Dossier: At school, initiatives to reinvent the classroom

By destabilizing the framework of the class as we knew it until then, with a teacher teaching about thirty students listening to him wisely, each seated at their table, the Covid crisis prompted us to question the traditional ways of learning.

If the quest for new models had already animated a certain number of researchers and actors in education, as shown for example by the experiments around the “mutual class” and group work, distance education has made “one” of fundamental questions such as the place of the body in the classroom. While Katie Headrick Taylor (University of Washington) shows us how much movement helps in the acquisition of new knowledge, Sylvain Wagnon and Fabien Groeninger (University of Montpellier) wonder how to fight against sedentary school life.

One of the ways to make students more active and decompartmentalise knowledge would be the outdoor class? This could be put in place in more situations than we imagine, even in town, continues Sylvain Wagnon, at the same time confronting the students with one of the major challenges of the 21st century.^and century, the climate emergency.

Because in a changing world, it is also about training citizens to listen to others, capable of engaging in public debate. Sébastien Claeys (Sorbonne University) presents devices to make school a laboratory of ideas, encouraging the expression of young people, while Omar Zanna (Le Mans University) looks at the pedagogy of empathy and that Edwige Chirouter (UNESCO Chair/Nantes University) sheds light on the democratic ideal that underlies the philosophy workshops that are developed in primary school.

More than 80% of the French population is urban and, with it, the vast majority of schools. Under these conditions, how to develop outdoor classes?

Would we empathize first, and sometimes only, with those who are like us? How to help children to really understand and accept the difference? A few landmarks.

When we think of a child doing his homework, we imagine him quietly sitting at a desk. However, numerous research works emphasize the importance of movement for learning.

“The school is changing with digital”, says the National Education. But before equipping establishments with the latest equipment, shouldn’t we rethink the fixed model of the classroom?

Physical inactivity is one of the current threats to children’s health and the Ministry of Education has just launched an initiative to encourage sport. A turning point in school history?

Over the past thirty years, proposals for philosophy workshops for children have multiplied. What can they bring to 6-10 year olds?

Learning about debate and its practice open up perspectives for rethinking the transmission of knowledge. Examples.