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on September 21, 2024
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Published on November 7, 2024– Updated on November 7, 2024
Cooperation as a Drive for Learning in Higher Education
In its 2024 call for proposals, CY Initiative funded 17 innovative research projects. Let's take a look at one of the winning Emergence projects led by Bruno Robbes, teacher-researcher at EMA and professor at CY Cergy Paris University, on the impact of cooperative pedagogies in higher education.
CY Initiative: Could you introduce yourself and tell us more about your career and your main research themes?
Bruno Robbes: I've been a teacher-researcher in education and training at CY Cergy Paris University since 2008. Prior to that, I worked as a primary school teacher for about fifteen years in the Val-d'Oise region, and then as a trainer and adviser to the Versailles education authority.
During this period, I worked on violence prevention issues in schools as part of a team of other professionals consisting of primary and secondary school teachers, social workers, educational advisors, psychologists and others. We worked in schools in the region that were experiencing difficulties related to violence. Through this theme, we also addressed other issues in the field of education, schooling and teaching.
These experiences have naturally guided my research as a teacher-researcher. I work on the issue of school discipline, and more specifically on authority in education. This is a very topical subject. Through this theme, I quickly turned to what are known as the various pedagogies stemming from the Education Nouvelle movement, which emerged in France and Europe at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th. In France, an important teacher, Célestin Freinet,is known for the pedagogy he developed: the Freinet pedagogy. It uses tools and techniques designed to foster and support cooperation as a means of autonomous and collective learning.
Then I turned to another Freinet teacher, Fernand Oury. In the 1950s and 1960s in France, he used Freinet pedagogy in the suburbs, where there was a need for more structure in classroom and in teaching, due to the academic, social and behavioral difficulties of the pupils. He drew on the contributions of institutional psychotherapy, a movement originating in the field of psychiatry that placed enormous emphasis on the importance of social relations and the living environment as therapeutic mediators.
These care practices influenced the Freinet pedagogy, which bacame known as “institutional pedagogy”. These practices, which I trained in, have greatly assisted me in my classes, to address certain situations related to the exercise of discipline and authority, but also to improve student learning. Today, these are the subjects of my research work in primary and secondary schools, and in higher education.
CY Initiative: You won the CY Initiative's 2024 call for proposals. What does this project involve, and what is its objective?
Bruno Robbes: One of the origins of the CoopEnSup project obviously comes from these so-called cooperative and institutional teaching practices. With this project, we aim to reuse these contributions to train the students of our Bachelor's degree in Education and Training, most of whom will go on to become schoolteachers. The idea is to train them in and through active, cooperative and institutional pedagogy. They need to personally experience these situations during their training, so that they can then put them into practice in the classroom.
A second important aspect of the project is the GPS system, which stands for Gérer Professionnellement des Situations (Professional Management of Situations). GPS, which also relies on cooperation, is based on real-life professional situations experienced by teachers. In fact, in 2015, following the terrorist attacks in our country, researchers from our EMA laboratory looked into how to manage a certain number of incidents in schools, resulting from students speaking out or refusing to obey certain requests from teachers.
This GPS system was based on a collection of situations written by teachers, supervised by researchers. A protocol for analyzing and improving these situations through co-writing was then drawn up. This is a cooperative process in which professionals meet in practice analysis groups. This tool was developed from 2015 onwards, and we now have an open platform that brings together a number of situations. It's a real professional training tool for teachers faced with difficult or tense situations... which can be linked to issues of authority, discipline and student comments.
Based on these two systems, the aim of the project is to step back and compare the concepts of training and learning that underpin these cooperative systems with practical examples. We're going to look at the internal and external conditions that are favorable or unfavorable to the implementation of these systems. We will also look at their effects. Our hypothesis is that these cooperative pedagogies in higher education can produce formative and transformative effects that will change not only future teachers' and students' relationship to knowledge, but also their relationship to teaching and learning.
I'm not alone in this project. I'm in charge of the CoopEnSup project with my colleague Jean-François Nordmann, lecturer in philosophy, who runs the GPS system. Very early on, we came together around a shared interest in Education nouvelle and cooperative pedagogies. This project is therefore significant for us, as it presents also an opportunity to realize our desire to collaborate and to involve other colleagues in the laboratory. The project also aims to establish a broad French and international network (notably with Canada, Belgium and Switzerland) of researchers who are interested in these issues and developing cooperative training programs in their respective universities.
CY Initiative: In concrete terms, how will the project be rolled out?
Bruno Robbes: The project is divided into three main parts. In the first part, we'll be looking at how the notion of cooperation appears in the texts governing teacher training and the teaching profession, from kindergarten through university. The questions we ask ourselves at this stage are: How is the notion of cooperation defined in competency frameworks? Is it addressed in training frameworks? The aim is to produce a socio-history of this representation of cooperation in institutional texts.
The second part of the project will closely examine the teacher training systems themselves, to identify how cooperation is deployed in them, what teaching content is related to cooperation, how it has developed and how it is evolving. We'll be observing practices to understand how they are perceived and engaged with by students, teachers and trainers. To do this, we'll be conducting observation phases in our academy, as well as in the Lille and Rennes academies, and beyond if possible.
The third and final axis of the project is to study the effects that training in and through cooperation has on the concrete practices of both students and also teachers once they have been trained. We'll be visiting schools and classrooms to observe teachers in action a few years after their training, and to assess the impact on their day-to-day practices. We'll be starting these observations with the Haute École Libre Mosane in Liège and its Tenter+ project, which has almost 20 years' experience in implementing cooperative teaching methods. Research is already underway, based on the training we offer in the Bachelor of Education and Training at CY Cergy Paris University, at the Cergy Hirsch and Antony sites. Other observation sites are currently being studied. This will enable us to better understand how the systems are set up, and to directly observe the impact of cooperative pedagogies on training courses, practices and all involved stakeholders.
The CY Emergence call for proposals will allow us to initiate or pursue our research and develop our ambition: to create our network beyond Cergy, in France and internationally. The funds obtained will cover expenses related to implementing our research (going out into the field to observe, collect and analyze data). They will also enable exchanges and travel between researchers, as well as participation in international conferences scheduled for 2025, in Sherbrooke (Canada) and Liège (Belgium).
Bruno Robbes: I've been a teacher-researcher in education and training at CY Cergy Paris University since 2008. Prior to that, I worked as a primary school teacher for about fifteen years in the Val-d'Oise region, and then as a trainer and adviser to the Versailles education authority.
During this period, I worked on violence prevention issues in schools as part of a team of other professionals consisting of primary and secondary school teachers, social workers, educational advisors, psychologists and others. We worked in schools in the region that were experiencing difficulties related to violence. Through this theme, we also addressed other issues in the field of education, schooling and teaching.
These experiences have naturally guided my research as a teacher-researcher. I work on the issue of school discipline, and more specifically on authority in education. This is a very topical subject. Through this theme, I quickly turned to what are known as the various pedagogies stemming from the Education Nouvelle movement, which emerged in France and Europe at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th. In France, an important teacher, Célestin Freinet,is known for the pedagogy he developed: the Freinet pedagogy. It uses tools and techniques designed to foster and support cooperation as a means of autonomous and collective learning.
Then I turned to another Freinet teacher, Fernand Oury. In the 1950s and 1960s in France, he used Freinet pedagogy in the suburbs, where there was a need for more structure in classroom and in teaching, due to the academic, social and behavioral difficulties of the pupils. He drew on the contributions of institutional psychotherapy, a movement originating in the field of psychiatry that placed enormous emphasis on the importance of social relations and the living environment as therapeutic mediators.
These care practices influenced the Freinet pedagogy, which bacame known as “institutional pedagogy”. These practices, which I trained in, have greatly assisted me in my classes, to address certain situations related to the exercise of discipline and authority, but also to improve student learning. Today, these are the subjects of my research work in primary and secondary schools, and in higher education.
CY Initiative: You won the CY Initiative's 2024 call for proposals. What does this project involve, and what is its objective?
Bruno Robbes: One of the origins of the CoopEnSup project obviously comes from these so-called cooperative and institutional teaching practices. With this project, we aim to reuse these contributions to train the students of our Bachelor's degree in Education and Training, most of whom will go on to become schoolteachers. The idea is to train them in and through active, cooperative and institutional pedagogy. They need to personally experience these situations during their training, so that they can then put them into practice in the classroom.
A second important aspect of the project is the GPS system, which stands for Gérer Professionnellement des Situations (Professional Management of Situations). GPS, which also relies on cooperation, is based on real-life professional situations experienced by teachers. In fact, in 2015, following the terrorist attacks in our country, researchers from our EMA laboratory looked into how to manage a certain number of incidents in schools, resulting from students speaking out or refusing to obey certain requests from teachers.
This GPS system was based on a collection of situations written by teachers, supervised by researchers. A protocol for analyzing and improving these situations through co-writing was then drawn up. This is a cooperative process in which professionals meet in practice analysis groups. This tool was developed from 2015 onwards, and we now have an open platform that brings together a number of situations. It's a real professional training tool for teachers faced with difficult or tense situations... which can be linked to issues of authority, discipline and student comments.
Based on these two systems, the aim of the project is to step back and compare the concepts of training and learning that underpin these cooperative systems with practical examples. We're going to look at the internal and external conditions that are favorable or unfavorable to the implementation of these systems. We will also look at their effects. Our hypothesis is that these cooperative pedagogies in higher education can produce formative and transformative effects that will change not only future teachers' and students' relationship to knowledge, but also their relationship to teaching and learning.
I'm not alone in this project. I'm in charge of the CoopEnSup project with my colleague Jean-François Nordmann, lecturer in philosophy, who runs the GPS system. Very early on, we came together around a shared interest in Education nouvelle and cooperative pedagogies. This project is therefore significant for us, as it presents also an opportunity to realize our desire to collaborate and to involve other colleagues in the laboratory. The project also aims to establish a broad French and international network (notably with Canada, Belgium and Switzerland) of researchers who are interested in these issues and developing cooperative training programs in their respective universities.
CY Initiative: In concrete terms, how will the project be rolled out?
Bruno Robbes: The project is divided into three main parts. In the first part, we'll be looking at how the notion of cooperation appears in the texts governing teacher training and the teaching profession, from kindergarten through university. The questions we ask ourselves at this stage are: How is the notion of cooperation defined in competency frameworks? Is it addressed in training frameworks? The aim is to produce a socio-history of this representation of cooperation in institutional texts.
The second part of the project will closely examine the teacher training systems themselves, to identify how cooperation is deployed in them, what teaching content is related to cooperation, how it has developed and how it is evolving. We'll be observing practices to understand how they are perceived and engaged with by students, teachers and trainers. To do this, we'll be conducting observation phases in our academy, as well as in the Lille and Rennes academies, and beyond if possible.
The third and final axis of the project is to study the effects that training in and through cooperation has on the concrete practices of both students and also teachers once they have been trained. We'll be visiting schools and classrooms to observe teachers in action a few years after their training, and to assess the impact on their day-to-day practices. We'll be starting these observations with the Haute École Libre Mosane in Liège and its Tenter+ project, which has almost 20 years' experience in implementing cooperative teaching methods. Research is already underway, based on the training we offer in the Bachelor of Education and Training at CY Cergy Paris University, at the Cergy Hirsch and Antony sites. Other observation sites are currently being studied. This will enable us to better understand how the systems are set up, and to directly observe the impact of cooperative pedagogies on training courses, practices and all involved stakeholders.
The CY Emergence call for proposals will allow us to initiate or pursue our research and develop our ambition: to create our network beyond Cergy, in France and internationally. The funds obtained will cover expenses related to implementing our research (going out into the field to observe, collect and analyze data). They will also enable exchanges and travel between researchers, as well as participation in international conferences scheduled for 2025, in Sherbrooke (Canada) and Liège (Belgium).
