Publish at April 22 2019 Updated October 30 2025
Dealing with innovation in teaching is a subject that required a great deal of conceptualization and theoretical framing in this thesis. Teaching and tradition are brought together, as both notions concern the transmission of knowledge and culture between individuals and generations.
The author examines the identity of innovators and their relationship to innovation. For contextualization, particular attention is paid to understanding the organizational framework within which training takes place. The three case studies proposed concern: innovation training in engineering schools; Ecole 42, a training school for programmers; and the Bachelor Jeunes Entrepreneurs program at EM Strasbourg.
Two key concepts run through the thesis: training and innovation. Training is described in terms of two of its components: the pedagogical paradigm, at the level of its conception, and the teaching system, at the level of its practical realization. Innovation is described as cyclical (in reference to Schumpeter), which is a change necessary for the system to continue in the same paradigm; or as radical, which implies a mutation, the disappearance of an old system and the birth of a new one.
Tradition oscillates between two forces: it is conservative and adaptive/creative. "Tradition is thus akin to a cultural transmission legitimized by the past, with a stake in identity. It ensures continuity, but is not opposed to change or innovation.
In the engineering school we studied, for example, tradition is a vehicle for the construction of identity. The values, codes, standards and representations transmitted by the school are sometimes at odds with the identity-building process. At the same time, the injunction to innovate attracts new candidates and reinforces the prestige of the school, raising questions about the link between the mechanisms of professional identity construction and certain types of innovation. We therefore need to consider this construction as a pedagogical process in its own right, integrating
Training in innovation, particularly radical innovation, would be based on the construction of a singular and specific identity for each innovator.
However, the transmission/acquisition paradigm that dominates most engineering schools limits their effectiveness and the transition to training radical innovators. The thesis shows the gaps in the identity-building processes of the identity-building programs studied.
The question arises as to how to articulate a hierarchical culture of acquisition with an egalitarian and emancipating environment? How can we transform a culture centered on the transmission of knowledge into a culture centered on action and dialogue between learners and teachers? Two training courses that have opted for a break with the past show what can be achieved.
École 42 was founded in 2013. Its self-study structure limits mediation between knowledge. This absence does not compromise the effectiveness of learning, given the teaching content, coding, which the machine accepts or rejects without ambiguity, but effects on the posture of staff members are observable. This posture is ambiguous.
Staff, especially students, are divided on this issue, and for some, it produces the effect of being a product, or of living by the rules without really accepting them, with a growing sense of tension about whether or not they can find a job. A managerial utopia of flat hierarchies inspired by the logic of gift versus gift, expressed in a total system of give-receive-give back, is set against the need for support and emotional construction, which differs from one student to the next, and from one to the next.tudent to another, and for whom school and acceptance into the "family" that school constitutes, makes the relationship to rules and expectations central to inclusion, socialization and acceptance.
At the same time, this sense of belonging is accompanied by a culture of winning whenever there is competition. To date, this competition seems bearable, as demand for developers is high and the salaries on offer are high. If conditions change, the question of ethics will become much more acute, and what appears to be emulation will take on a whole new weight.
Finally, the thesis shows a system that claims to be an "open learning environment", although semantic referents linked to belonging to a family or a home predominate. Spaces for sleeping, washing, entertaining, playing and cultivating are also present. The space of 42 is a universe in itself, where a student can live almost self-sufficiently, in a culture very much at odds with the rest of society's codes, even with chosen, staggered working hours (students generally start their day at around 2 or 3 pm), which cut them off from the rest of the city.
A number of signals point to the need to keep to oneself and close in on one's own social codes. École 42 is a radical experiment. The absence of economic constraints and social norms allows the staff, and above all the founders, to carry out their pedagogical project with all the strength and coherence of its model, based on a culture of its own that is gradually becoming a tradition. Questions about the pedagogical model arise:
According to the idea that innovation lies in updating tradition in order to propose a vision of the future that makes sense, then any school claiming to be innovative should constantly transform and adapt it, or risk sinking into traditionalism by remaining centered on a fixed structure and model.
The study of the Bachelor young entrepreneurs raises the question of whether school is an emancipating environment. The conditions and characteristics of a training program aimed at putting people into sustainable action beyond a formative space, such as becoming an entrepreneur, go beyond the acquisition of the gestures of a certifiable trade. Entrepreneurial situations are too varied for that. Becoming one's own boss is desirable, but the real possibility of doing so is tested in training through collective experimentation and solidarity in a variety of increasingly complex projects, enabling potentialities to be converted into achievements and thus building an entrepreneurial identity.
Our observation work shows that increased empowerment is based on learning by doing, made possible by an environment that gives full scope to individual and collective voice in action. However, the anchoring of this power to act is contingent on the psychological transformation of students, who build a professional identity as team entrepreneurs, enabling them to reproduce elsewhere the relational conditions that ensured their learning.
In the Bachelor's program, the process of transforming students is based on the emancipatory intention of the system, which aims to facilitate their transition from the posture of learner to subjects capable of succeeding and bouncing back in the event of failure. The teaching system is designed as a learning collective. This concept is the key to a genuine pedagogical paradigm shift. The heart of learning is the construction of identity resources and self-awareness, over and above the achievement of an acquisition. The author echoes Stiegler (2012), who states;
"We are thus moving towards the question of emancipation: whoever acquires knowledge, acquires it not to conform to it but to transform it. The model for transmitting knowledge is not conformation - that's what we call skills - but transformation, and that's what we call knowledge. Knowledge is the power I have. The power and knowledge I have to transform myself and others. And to transform knowledge itself."
The author proposes several concluding points:
This environment is supported by a range of support roles, including :
The ambition is that the analysis of these results will lead to further experimentation and the construction of knowledge on the implementation, management and sustainability of emancipating environments.
Illustration: Vadim ZH on Reshot
Source
Download the thesis: Les formations à l'innovation entre tradition et rupture. Doctoral thesis at Université Paris-Saclay- Tiphaine Liu
https://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-01878885/document
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