Construction de la technologie pour l'ecole moyenne en France : Un aperçu historique

Résumé

L'aperçu historique est celui des contenus prescrits, des propositions pour l'enseignement et des successives esquisses de la technologie au collège (11–15 ans). À partir de l'identification des tâches, de leurs visées et de leurs références, il caractérise chacune des cohérences provisoirement fixées par un principe fondateur et identifiée par une méthode. Se succèdent ainsi les méthodes des travaux ménagers, des applications modernes, des éléments logiques, du projet technique, des éléments de la qualité et des scénarios. Bien que la technologie soit toujours définie comme un enseignement général contribuant à l'orientation scolaire, elle oscille entre sciences appliquées, activités manuelles et techniques, initiation scientifique et technique ou découverte des réalités sociotechniques. Par conséquent, cette histoire met en évidence les fondements didactiques de cette discipline scolaire et leurs hésitations. S'opposent en particulier, approche d'investigation et approche de réalisation, références domestiques et industrielles, savoirs élémentaires ou projets techniques. L'étude comparée de ces méthodes révèle également les principes de construction de cette discipline scolaire pour en faire un enseignement élémentaire, progressif et flexible. Cette histoire didactique propose ainsi des moyens pour rendre intelligible la structure des curriculums disciplinaires et pour intervenir sur leur construction.

Executive Summary

In this article, I will present tools for objectifying—from a classroom perspective—technological education as this has been approached in the form of disciplines in the French “école moyenne” (i.e., children ages 11 to 15) since 1960. These tools can be used to characterize disciplines that are only provisionally stabilized and to identify their historical development. The notion of method situates the coherence structuring student tasks, as well as the aims and performance levels associated with these tasks. It is useful for revealing the principles that form the basis on which contents are selected for building the stages of an education in a given discipline. A cross‐disciplinary examination of how these contents are further developed over the course of children's schooling serves to highlight the principles informing the construction of the structure of such contents, thereby assuring a step‐by‐step, flexible learning process.

Four distinct methods are identified (those of logical components, technical projects, components of quality, scenarios), which, in their alternation, give evidence of the instability affecting the framework of technological education—i.e., a kind of vacillation between knowledge and sociotechnical practices, between the integration and non‐integration of preparation for academic tracks, and between scientific investigations and technical accomplishments. Thus, a comparative analysis reveals two groups of methods: syllabus‐based, synthetic methods and comprehensive, analytic methods. The former promote a deductive approach based on the study or realization of an elementary object, gesture, or function, whose general thrust nevertheless presupposes a synthesizing extension. The latter are constructed on the basis of an inductive approach, requiring comparative analysis. The comprehensive method differs from the syllabus‐based one in that it supposes that wholes represent more than the sum of their parts. Understanding a technique and involving oneself thoroughly in it as a way of thinking out one's actions or path (what, in other words, corresponds to the aims of a general academic education) militates in favour of comprehensive methods that approach sociotechnical realities in terms of the latters’ complexity.

The opposition between these two types of method depends on one's approach to making education both elementary and progressive. Thus, exercises built up from atomized contents regularly conflict with projects designed as technical experiences adapted to the children's level. Four major principles found the construction of a progressive curriculum in a given discipline, in keeping with the two approaches to the notional building blocks of the technical domain mentioned earlier: repetition of exercises; performance of tasks, initially simple, then composite; introduction to a generic technique that is then extended; and a variety of experiences in several areas of technical practice—experiences that are then compared with one another. These principles for the identification of base constituents, on the one hand, and progressiveness, on the other, can be combined to provide contrasting representations of this discipline, which remains defined throughout as a discipline of reason and action. .

The comparison of various versions of technological education in schools thus makes it possible to objectify the structure of a given discipline‐related curriculum, considered as an avenue taken by children over the course of their schooling to discover technology in its material and social dimensions. This process serves to reveal both continuities and breaks.

Historical investigation also reveals that the structure of technological education developed during the four years of high school has proved to be genuinely flexible only quite recently, when this curriculum became obligatory for all students, taking into account their heterogeneity. Such flexibility ensures the variability of itineraries according to the inclinations of students and teachers, on the one hand, and to the degree to which contexts lend themselves to this variability, on the other. Flexibility requires both a strong normative framework that guarantees notional and instrumental learning, as well as opportunities for varying the activities open for selection—in particular: the technical nature of tasks, performance levels, products realized, etc.

Finally, I suggest that these means of rendering technological education intelligible constitute proposals for the retrospective study of other educational contents and that they also lend themselves to the creation or reorganization of educational curricula.

Les disciplines scolaires sont des objets politiques, sociaux, économiques, institutionnels, etc. selon les points de vue choisis pour leur étude. Discours de ministres, débats parlementaires, décisions budgétaires, rapports conjoncturels, etc., en sont alors les manifestations perceptibles et les sources de leurs différentes histoires potentielles. Celles‐ci permettent d'interpréter leur existence et leur légitimité, leurs missions et leurs statuts, leur évolution et leurs changements.

L'aperçu historique présenté est une autre histoire, celui des contenus prescrits, des propositions pour l'enseignement et des esquisses de construction d'une discipline scolaire. Il s'agit d'une histoire scolaire, et plus précisément, didactique d'une discipline.1 C'est donc une histoire de cet enseignement, de l'optique intrinsèque de ses contenus et de leur organisation.

Dans une première partie, sont précisés la problématique de cette recherche et les outils méthodologiques de l'enquête historique. La deuxième partie est consacrée aux évolutions de l'éducation technologique et à leurs principes fondateurs. Les principes constructifs sont ensuite analysés dans une troisième partie. Enfin, sont examinées les caractéristiques de la technologie et plus largement celles des disciplines scolaires.