The school injunction to autonomy: a sociological approach to a paradox

Abstract

"Don't get upset and favor autonomy": these were the main recommendations made to parents by Jean-Michel Blanquer, the French Minister of Education, during a radio interview in March 2020, when distance learning was being implemented . As in many countries affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, the unprecedented circumstances of school closures gave rise to speeches, made by both politicians and experts, recalling the importance of 'pedagogical continuity' and placing the autonomy of pupils at the forefront. Pupil autonomy thus appears to be a remedy for many ‘ills’: learning difficulties, lack of motivation, management of pupil heterogeneity in the classroom, problems linked to distance learning, etc. If this 'solution' is so strongly urged upon today, it is because autonomy appears to be a ‘flagship value of contemporary educational norms’ (Darmon, 2006, 36) and, more generally, it is one of the 'positive categories of perception of the social world' that is enjoying undeniable 'discursive success' (Lahire, 2005, 322). However, this recourse is most often presented as a paradoxical injunction, in which pupils must freely want what is imposed upon them by the school system. This contribution seeks to explore this paradox by examining its implications on teachers, students and parents. We argue that the autonomy imperative contributes to establish specific forms of learning, as well as new relations to authority and even forms of subjectivity. It also promotes some teaching practices, as well as pedagogical materials, therefore preventing others. The discussion is based on several research projects related to the issue of student autonomy. Two ethnographic surveys will be mainly referred to. The first fieldwork took place at the end of the 2000s, in a primary school in Geneva, Switzerland, as part of doctoral research (Durler, 2014; 2015; 2016; 2018; 2019). More than 200 hours of observation were carried out in classrooms in the first grades of schooling, with pupils aged between five and ten years. Long-term semi-structured interviews were conducted with teachers, as well as observations of formal and informal teacher meetings. The study also included intensive monitoring of four children in their classrooms and families, through the proposal of homework support. The second fieldwork took place in a secondary school located in the countryside, in the French-speaking region of Switzerland. It was part of a larger research project on self-directed learning in lower secondary schools . Over a three-month period, we spent approximately 38 hours observing the lessons of two teachers whose aim was to bring students to "take responsibility" for their learning through a specific pedagogical experiment. We used a variety of ethnographic techniques from shadowing the work of the teachers, to observing how a group of pupils interacted and addressing a small questionnaire followed by some focus groups with the pupils. A third project on autonomy in Montessori schools completes the analysis. Observations in private Montessori school classes were carried out in late 2019 and early 2020 (Leroy, Dubois, Durler, 2021). Finally, some results of a questionnaire filled out by parents of primary school pupils in the cantons of Vaud and Fribourg in the western part of Switzerland during the school closure period (spring 2020) are also used (Conus & Durler, 2021; to be published) We question the twofold conception commonly associated with the notion of autonomy. First, when faced with a learning situation, it should be 'enough' for pupils to be more autonomous, on a voluntary basis, in order to overcome their possible difficulties. According to this perspective, autonomy can be accompanied or 'privileged' by parents or teachers, but it is above all the result of an individual effort. Secondly, in a more naturalistic approach, adequate conditions - distance learning, for example - would ipso facto allow a naturalistic and intrinsic autonomy to 'emerge', and only asking to manifest itself, if given the opportunity. The inference here is that a pupil who is not autonomous is a pupil who has not made the effort to be autonomous or, because he or she is 'too' framed by adults, has not had the opportunity to let his or her autonomy be expressed. We argue that these conceptions whether refering to responsibility or inborn traits contain the seeds of deepening school inequalities. Insofar as these definitions of autonomy rely on the capacity to carry out school tasks and on the mastery of specific knowledge and the possession of particular dispositions (such as the capacity to concentrate over a given time, to have a "taste for effort"...), autonomy corresponds to an internalisation of norms, codes and school knowledge, unequally distributed among children, depending on their social background. This contribution explores the links between individualized teaching arrangements that promote autonomous learning and the students’ social background and their family resources. We analyse the expectations of teachers and how they bring students to "take responsibility" for their learning through a specific pedagogical experiment.

We show that individualized settings, in which teachers abstain from direct and frontal teaching, require a systematic use of indirect and lateral resources. Our analyses show for instance how parents are asked to support autonomous learning, e.g. by supervising the school work of their child. Thus, this conception of autonomy, described as a result of individual will, tends to externalize the learning difficulties (requiring parental support), instead of building the resources needed for autonomous learning during class lessons. As may be expected, this use of parental time and abilities contains risks of furthering social inequalities, since parents are more or less in a position (by virtue of their resources, cultural capital, educational practices, etc.) to assist their children in the directions desired by the school.