« Je ne peux pas vous en dire plus, c’est confidentiel ! ». Dilemmes professionnels entre respect du secret et transparence à l’égard des familles

Abstract

In the Geneva primary school, the treatment of educational difficulties is approached in connection with an intense partnership activity, carried out in the name of a global approach to the pupil and the effectiveness of the pooling of professional know-how. These collaborations imply that the professionals exchange the information they have about the pupil and his family. However, the requirement for transparency is competed by the notion of secrecy, which makes the implementation of the partnership problematic. In this text, we show that all the professions (teachers, speech therapists, school nurses, etc.) involved in these collaborations do not have the same apprehension of information sharing and do not respond to the same rules. We underline that local and situated circumstances, notably related to the question of interpersonal trust, are taken into account in the choice of disclosing elements obtained in other arenas. This article is empirically based on the material of a doctoral research which focused on the implementation of the partnership in 3 schools of the Geneva Priority Education Network (REP). It is based on 73 observations of meetings of professionals and 71 interviews with a representative variety of professionals working in this network.

Keywords

• partnership
• professional secrecy
• priority education
• educational difficulties