Stability and transformation in configurations of activity: the case of school teaching in France and Mexico

Abstract

The present article examines the social and cultural dimension of activity, which we propose to call configuration, in reference to Elias’ works. These configurations are characterized by: (1) stability (they do not change a lot); (2) security (for the teacher who can rely on school habits); (3) invisibility (teachers are not aware of them); (4) incorporation (they are culturally inherited); (5) community share (they are common to most teachers around the world). We illustrate these characteristics in two different contexts, each one taken in primary school: in France, in a classroom where the teacher uses a work by contract (seatwork); and in Mexico in a context of reform of the curriculum. These configurations are, simultaneously, conditions of formal learning and objects, which must be informally learned; in spite of their permanency, we try to investigate the conditions of possibility of configuration transformation: lifelong learning is one of these conditions.