comes from the action of the teacher, that characterizes the instructional intervention and that deals specifically with cognitive mediation by means of an educational device. These two mediations are intimately linked, due to the fact that pedagogic-didactical mediation, thus defined, characterizes itself by the implementation by the teacher of conditions most propitious for activation by the pupil of cognitive mediation processes (Lenoir, 1996) and they meet one another through the intermediary of the educational device implemented by the teacher when faced with a problem situation with which the pupils are confronted.

From instructional intervention to the comprehensive reading of the teaching activity

By relying on the works of Not (1979, 1987), four principal profiles of teacher conduct – or models of instructional intervention – were extricated and analyzed in the midst of many researches. The choice of this typology, among many other propositions, stems from the fact that it is centred on the identification of relationships between pupil, objects of learning and the teacher, in relation to the aims that underlie these propositions. This classification of models of instructional intervention also has the advantage of taking into consideration the components that found interactions among learning subjects, knowledges, and of one or more teachers in a specific socio-educational and socio-cultural context, without privileging either one of these components. It retains as basic parameters the conceptions adopted as aims and the instructional processes and their modalities of operationalization, meaning to say how the various interactions among these components can be conceived and actualized (Larose & Lenoir, 1995; Lebrun, Lenoir, Larose & Désilets, 1999; Lenoir, 1991a, 1991b; Spallanzani, Biron, Larose, Lebrun, Lenoir, Masselter & Roy, 2001).

Defined in this way, research on instructional intervention allows to extricate, under various angles of approach, the trends that characterize teaching practices and their conceptions of these practices and to supply teaching and university environments indications on teacher education modalities to adopt in the framework of pre-service and continuing education of teachers. It thus opens the door, in the context of professional training in teaching, to the possibility of reflecting, starting with teaching actions, on the professional act, meaning to say on the elements normally defining and externally “a constructed social objectivity” (Nélisse, 1997, p. 24) that proceeds from the profession as a socio-political actor and that the practitioner appropriates and adapts in the very midst of her/his intervention.

Moreover, by advancing that the fundamental rationale of instructional intervention is to put in place the most propitious conditions (epistemological, social, psychological, didactical, pedagogical, organizational, etc.) to foster the development of learning processes, the Crie inscribes its activities of research and education in a socio-constructivist perspective. Indeed, it considers that the relationship to knowledge is most of all a social relationship, a relationship among subjects before becoming an individual relationship; it is a creator process for thinking and acting, making every subject an author of socially and spatiotemporally determined knowledge. In so doing, it postulates that human knowledge results from an approximation process of the real, from an activity of representation of the real constructed both socially and individually. The relationship between individual and collective experience of the world upon which knowledge is founded implies that a unique, exact and correct representation that would constitute constructed reality, does not exist. In addition, learning that is the construction of knowledge in the midst of social relationships, unfolds in a context socio-culturally, historically and spatially determined. It is therefore a mediatized process of objectivation of the real. Social interaction, which may take the form of a relation to self, to others, to the world (Charlot, 1997), is, from that moment, at the foundation of all relationships to knowledge, which, in essence is a social construct acting specifically as mediation in the relationship that human beings establish with themselves, with others, with the world. Interaction between a human being and his/her peers requires at the outset an unequal cognitive relationship, source of conflicts and socio-cognitive adjustments. The socio-cognitive conflict is therefore the source of knowledge. As a consequence, it is relative more than absolute and is determined spatiotemporally and socially rather than as universal and trans-historical, if not an-historical.