Maïté Eugène thesis defense

Maïté Eugène will submit her thesis on October 18, 2021, to obtain the title of Doctor in Education and Training Sciences from the University of Montpellier.

Thesis title: Les non-lecteurs à l'épreuve de l'enseignement de la littérature. A survey of non-readers in a 2de class.

The defense will take place from 1:30pm in Salle des actes n°011, at Université Paul Valéry Montpellier 3, site Saint-Charles.

Jury members:

Marie-France Bishop, Professor Emeritus, CY Cergy Paris Université, Rapporteur
M. Stéphane Bonnéry, PR, Université Paris 8 Vincennes Saint-Denis, Examiner
Jean-Louis Dufays, PR, UCLouvain, Rapporteur
François Le Goff, PR, Université Toulouse II Jean Jaurès, Examiner
Brigitte Louichon, PR, Université de Montpellier, Director
Patricia Richard-Principalli, MCF HDR, Université de Montpellier, Examiner

Thesis summary:

This thesis focuses on non-reading at school, and in particular on non-reading high-school students, i.e., high-school students who evade the school requirement to read the works they are working on in French classes. A phenomenon that has been little documented, even though sociology and didactics have taken an interest in non-readers, it raises questions about the boundaries between reading and non-reading, and about literature teaching practices. The aim of my work is to shed light on this phenomenon through fieldwork. Having followed a class of 2nd year students in a general and technological high school for one school year, I set out to describe and understand the practices of non-readers at school (NLS). Starting from the definition of non-reading as an activity, as constructed by P. Bayard in his book Comment parler des livres que l'on n'a pas lus? (2007), I collected students' declarations (questionnaires and interviews), their school productions (oral and written) and filmed literature teaching sessions. Classifying students as academic readers or non-academic readers poses major theoretical and methodological problems. Once the classification tool had been developed, my work revealed that academic non-reading was not a marginal phenomenon in this 2nd grade class. However, being NLS is not a status, given the wide range of (non-)school reading practices. Likewise, the NLS appear in their great variety. Rarely inactive or unproductive, NLSs deploy multiple and sometimes effective strategies to compensate for their non-reading, both before and during class sessions devoted to the work they haven't read. These strategies can be compared with the way literature is taught. The comprehension work carried out in class on the works appears to be decisive in understanding the practices of the NLS. Analysis of NLS productions (oral and written) shows that it is possible for an NLS to forge a special bond with the phantom book (Bayard, 2007), through the mediation of literature teaching. Some NLS even seem more involved in literature classes than some school readers. This observation does not apply to all NLS, however, and my work has resulted in a typology of NLS that distinguishes between converted NLS, perplexed NLS and refractory NLS. This dynamic typology hopes to open up new avenues for the teaching of literature, emphasizing that even NLS can be affected.