Interdisciplinary Laboratory for Research in Didactics, Education, and Training

Work, training, professional skills

With regard to professions characterized by human interaction and/or certain professions involving contact with animals or plants (professions in education, health, sports, social services, agriculture, etc.), this area explores work both as a system of constraints, sometimes a source of suffering, and as one of the most important places for social existence and self-fulfillment.

Presentation

Work is a complex subject to grasp, and today it encompasses technical, organizational, human, and ethical aspects, as well as powerful identity issues. In order to analyze work, we focus on meaningful action, intentionality, and the interpretations of workers, who are considered to be intelligent, creative, social, and autonomous actors, as well as on the context in which this action takes place, which provides resources and also defines constraints. This research area studies the activities of professionals at work or in training, as well as the activities of training beneficiaries. These "professions aimed at others" require both technical skills and communication and interpersonal skills that are articulated in action but remain partly implicit, invisible, and opaque to observers and the actors themselves. This research area also studies the place and nature of knowledge in training, as well as how trainees develop their practices and/or construct knowledge and remobilize it in their practices. To address these complex issues, we combine anthropological, activity analysis, sociological, and psychological approaches. From a methodological point of view, the corpora analyzed in this work are complex, on the one hand because they combine different types of data (videos, interviews, participants' work, questionnaires) and, on the other hand, because they are often very large. This research area also seeks to renew the relationship between the goals of knowledge and the goals of transformation in the organization of work and training. From a sociological perspective, the aim is to understand the dynamics of actors (individuals and groups) in work situations and their interactions with the institutional, organizational, and human environment. From an ergonomic perspective, we seek to contribute to the design of professional training programs based on the analysis of real-life activities, in particular by constructing simulation situations to develop an approach to learning situations rather than just learning knowledge.

To achieve this, the focus area has three main objectives:

  • The first objective is to understand the work by analyzing it both in terms of what is required, i.e., what needs to be done, and in terms of the actual activity, i.e., what the actors actually do to meet the requirements. We start from the initial observation, based on numerous studies in ergonomics, that there is a permanent and inevitable gap between the prescribed task and the actual activity, revealing the full complexity of the work. Work activity can never be reduced to the application of instructions or pre-established rules, and always goes beyond the task.
  • The second objective is to understand learning and development at work by analyzing vocational training activities (those of trainees and trainers) in various settings closely linked to real-life work situations (field situations, practice analysis, simulation, video training, serious games, "innovative" situations, etc.). The aim is to try to establish how the skills and knowledge acquired in these vocational training situations are sources of inspiration, creativity, and new learning in real work situations. The conditions for professional development are studied in particular through the understanding of processes of mimetic immersion, reflexivity, and cooperation. Professional development is understood in terms of becoming, processes, and the relationship between the actor, the environment, and others through the analysis of transformations in work and/or training activities. The results of these studies contribute to a technological program aimed at designing, validating, modifying, and enriching existing or new training environments.
  • The third objective is to understand professional identities that are being constructed(beginners), have been constructed, or are evolving, by focusing on the intersecting discourses of actors about their work, the situations they have experienced, the contexts in which they operate, and their logic (actor-system). Talking about professionalism means considering both the acquisition/stabilization of the professional skills necessary to practice the profession and the unique, partly shared, "way of being in the profession" that mobilizes a strong identity dimension. In fact, this approach takes into account the dynamics of professional identities and the issues of recognition that contribute, individually and within groups, to the meaning given to action.

Summary prepared by Serge Leblanc and Thérèse Perez-Roux.

SOME CONTRIBUTORY PROJECTS

in progress

Item being updated.

Previous projects

  • Supporting home healthcare in the Occitanie region through training programs (ACSADOM, Philippe Gabriel and Elodie Roebroeck, 2022-2024).
  • Interprofessionality and partnerships: what new practices in initial training? (INTERPROPART, Eric Maleyrot and Thérèse Perez-Roux, 2019-2022). 
  • Analysis of learning activity in a simulated and real training environment: the case of driving a 1- or 4-horse carriage (OPTIMATTPRO, Serge Leblanc, 2016-2019).
  • Support for the professionalization of equestrian artists: Training for Equestrian Artists (FARTEQ, Thérèse Perez-Roux, 2017-2022).
  • Professional identity and relationship to the activity of judo teachers in France (IPRADEJU, Thérèse Perez-Roux, 2015-2019).
  • Reengineering of Physical Therapy Studies and the Impact of the 2015 Reform on Training Activities: Tensions, Transactions, and Developments (REMKAF, Thérèse Perez-Roux, 2016-2019).
  • Action research on the preservation and transmission of knowledge and skills related to traditional horse-drawn carriage driving (ATTRAD, Serge Lebanc and Guillaume Azéma, 2018–2019).

Pre-existing and contributory seminars

  • Transdisciplinarity and multi-level research in education and training. Theoretical and methodological issues
  • ViSA Days

REVIEW OF ACTIVITIES