Un dilemme pratique à trancher depuis des valeurs logées dans l’activité

Abstract

In our research on the construction of professionality derived from professional activity, we examine the development of values based on practical inquiries of special educators working in a home for adolescents whose family and social situations have broken down. In the context of a dual mission, based on creating integration workshops, we analyze in practical terms how the professionals retain certain of their values by confronting the dilemmas they face during the fulfillment of their mission. We examine the role and place of values as situated conducts that we conceive to be guides for stabilizing ways of constructing practical problems. An analysis of discussions at symposia provides the opportunity to observe the extent to which professionals’ assessments, which consist in assigning value to the relationships with other objects in the work place, are continuous and critical to the activity. They allow a continuous search for effects as a perspective from which to orientate their practical inquiries. This finding provides a means to problematize values in a manner which is not absolutist and which does not bring them into conflict with professional expertise or technicality. In our situated approach, which focuses on a developing set of skills, values and knowledge are combined in the inquiry process that builds professionality. This leads us to consider, in particular, the classic definition of representational knowledge. Finally, we draw conclusions regarding the definition of professionality.

Keywords

• values
• knowledge
• colloquium
• dilemma
• professionality of special educators