Contenu du sommaire : Le retour de l'éducation morale

This report is an extension of the reflection carried out in issues 40 and 41 concerning the evolution of the references which inspire education policies: an integration which respects differences, the goals of sustainable development. These new approaches of the common good carry new definitions of the citizen and moral education. Furthermore, economic globalisation has been accompanied by a cognitive decluttering of the world based on international major surveys and indicators. This context calls for a renewal of critical thought which is capable of questioning the representation of societies which are being constructed, to come back to these foundations and to open up new possibilities. A series of international studies also insist on the renewal of methods. Learning must be anchored in the experience: the ways of participating in the life of the classroom and in schools are more important than top-down instructions, which is bestowing a new dimension to curriculum sociology.

The effectiveness of the Homo sustainabilis production process
By adopting the goals of sustainable development (GSD) in 2015, countries agreed on the need to educate the young to become citizens of an ecologically responsible world. This article focuses first of all on the long history of GSD and highlights how their adoption has encouraged the activation of a “sustainability process” which makes the production of Homo Sustainabilis a condition of survival for the human species. It then discusses the space given in education to the production of this Homo sustainabilis with its aim of avoiding wastage and participating in a societal project in which each person finds his or her place by serving collective projects. It ends by putting GSD into perspective with the decision to integrate in PISA, from 2018 onwards, the assessment of a “global competency” which aims to test the sensitivity of students regarding sustainable development.

Educating civil values: how to compare? A methodological reflection on the basis of a Franco-German caseOn the basis of a field of research based on a Franco-German comparison, this article reflects methodologically on the conditions of possibilities when comparing the field of civic and moral education. A large part of the comparison work refers to national models of citizenship, education or even pedagogy. Faced with concrete evolutions in civil education, they reveal the heuristic limits in their capacity to understand and compare concrete phenomena. Analysing possibilities opened up by approaches in terms of civic and moral convention, of which the starting point is no longer exposing differences, but the common element of situations and practices in German and French schools therefore makes it possible to propose comparatist research strategies based on the conventionalist approach.

Between formal curriculum and hidden curriculum. What morality do schools really teach?
Teaching morality, civic-mindedness or citizenship at school is in part governed by formal curriculum and the debating of ideas trying to orientate it. But what morality do schools really teach, in their everyday practices and within the layers of hidden curriculum? A summary of research carried out over twenty years in compulsory education in French-speaking Switzerland demonstrates that the dominant local ethos is first of all the responsibility of students and the cohesion of classes in a framework of adapted work. Furthermore, in each academic institution, trust and complementarity are the enhanced components of a tranquil dialogue. Knowing how to live together is one of the goals of educational programs, but also the immediate virtue of a thusly practiced convivialism. Is this configuration specific to Switzerland or does it illustrate a democratic tension between two perspectives: decreeing the common good above all else or searching for it collectively by contradiction?

Return to education. Educational academic exercises for the 21st century. Pleading for a new field of researchOn the basis of a diagnostic which considers the crisis of schools as an educational crisis and approaching it via academic exercises, the article proposes three key streams of research. The first problematization studies the historical and structural reasons which have led to the current disconnection between academic exercises and educational considerations. The second, on the contrary, attempts to characterise current attempts to maintain these links, as much within schools as in their periphery. Finally, the third reflects on the way in which public education systems can rethink the education issue in a period marked by the absence of any global standardised agreement. By articulating these three issues, the article draws on the need for a vast collective research program at the crossroads between educational stakes and academic exercises.

Survey on teaching democratic citizenship in French-speaking Belgium: a new political imagination and fragmented local translationsOn the basis of the results of a research-action carried out in 2016-17 in French-speaking Belgium, this article examines the way in which different academic institutions translate (in other words interpret and realise) the contemporary political injunction of making schools a space for teaching citizenship. The research formulates the hypothesis of the decline of the modern concept of teaching citizenship in favour of a model which is both more pragmatic and more anchored in the experience, and which conceives the common good as a horizon to be built from diversities. The article then states three translations of the mission, echoing the local specificities and organisational identities of schools. In a normative indeterminacy and an academic fragmentation, schools today truly operate as a mediator between the general political injunction and local challenges. The observed fragmentation of socialisation projects is at the antipode of a project aiming to rebuild a common political community.

How do codes of conduct impact secondary school students' relation to the law?
The academic experiences of students contribute to forming their conception of the social world, public institutions, the relations to be maintained in society and the role that they can play in it. Beyond formal curriculum, these experiences are also delineated by standards and conventions of which certain are elucidated in codes of conduct aiming to regulate and predict the behaviours and intersubjective relations of student with the diverse players in schools. This article aims to present the analysis of a sample of codes of conduct, in force in Quebecer secondary schools, regarding the development of student's relation to the law. Ewick and Silbey's typology of the conscience of law (1998), as well as Günther's perspective (1998) on legal discourses were used as an analysis grid for these codes of conduct and led to the observation of the preponderance, in these texts, of a submission to law.

The return of moral education in Korea, an example of educationalization?
This study analyses the process of the return of moral education in South Korea via the grammar of pedagogical discourse (Bernstein). In South Korea, there are two points of view regarding the issue of teaching citizenship, if one of them positions itself in favour of moral education, the other focuses on citizen participation. Nevertheless in 2014, following the sinking of a liner ship, the Sewol, and the fact that politicians shifted the responsibility of the moral fault onto the crew, a law to educate character was announced, therefore encouraging moral education. In the absence of a precise definition of teaching character in this law, each school organises the curricula in accordance with the empirical meaning given to this notion. Certain activities based on this education therefore intervene in the private domain, using a pedagogy based on authority and one attached to traditional values.

Taking into account non-academic skills in the redefinition of the human capital developed by students. Applying this to students in French primary schoolsTaking into account non-academic skills in schools is a recent phenomenon. The authors examine a student's capital (cultural, social, emotional) as indicators which could explain his or her human capital, itself measured by academic skills. The article is based on data collected for a thesis analysing one thousand students in cycle 3 (the last years of primary school in France) in order to demonstrate how each non-academic skill is an indicator of a type of capital developed by students. This approach presents an original measurement of the concept of capital and contributes to enlightening our understanding of the inequalities in attainment of students in primary school, by taking into account new, explicative factors or variables focusing on non-academic skills. The growth of these non-academic skills has become an additional stake in the fight against inequalities in attainments, as in terms of the capital developed by students, they have an impact on their educational, and subsequently their professional background.

Fast Track, a new integration program for newly arrived immigrants in Sweden
In Sweden, more than 160,000 refugees, of which 70,000 were children, crossed the border between September 2015 and July 2016. This influx required initiatives from the public sector and voluntary commitments. This article attempts to understand the results of immigrant graduates—in theory easier to integrate—who were part of the Fast Track program. An initiative by the Swedish Public Employment Agency, it welcomed 3,105 students between 2015 and 2016. Its aim was to improve the integration into the job market of higher-education graduates and to offer them a fast track into the employment market. The project was managed by a private company in partnership with the Uppsala University, it mixed two systems, higher education and the employment market, without benefiting from either the legitimacy or the recognition of the other. There was a large risk that this would contribute to building an immigrant identity for these people in which they were neither a student nor a job seeker. Will the beneficiaries of Fast Track integrate more easily and more quickly into the job market? Only a several-year long longitudinal monitoring can reply to this question, but the results of the study indicate that for these highly-qualified immigrants, lacking the necessary linguistic and social capital to succeed in Sweden, it would be preferable to undertake a process which reinforces their social skills.

The socialisation of engineering students and the relation to ethics
The French engineering grandes écoles have displayed their intention to educate citizens and highlight their social and environmental responsibilities. This ethnographic study of an academic program, built around a student's first experiences working in a corporate environment, nevertheless demonstrate that ethical questions are censured or perceived to be non-professional when they are formulated with regard to the situations experienced by students during their internships. People have a strategic attitude when entering the job environment and this tends to eclipse any moral issues they might encounter during their work. Thus, along with explicitly moralistic teachings, work on socializing students is carried out unwittingly. It is the product of a division of work between different teachers, different spaces, at different moments. This diffuse, invisible, routine pedagogical process contributes to training engineers to put, as often as is necessary, morality on the back burner in the exercise of their functions.