An inclusive approach: rethinking the ideal of justice in education in the context of globalisation
Head: Jean-Louis Derouet

Education policies are in tension as they are expected to pursue an inclusive agenda: working out policies both for all and the best students. The definitions of the two poles – democratisating, i.e. extending access to schools to working-class students and training the elites – are rapidly changing. These issues should be studied together as the two sides of the same coin, namely a radical challenge to the great confinement advocated by the Enlightenment to face the demands of globalisation.
The modern project lies on a great confinement which didn’t require schools to be productive and assumed that progress was based on the lengthening of the schooling period. It is now clearly challenged by the interests of capitalism but also by educational agents. Capitalism offers to put an end to the crisis started in 1968 in the same way as it managed to recover from the 1973 crisis, namely through a lifelong project-oriented training approach with individual flexibility, geographical mobility and international networking. This offer meets society’s demand. Stakeholders no longer trust the educational institution and wish to make their own choices in a training market offering a wide range of opportunities. While in the 1950s and 1960s middle-class students managed to adapt to the school form designed for the bourgeoisie, working-class students are unsuccessful in this system. Therefore a new democratisation model is to be worked out. One might wonder if an organisation with closer links between the training and professional worlds would not suit them better.

It is in this context that the question of justice should be reconsidered. Whether research works bear on the mass or the elite, two constraints will be under consideration:
-    In the modern legacy, separate what partakes of a permanent demand for justice from what remains of an outdated model.
-    In the new proposals (school-work link, structuring into networks, new contents, portfolio of competences), separate what amounts to an adaptation to the new spirit of capitalism from the renewal of the ideal of justice.

This topic was at the heart of the symposium “Rethinking justice in education and training” held in Lyon on 15, 16 and 17 May 2006. Pending the publication of the annals, you may access the presentation of the symposium and the summary of contributions at XXX.
At empirical level, this issue underpins numerous studies and research works on how the networking of schools and territories operates. What holds these constructs together (the reference to equality, effectiveness)? What skills are necessary to education managers to understand these operations? To what extent does globalisation affect the choice of these references? Does it lead to converging policies between the different countries?



Universalism and plurality of cultures
Head: Jacqueline Gautherin

The prescriptive framework for French state schools was based on the ideal of individual freedom, equal opportunities and universality at the turn of the 20th century. This compromise is now challenged on two sides: the refining of the republican model intended to fight against the opening of schools to society through the promotion of a legal and formal conception of identities, rights and equality between students in the name of universalism; a community-based liberal perspective designed to struggle against the closing of schools to plural cultures and the existing inequality between students through the recognition of the diversity of cultures and identities.
All the research projects in this field assume that these prescriptive frameworks are not mere ideological constructs. They are prescriptive frameworks that researchers resort to and sometimes transform in work situations. They are also interpretation, justification and denunciation schemes that stakeholders put forward during debates or controversial discussions. 



Knowledge, culture, and childhood policies in a changing school form. Curricular changes, aesthetic dimension and mass education
Head: Alain Kerlan

The challenge to the school model and ideal now affects the definition of educational contents and its related values. The school system is requested to take into account a number of practices, social knowledge, and cultural values such as citizenship, the use of online resources, the recognition of differences, individual freedom, a policy for the disabled, health care, etc. which were beyond its scope and legitimacy. This request questions the subject-based organisation and leads to new educational demands whose mere accumulation is actually unsustainable. Going back to basics proves necessary: renewing philosophical demand in education is but one aspect. Each historical period develops a project of socialisation for the young generation which underpins all the education policies and especially knowledge, culture, and childhood policies. The new socialisation move at the origin of these requests should be enlightened and a project of curricular reform be put forward. However the latter calls for a clear identification and explanation of the shifts affecting the school form. The UMR works in collaboration with the experts of the disciplines concerned. It focuses its attention on a few points that both seem crucial and are in its field of competences. In this perspective, the focus on individuals, the growing interest for the body, sensitivity, art, the imaginary and more largely for the aesthetic field need being taken into consideration. Could the aesthetic dimension bring unity to the learning contents and ultimately unify socialisation procedures and knowledge, childhood policies? The possibility of an aesthetic regime in education is worth developing through different works on the teaching of arts at school and the dissemination of aesthetic values in the educational field. Similarly, the development of architectural culture is regarded as one element of the new definition of citizenship in so far as it provides the means to understand urban development. The school form of knowledge transmission between generations has never been the only one but has sometimes been presented as the most legitimate and democratic. Criticism expressed in the 1960s and 1970s showed how much this ideal was mystifying. Current criticism raises the problem differently: the purpose is to meet the concrete learning demands and equally to consider the emergence of an information and individual-based society. At the end of this process, it seems clear that the school form is but one mode of circulation of knowledge among others. Any social activity includes a training dimension. Online interactions, networking and the different uses of the Internet are cases in point. A new approach to the sociology of the curriculum should account for this mass education. Interrogating childhood and teenage policies, which are closely linked with knowledge and culture policies, is also necessary.