Teaching and learning lively resources – ReVEA

This project will focus on the design, selection and usage of resources in secondary education. Four subject matters will be considered, because of their contrasted characteristics (specific culture, use of authentic documents or documents developed by teachers, of general or specific software, etc.): mathematics, sciences, English, engineering.
The work is divided into five connected tasks:
Task 1: The reconceptualization of the concept of educational resource
Task 2: Photographs of the selection and use of resources, mapping of general offer
Task 3: Analysis of resource systems and their evolution over time, for individual teachers and class teachers in institutions
Task 4: Monitoring group of teachers and resource developers, lifecycle of resources
Task 5: Identification of factors that influence selection and processing of resources
Quantitative and qualitative methods for the collection and analysis of data will be associated: collection of quantitative data on the resources used, statistical processing; forum analysis; monitoring of individual teachers and groups by reflexive investigation, including interviews and logbook.

This project will allow us to characterize the evolutions of resource usage and to model resource life cycle in education.
The conditions under which a national observatory on educational resources could be launched will be specified.

It will lead to recommendations, in particular regarding teacher education and propositions of standards relative to the appropriation of educational resources by teachers.
This project is expected to initiate further research on the management of educational resources in the educational system, including exploring segments not covered by the project: primary school; higher education.

The project and will produce scientific communications and papers in international conferences, in leading journals, and as a book. The inclusion of four specific disciplines; developments related to informatics; to teacher groups and communities will lead to publications in science education, but also in journals of these fields.
The results of the project will fuel several international ongoing project, and lead to the development of new work with partners in different countries as part of the platform JORISS (Joint Research Institute for Science and Society), cooperation between the ENS Lyon and ECNU (Shanghai), and the proposed French Chinese Lab for Comparing Curriculum in Science Education; within the international association IARTEM (International Association for Research on Textbooks and Educational Media).
In addition, we will participate in discussions within the IARTEM on the establishment of international standards for the management of resources by teachers.
A final international conference will be organized at the end of the project. This conference will propose the creation of a national observatory of teaching resources and specify his objectives and conditions.

A central task for teachers is to design, search, select, edit, reconstruct the resources they provide to their students in order to support their activities, but also share or pool with their colleagues. Teachers build up a system of resources that they constantly modify, adding new resources, modifying older ones and deleting some of them (especially if they are no longer compatible with the curriculum or the infrastructure of the school where they work). Teachers' work on resources, their selection and transformations, which are characteristic of their pedagogical freedom but is sometimes not acknowledged by educational institutions, is essential for the quality of teaching; its analysis represents a major issue for the understanding of the educational system and its evolution. It is at the heart of the ReVEA project: living resources for teaching and learning.

This project will focus on the design, selection and use of resources in secondary education. Four subject matters will be considered, because of their contrasted characteristics (specific culture, use of authentic documents or documents developed by teachers, of general or specific software, etc.): mathematics, sciences, English, engineering.

The first objective is to collect new information on the documents and resources used by teachers and to design a panel of indicators that will be used in a future national observatory. To do so we will rely on information that is currently not public, obtained by data mining in anonymous databases: those of the Centre Français d'exploitation du droit de Copie (CFC) and of the national syndicate of publishers. In addition, we will also collect data about the resources teachers download from institutional sites (both national and regional) or from professional platforms. Finally, we will also complete these data by using, if possible, statistics produced by educational local authorities. In relation with this first objective, we will establish a cartography of resource exchanges for the selected subject matters. A second objective is to document and provide a critical analysis of the current evolutions and to identify the importance of different factors, both at a macro level (the implementation of competence-based approaches, the integration of new knowledge, economic changes, growing need for individualisation and interactivity, etc.) and at an individual level (gender, school context, expertise in the subject matter, number of years of service in the school, use of technologies, adaptation to students with special needs, etc.). Longitudinal work will also be led in order to elucidate underlying processes. To do so we will follow a sample group of teachers using the methodology developed by Geudet & Trouche to understand the structure of the systems of resources used by teachers. Furthermore, two types of investigation will also be led: 1) an analysis of the exchanges that occur between teachers within official and nonofficial teacher communities, and 2) the trajectory of resource usage (life cycle, indexation, tagging, discussions, etc.).

With a duration of 48 months, this project will allow us to characterize the evolutions of resource usage and to model resource life cycle in education. It will lead to recommendations, in particular regarding teacher education and propositions of standards relative to the appropriation of educational resources by teachers.