Les collectifs enseignants face aux directions d’établissements scolaires

Abstract

The study of collectives is a crucial issue in social philosophy, but it is rarely challenged against empirical findings. Conversely, social sciences may develop their analyses by mobilising philosophical frameworks, including those which claim to specify intuitions articulated by classical sociologists. Finally, education sciences might enrich their conceptual tools by specifying several mechanisms explaining the formation of collectives, as identified by sociologists or philosophers. The following article would like to contribute to this threefold objective. It relies on a fieldwork, in a secondary middle school and a high school, which exhibits several ways by which teachers’ collectives are constituted and maintained, notably in relation to their authorities (headmasters) which reveal to be little appreciated. Rather than investigating what collectives “really” are, the challenge is to mobilise sociological and philosophical models as tools that require to be challenged, while taking into account the specificities of teachers’ work as emphasized in the field of education sciences.

Keywords

• joint activity
• social action
• focused gatherings
• plural subject
• work