Since the 1960s, in Quebec, various reforms of teacher training programs have attempted to better contribute to the renewal of teaching practices and to minimize responses to traditional practices. In a doctoral study... [ view full abstract ]
Since the 1960s, in Quebec, various reforms of teacher training programs have attempted to better contribute to the renewal of teaching practices and to minimize responses to traditional practices. In a doctoral study (Dumoulin, 2009) of interactionist inspiration, we have highlighted how, in the process of professional learning, an "experiential frame" is integrated by the beginning teacher in the context of professional induction. This experiential frame, comparable to what Cohen-Scali (2000) calls a « schéma de soi » (self-schema), refers to a set of principles, values and interests that guides the teacher's reflections and behaviours in the classroom. The study reveals the strength of this frame, which acts as an "active rule" in daily classroom experience, suggesting that more attention needs to be paid to the phenomenon of « conformism to oneself » rather than to « conformism to traditional practices ».
More recently, we focused on professional learning during an internship, a teaching placement that takes place over a period of 72 consecutive days (Dumoulin, 2013-2017). During that internship, the student teacher already relies on an experiential frame to guide his pedagogical choices among the pupils, frame developed on the period of schooling. In the context of professional induction, the influence of this framework is in a relative autonomy, but in the context of the internship, the experiential frame of an associate teacher influences classroom dynamics.
The detailed analysis of the data offers a different view on the reflection student teachers have on their experience in class where the experiential framework is negotiated under two opposing perspectives: an identity perspective, with an image of credibility that must be preserved in the face of parents, and a pragmatic perspective, in relation to the principles of active learning among pupils. The results show that the supervisor is not a neutral interlocutor.
