The teacher and interruptions: from improvisation to collective response

At a time when they're responsible for leading a group dynamic, ensuring pedagogical progress and supporting a variety of learning rhythms and profiles, teachers are subject to numerous interruptions.

How do you deal with interruptions? How do you regain concentration? And what to do when recipes and tricks seem derisory when something unexpected upsets the group?

Teachers have to deal with all the more or less serious interruptions that disrupt their teaching scenario. One pupil forgets his equipment, another injures himself swinging on a chair, a third is late, obviously disturbed by a private event. Jackhammers attack the sidewalk, a traffic accident blocks the street, sirens announce a more distant catastrophe. Students quarrel, the principal comes to warn that he will find and severely punish the perpetrators of graffiti, while the latter, a little dreamily, has bitten into his ink cartridge!

How to react? In a seminal article, Philippe Perrenoud shows us that teachers have to make a multitude of micro-decisions, at any given moment, to regulate these interruptions. Some are tried-and-tested techniques, while others barely pass through the cortex, and are virtually automatic. Others require us to cobble together a new solution by adapting old ones, or by innovating!

Recipes

Perrenoud shows us that teachers can rely on recipes and methods. This works quite often, and it can be useful to have a series of ready-to-use techniques for regaining attention. Many suggestions are available online.

For example, the blog "apprendre à éduquer" (learn to educate) offers a small booklet that students can keep in a pencil case. It contains ideas for regaining concentration. The teacher can choose the activities, present them and organize them. But each pupil can also choose the solution that suits him best, and gain in autonomy by regulating himself. If you want to go further, you can design the booklet with the students.

Teachers share many useful techniques for restoring concentration after a break. One example is Luccia's class, which uses worksheets for exercises. Still others are inspired by yoga exercises.

But sometimes there's no recipe. The interruption is unusual. The teacher is forced to cobble together a solution, to make a decision. The first step is to decide whether or not the interruption should be noted. Do we stop for the late student who arrives in tears, or wait until the end of class? Very often, solutions are worked out on a case-by-case basis, because they incorporate a huge number of parameters.

Philippe Perrenoud encourages exchanges between peers and the analysis of practice from the perspective of different humanities disciplines.

In an article published in the "cahiers pédagogiques" and devoted more directly to interruptions, Alain Jean gives us a few examples, avenues of analysis and solutions.

When recipes and DIY are no longer enough

Sometimes the unexpected can't be dealt with using methods that help restore concentration. The sudden exclusion of a pupil, the unplanned interruption of a teacher's activity, a sudden event in the school environment, the intervention of the forces of law and order in the school.... Laurent Karsenty and Adrien Quillaud's article on managing the unexpected in organizations stresses the importance of giving meaning to the event.

It's not so much precision, detail or accuracy that's important, but the meaning that will be shared and built collectively, and which will enable the activity to continue.

The article proposes a list of elements that prevent the emergence of a shared meaning by the group. This list, only partially illustrated below, shows the importance of collective action, stress management and the detection of unforeseen events that disrupt the organization.

Illustrations: Frédéric Duriez

Resources :

Philippe Perrenoud "La pratique pédagogique, entre l'improvisation réglée et le bricolage" University of Geneva - published 1983 - accessed January 21, 2018
https://www.unige.ch/fapse/SSE/teachers/perrenoud/php_main/php_1983/1983_01.html

Alain Jean: "Faced with the unexpected, training, improvisation or bricolage?" - Les cahiers pédagogiques - published February 2011 - accessed January 21, 2018
https://www.cahiers-pedagogiques.com/face-a-l-imprevu-formation/

P. Karsenty and A. Quillaud "Gestion de l'imprévu et construction collective du sens de la situation" published 2011, accessed January 21, 2018
http://www.dedale.net/dedale_en/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/SELF_2011_Imprevu_et_sensemaking_v2.11.pdf