What is growing on the degraded land of good educational ideas?

Jacqies Nimier, who has had a long career as a mathematics teacher first, then as an assistant director of IUFMs, and finally as a professor of clinical psychology, has for several years maintained the site Pédagopsy, which currently offers us more than 1,000 pages devoted to the "human factors in adult teaching and training."

Jacques Nimier wrote an article over the summer entitled "The decay of good ideas in pedagogy," in which he details the process that inexorably transforms many exciting pedagogical innovations into empty routines when they reach the theater of operations, i.e., classrooms, and must be implemented by teachers.

The pedagogical project, between appropriation and distancing

We summarize here the process of degradation as described by J. Nimier:

• Appearance of the idea generally at the grassroots, in the practices of one or more innovative teachers, in France or elsewhere. Dissemination, formalization;
  
  
• Precision of concepts, improvement of the operability of the idea by linking it to pedagogical objectives, publication of decrees and circulars describing the conditions of application of the good idea which is now elevated to the rank of pedagogical practice;
  
  
• Approval of the new practice by teachers, who ask for more and more details and equip it;
  
  
• Modeling of the tools by the authorities, who distribute standardized versions.

And J. Nimier suggests that the enthusiastic idea of the beginning, having reached this final stage, is no more than empty rhetoric and a form that teachers fill out with varying degrees of good will. The dynamic project of change, improvement, transformation...has turned into a heavy ball and chain that teachers drag with them from classroom to classroom.

One is struck, in the process described, by the alternating phases of appropriation (1 - 3) / distancing (2 - 4) of the initial concept and the modalities of application by the teachers in the field. But should we be surprised? The history of this object with a thousand faces, the project, offers us multiple examples of this back and forth. If teachers complain about the additional paperwork involved in any ambition for systematic practice in their professional field, they are not alone: professionals in social action, for example, in development aid, and more generally in any type of complex intervention centered on individuals all complain about the administrative paperwork that gives them the feeling of working under permanent control (which is indeed very often that of the principal, whether or not it is doubled by the public funder) and of sacrificing the core of their profession to administrative obligations.

Do not confuse the activity itself with its standardized trace

Jacques Nimier reminds us of the fact that teaching is not filling out paperwork. Implementing competency assessment is not about checking off crosses in the grid attached to an ideal grade level much more than to an individual. And everyone has good little anecdotes to tell at this level, when the binary logic of the statistical tool meets the rough and tumble and subtlety of situational assessment...

Fortunately, J. Nimier is not content to criticize "the administrative-logic-that-discourages-good-will." On the one hand, he admits the usefulness of standardized tools that provide an overview of large and complex systems. On the other hand, he indicates some courses of action for teachers who are disoriented by the gulf between imposed administrative practices and their pedagogical practices. The analysis of practice, collective reflection, and the use of the tool itself as a support for dialogue with the student as well as with his or her parents, are all part of it. All of this makes it possible, fundamentally, to reconcile the subjectivity of the individual teacher with the demand for objectivity on the part of the educational system and those who manage it. Nimier shares with us here a reflection that deserves a moment's attention: one of the functions of the institution is to reinforce the defenses of the individual. To avoid as much as possible the destabilizing face-to-face encounter, which forces one to say that one does not know, that one does not understand everything, that the grade does not mean much, that the path counts more than the result even if it is more difficult to keep a trace that shows the path accomplished...

The abolition of grading or the recycling of a somewhat old idea that still has much to give

Rating, precisely, and performance measurement, have been put back at the center of public debate in France in recent months. The Afev, an association of students practicing tutoring, has launched a petition for the abolition of grades in elementary school. The idea is not absolutely new (it had already been seen in the French landscape around May 1968), but thus revised, recycled, repackaged, it still makes a nice effect. Specialists of all stripes are seizing on the subject, both in specialized organs and in the general public press. Of course, the idea itself has degraded at a rapid pace, as we can see on this site that wants to gather "all those who do not want to replace grades with smileys."

What will happen to the proposal? No one knows. If the idea followed the cycle of decay described by J. Nimier, we would first see:

• A few bold teachers who would practice a new mode of evaluation in primary school, publicize their work, garner praise from their hierarchy.
  
  
• The institution would then eventually adopt the new device, specify it, instrument it.
  
  
• And it would go back into the classrooms...
  
  
• Where it would become one more constraint for teachers discouraged from filling out yet more charts.
  
  

Unless they decide to take this beautiful idea, make it their own, and have the leeway to transform it, recycle it once again, reintroducing it into the infinite cycle of educational material that potentially knows no disappearance, only transformations. For let us not forget that all matter must degrade in order to be reborn, to melt into a soil that allows new plants to grow.

The degradation of good ideas in pedagogy. Jacques Nimier, Pedagopsy website (undated).

Photos: Christing-O-, Flickr, CC license.