- Bertron, C., Farges, G., & Velu, A.-É. (2023). “Spice” and “Pots and Pans”: The Careers of High School Teachers Through the Lens of Professional Commitment. Revue française de pédagogie, (221), 47‑70. Retrieved from https://www.cairn.info/revue-francaise-de-pedagogie-2023-4-page-47.htm
Teachers as a professional group have been the subject of sustained scientific, political, and media attention in French society. Among the discourses surrounding them, the idea of a “crisis of vocations” has been prevalent for at least twenty years, justifying a series of reforms that paradoxically may be more the cause than the remedy to the public issue thus constructed. This special issue therefore focuses on the concept of teacher commitment or disengagement, distinguishing the various dimensions at play—professional, militant, as well as familial and political—while articulating both individual and collective perspectives.
From a socio-historical perspective, this dossier analyzes the evolution of teachers’ relationships with their profession in light of the social and institutional transformations they face. The contributions gathered here address, respectively, the issue of recognition and its proceduralization by the administration, pedagogical experiments and their managerial appropriation through a case study, the uneven and confusing recognition of professional commitments by the Ministry of Education, and the challenges caused by contradictory injunctions from the Ministry at the time of entering the profession.