Thesis defense Emmanuel Vergnol

Emmanuel Vergnol will defend his thesis on September 10, 2021 at 2:00 pm at the Faculty of Education (2 Place Marcel Godechot, 34000 Montpellier) in room A109(NB: University health crisis rules require the presentation of a health pass to attend the defense and the potluck).

Thesis title: Speech therapy for learning difficulties in mathematics

The jury is composed of
Mme Floriane WOZNIAK, thesis director
Mme Caroline LADAGE, rapporteur
Mme Claire MARGOLINAS, rapporteur
M. Hamid CHAACHOUA, jury president
M Thomas HAUSBERGER, examiner
Mme Anne-Marie RINALDI, examiner.

Thesis summary:

The aim of this thesis, based on the anthropological theory of didactics, is to study the praxeologies of speech therapists in France when dealing with subjects with recurrent learning difficulties in mathematics. The first part presents the context of French society, which leads to the medicalization of school failure (Morel, 2014). It discusses the definitions of academic difficulty in mathematics and dyscalculia, and presents the theoretical and methodological frameworks of the research. The second part looks at the history of the profession and how its subjection to the world of medicine came about. The theoretical underpinnings of the profession's approach to the management of recurrent learning difficulties in mathematics are uncovered by cross-referencing analyses of various data: initial and continuing training plans; questionnaires and interviews with students, trainers and professionals; a corpus of student dissertations from speech therapy schools. The last two parts are based on naturalistic observation of speech therapy check-ups and follow-up sessions on multiplication. The praxeological analysis of mathematical organization in the observed sessions, contrasted with that of textbooks, enables us to identify differences and similarities between speech therapy and school praxeologies. The mapping of task types on the basis of the ostensives worked on represents and reveals the didactic stakes of speech therapy follow-up and the epistemic role of the material. Finally, the analysis of didactic organization within the sessions leads to the definition of the speech therapy relationship as a model of the situation. This relationship between the speech therapist and the student-patient, whose terms are most often implicitly negotiated, is asymmetrical. It is based, on the one hand, on adherence to and trust in the therapist and, on the other, on a didactic contract established in follow-up sessions based on entirely controlled environments that reduce the student-patient to the performance of repetitive tasks in which manipulation is omnipresent.

Key words: speech therapist, praxeology, mathematics, academic difficulty, multiplication,
anthropological theory of didactics.