99. Emerging Researchers' Group (for presentation at Emerging Researchers' Conference)
Paper
Teaching in Prison : an Atypical Career for a Minority of Professionals in France
Jeanne Gavard-Veau
IREDU (Université de Bourgogne, France), France
Presenting Author: Gavard-Veau, Jeanne
In France, incarceration represents a time when inmates are isolated from the outside world and they deal with the resources available in prison. The Penitentiary Code of May 1, 2022 insists on the fact that "[every convicted person is obliged to carry out at least one of the activities offered to him]" (Article L411-1). Among these activities there is the teaching, the result of collaboration between the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of National Education since the agreement of January 19, 1995. The teaching provided in prisons is part of a perspective of lifelong education, an inalienable right of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which states that "[everyone has the right to education]" (Article 26). The French prison population is mainly composed of poor young men with an educational level below the average of the population (Combessie, 2018). The obligation to provide primary education in all prisons for all inmates makes this activity more attractive since it is part of the main mission of the sentence of deprivation of liberty: the insertion or reintegration of persons placed under judicial authority (Article L1 of the Penitentiary Code, 2022). The time spent in prison can be an opportunity to make up for the shortcomings of initial education, especially because 67.8% of incarcerated persons have a level below the baccalaureate and 52.5% are serving a sentence of more than two years (Ministry of Justice, 2021). Thus, education appears to be a means for prisoners to educate themselves but also to demonstrate a desire to reintegrate into their prison pathway.
People serving a prison sentence in France have a particular relationship with education. The illiteracy rate in the closed environment is about 12% on average, whereas it is 7% in the overall population (Heraud & Marmonier-Lechat, 2021). Concerning the educational program offered, 53% of the penal population attending school is trained in basic skills, 16% of which are devoted to learning French correctly (Heraud & Marmonier-Lechat, 2021). This population is characterized as a priority need group that requires special attention.
In France, as in many other countries, teaching in prison is not the subject of much research. We are particularly interested of the professionals who teach in a closed environment, but also in the teaching itself and the meaning that professionals give to it. The professional subgroup of prison teachers represents 0.2% of the total number of teachers in France (Heraud & Soigneux, 2020). These teachers in the margins (Kherroubi, Millet & Thin, 2018) intervene punctually or full-time basis within prison establishments. Teaching in prison is a voluntary process, there is no systematic assignment possible, especially since the penitentiary institution seems to be an impediment to the proper conduct of teaching with the security and disciplinary logics it imposes (Salane, 2013). In particular, it would seem that reorientation in difficult contexts allows professionals to focus on the transmission of knowledge (Maroy, 2006). Moreover, these teachers on the margins of the institution also seem to present a logic of global educational action (Kherroubi, Millet & Thin, 2018) with the consideration of various dimensions, particularly social, adjoining teaching.
We can ask whether this teaching activity represents a resource for incarcerated people, both in terms of the activity itself and through the teachers practicing in prison. We hypothesize that teaching is a resource that takes different forms for adult prisoners. We also suggest that teachers are essential resources for people in prison. In this presentation, we will show the benefits to teachers and prisoners of this closed instruction. We will present our first results showing that teachers are resource persons for inmates and how they find a particular interest in this atypical environment.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedIn the context of our thesis, our research work is based on a mixed methodology to make the data from this small population actionable and assertive by various methods (Aguilera & Chevalier, 2021). First, we conducted a four-week observation period in three prisons in the Bourgogne Franche-Comté region. The observation period was sometimes participatory, sometimes semi-participatory with informal interviews with teachers. Indeed, we sometimes participated in activities with the prisoners in order to blend in with the froup as much as possible, wich of course created opportunities to talk with the inmates. Whenever possible, we stood back to observe the class group and the teacher. We followed different professionals, temporary employees, referents or managers. We were mainly in contact with adult male detainees, but also with minor males for whom, in the prison context, it is more difficult to introduce a person who is not a member of the service without having him actively participate in the smooth running of the session. During this period of observation and these numerous exchanges, we kept a logbook recounting all the events that took place during the days. In a second phase, we conducted 24 semi-directive interviews by phone call over a period of one and a half years with professionals teaching in prisons throughout France.
In a third and final stage, a survey was distributed nationally from May 2022 to February 2023 in order to refine the qualitative results and to globalize them. This questionnaire was distributed by the national education director to all the prisons in metropolitan France and in the overseas territories. This survey made it possible to collect quantitative data, in particular to understand the professional trajectories but also to draw up a sociological profile of these teachers. Indeed, as there is very little statistical data on this underrepresented population, it was necessary to have sociological data for our research. We currently have 139 complete responses and 307 responses in total for a total population whose numbers we do not know but estimated at 740.3 full-time equivalents (Heraud & Marmonier-Lechat, 2021), including 1264 temporary teachers in the year 2020-2021.
We are beginning to process the data from this questionnaire in an exploratory manner to support our qualitative fieldwork and discourse analysis data. Currently, we are using Jamovi and R software to process our quantitative data as well as Nvivo to analyze the discourse from our interviews.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsPrison teaching activity is seen by adult prisoners as a resource, used strategically and sometimes in a roundabout way, but one that helps to meet various individual needs. It can be a source of instruction or advantage in the prison journey. On the other hand, education itself remains a valuable resource for all incarcerated individuals seeking to obtain academic skills or enroll in a degree program. Teaching in prison allows inmates to occupy time in a meaningful way while learning or filling in previous gaps. Teachers also represent a human resource, they take on a coaching and mentoring role that is beneficial to prisoners wishing to interact with professionals from outside the prison administration. However, we found that the impact of their activity is limited and varies according to the various contexts, both material and human. The proportion of prison teachers with long experience in special education is very high, especially since the prison environment has recently required a specific contest for the specialized public or equivalent. Paradoxically, these prison teachers have a great deal of pedagogical freedom despite the constraints of the prison institution. Indeed, this subgroup of professionals declares an emancipation from the ordinary environment and its ministerial injunctions related to evaluation and school programs. The motivations of these teachers are mainly intrinsic and correlated to the meaning they give to their activity. This voluntary distancing from the ordinary environment in order to obtain a higher sense of social utility increases the satisfaction of these teachers since the activity is in harmony with their values and expectations. The links created by the teachers and the learners in the classrooms allow the inmates to reconnect with a public, individualized and adapted education in order to best accompany them in their reintegration project.
ReferencesThe legal texts quoted in square brackets have been translated from French to English for a better understanding of the abstract.
Aguilera, T. & Chevalier, T. (2021). Les méthodes mixtes : vers une méthodologie 3.0 ?. Revue française de science politique, 71, 361-363.
Assemblée générale des Nations unies. (1948), Déclaration universelle des droits de l'Homme.
Code de procédure pénale. (2010). JORF.
Code pénitentiaire. (2022). JORF.
Combessie, P. (2018). Sociologie de la Prison (4e édition). La Découverte.
Heraud, J.-L., & Marmonier-Lechat, F. (2021). Bilan annuel de l’enseignement en milieu pénitentiaire : Année 2019-2020. Ministère de la justice ; Ministère de l’Éducation nationale et de la jeunesse.
Heraud, J.-L., & Marmonier-Lechat, F. (2022). Bilan annuel de l’enseignement en milieu pénitentiaire : Année 2020-2021. Ministère de la justice ; Ministère de l’Éducation nationale et de la jeunesse.
Heraud, J.-L., & Soigneux, M. (2020). Bilan annuel de l’enseignement en milieu pénitentiaire : Année 2018-2019. Ministère de la justice ; Ministère de l’Éducation nationale et de la jeunesse.
Kherroubi, M., Millet, M. & Thin, D. (2018). Enseigner dans les marges : L'exemple des enseignants de dispositifs relais. Sociétés contemporaines, 109, 93-116.
Maroy, C. (2006). Les évolutions du travail enseignant en France et en Europe : facteurs de changement, incidences et résistances dans l’enseignement secondaire. Revue française de pédagogie (pp. 111-142).
Ministère de la Justice (2021). Statistique trimestrielle des personnes écrouées et détenues.
Salane, F. (2013). Les études en prison : les paradoxes de l’institution carcérale. Connexions, 99, 45-58.
99. Emerging Researchers' Group (for presentation at Emerging Researchers' Conference)
Paper
Choice of Subjects and Academic Achievement in the Context of the New Baccalauréat in France
Faustine Vallet
IREDU, University of Burgundy, France
Presenting Author: Vallet, Faustine
Academic achievement in higher education (HE) is the subject of a substantial amount of research in the field of educational sciences, mainly aimed at identifying and understanding the factors of academic performance. In France, higher education is divided into a variety of educational institutions, of varying selectivity as well as ranging of academic or vocational nature. However, university continues to welcome a majority of students enrolled in HE and was up until 2018 the only remaining non-selective body in the French HE landscape: the only requirement was the Baccalauréat, the end-of-study secondary school diploma.
However, the comparison of the Baccalauréat pass rate (around 90%) with the Bachelor's first year achievement rate (barely 40%) highlights an apparent dissociation between secondary and higher education. To fight against failure in undergraduate programs, many HE measures have been taken over the years, the latest being the Orientation et Réussite des Etudiants (ORE) Act, in 2018. It introduced a new academic portal for HE application, Parcoursup, and thus, generalised selection, including at university. In continuation, for the first time since 1995, a secondary education reform has modified the structure of the general Baccalauréat, to improve the articulation between secondary and higher education, and therefore improve the Bachelor’s first year achievement.
Until now, the French general Baccalauréat (the most academic, non-vocational path of the diploma) has been characterised by three tracks: a scientific track, a social science track and a humanities track. The scientific track has always been the most prestigious, as it offered the most and the best opportunities in HE, including non-scientific degrees (Dubet, 1991; Duru-Bellat & Kieffer, 2008). For this reason, 40% of students in the science track did not pursue scientific studies in HE: they only chose this track for its reputation as the 'royal way' of the French education system (so for the best students), and not for its scientific curricula (Mathiot, 2018).
This is the reason why the Baccalauréat reform removed these tracks and offered instead a system of combinations of specialities, inspired by the A-level, which provides pupils a new diversity of subject choices. From now on, they must choose three specialities in the second year of secondary school and then keep two in their final year. These specialities are the most important subjects of the Baccalauréat curricula and determine their disciplinary profile. The aim is for them to build up a specialisation consistent with their aspirations for further education.
However, this system introduces many uncertainties. How will the choice of specialities be made? We can assume that the choices will depend on the individual characteristics of the pupils (gender, social background, past academic records…) and on the characteristics of their secondary schools (social composition, reputation and prestige, overall academic level, public or private status, geographical location, size…). Moreover, chances are that some students will reproduce the disciplinary paths of the previous Baccalauréat, especially the scientific track, while others will choose more atypical combinations of transdisciplinary specialities. But we do not know how these choices will affect their achievement chances in the first year of the Bachelor. What are the winning specialities and combinations of specialities in terms of academic performance? Will it remain scientific subjects? (Beaupère et al., 2007). And who will be the pupils informed enough to choose these combinations? If this new system allows for more curriculum diversity, there is a risk that choices will be highly predetermined by individual and contextual factors, resulting in a homogenisation of the students’ characteristics within some subjects, and thus, a loss of diversity, especially regarding gender and social background.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedWe are building a new database from data collected from the Parcoursup procedure, the university academic record, students’ individual characteristics and public data on secondary schools. We therefore have a variety of variables at our disposal: grades in the various specialities chosen, the average grade at the Baccalauréat, the average grade obtained during the first year of the Bachelor's degree, gender, age, parents' professional category according to a national nomenclature recognised in France (INSEE), the allocation of a grant on social criteria during secondary education, the public or private status of the secondary school, the global social background according to a classification made by the French Ministry of Education (Rocher, 2016), the overall Baccalauréat achievement rate…
Our sample is composed of first-year undergraduate students, new Baccalauréat graduates, from a variety of fields of study at the University of Burgundy. This represents a little more than 4,000 new first-year students.
Depending on the hypothesis we are working on, we will rely on two quantitative methods. First, the multiple linear regression, according to the “ceteris paribus sic stantibus” (or “all other things being equal”) reasoning, meaning we study the effect produced by a given variable X on the target variable Y, the other variables being held constant. This allows us to adopt experimental scientific reasoning when the study situation is not strictly experimental (Bressoux, 2008). Each modality of the variable under consideration, minus one, is interpreted relative to the reference situation. This way, we are looking for the effect of one variable on another, in a similar way as the experimental reasoning. Second, since our variables admit different levels of hierarchy (individual and contextual), we should use a multilevel regression model. This type of method was initiated and developed in educational sciences (Goldstein, 1995) based on the idea that, for example, a pupil's grade doesn’t depend solely on their characteristics, but also on parameters specific to the school environment (class, school…). As in our research we consider that the choice of specialities depends on individual factors, but also on the context of the secondary school attended, this model should be needed.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsVarious results can be expected in view of what we know about educational choices in France, but also from what we can learn from Anglo-Saxon studies on A-level. To begin with, academic performance in certain specialities, when it is consistent with the field of the HE courses attended, leads to subsequent achievement. More importantly, performance in scientific subjects is conducive to higher chances of achievement, even in non-scientific HE degrees (Vidal Rodeiro & Zanini, 2015).
However, in France, girls have always chosen science subjects less frequently than boys (Duru-Bellat et al., 1993; Stevanovic, 2012; Blanchard, 2021). In the context of the A-level, pupils from the most advantaged social classes are more likely to choose the subjects most sought after by HE institutions, such as sciences, whereas pupils from less advantaged backgrounds are more likely to choose a mixture of non-specialist subjects and subjects that are not popular with universities (Vidal Rodeiro, 2007). We can therefore expect boys and students from advantaged backgrounds to make more specialisation choices that replicate the science track, and fewer atypical choices.
Pupils attending selective and private schools are more likely to be oriented towards science subjects, while pupils from non-selective schools are more likely to choose a non-specialised subject combination (Dilnot, 2018; Vidal Rodeiro, 2019). Student guidance as well as access to quality information during secondary education are crucial for making the optimal choice of subjects (Vidal Rodeiro, 2007; Dilnot, 2016). However, socially advantaged schools provide more support to students regarding their choices, based on their HE wishes. Conversely, socially heterogeneous schools have difficulty organising such guidance (Draelants, 2013; van Zanten, 2015). In this respect, pupils who attend selective, prestigious, and socially advantaged secondary schools may be those who make the most favourable choices of specialities for HE academic achievement.
ReferencesBeaupère, N., Chalumeau, L., Gury, N., & Hugrée, C. (2007). L’abandon des études supérieures (10401). La documentation française.
Blanchard, M. (2021). Genre et cursus scientifiques : Un état des lieux. Revue française de pédagogie, 212, 109‑143. https://doi.org/10.4000/rfp.10890
Bressoux. (2008). Modélisation statistique appliquée aux sciences sociales (8904). De Boeck.
Dilnot, C. (2016). How does the choice of A-level subjects vary with students’ socio-economic status in English state schools? British Educational Research Journal, 42(6), 1081‑1106. https://doi.org/10.1002/berj.3250
Dilnot, C. (2018). The relationship between A-level subject choice and league table score of university attended : The ‘facilitating’, the ‘less suitable’, and the counter-intuitive. Oxford Review of Education, 44(1), 118‑137. https://doi.org/10.1080/03054985.2018.1409976
Draelants, H. (2013). L’effet établissement sur la construction des aspirations d’études supérieures. Orientation scolaire et professionnelle (l’), 42(1).
Dubet, F. (1991). Les lycéens (3607). Seuil.
Duru-Bellat, M., Jarousse, J.-P., Labopin, M.-A., & Perrier, V. (1993). Les processus d’auto-sélection des filles à l’entrée en première. Orientation scolaire et professionnelle (l’), 22(3), 259‑272.
Duru-Bellat, M., & Kieffer, A. (2008). Du baccalauréat à l’enseignement supérieur en France : Déplacement et recomposition des inégalités. Population, 63(1), 123. https://doi.org/10.3917/popu.801.0123
Goldstein, H. (1995). Multilevel Statistical Models (2nd edition). Arnold.
Mathiot, P. (2018). Bac 2021 : Remise du rapport « Un nouveau baccalauréat pour construire le lycée des possibles ». Ministère de l’Education Nationale de la Jeunesse et des Sports.
Rocher, T. (2016). Construction d’un indice de position sociale des élèves. Education et formation, 90.
Stevanovic, B. (2012). Orientations scientifiques des filles en France : Un bilan contrasté. Questions vives recherches en éducation, Vol.6 n°16, 107‑123. https://doi.org/10.4000/questionsvives.964
van Zanten, A. (2015). 5. Les inégalités d’accès à l’enseignement supérieur : Quel rôle joue le lycée d’origine des futurs étudiants ? Regards croisés sur l’économie, 16(1), 80. https://doi.org/10.3917/rce.016.0080
Vidal Rodeiro, C. (2007). A level subject choice in England: patterns of uptake and factors affecting subject preferences. Cambridge Assessment, 100.
Vidal Rodeiro, C. (2019). The impact of A Level subject choice and students’ background characteristics on Higher Education participation. Research Matters: Cambridge Assessment, 28, 17‑26.
Vidal Rodeiro, C., & Zanini, N. (2015). The role of the A* grade at A level as a predictor of university performance in the United Kingdom. Oxford Review of Education, 41(5), 647‑670. https://doi.org/10.1080/03054985.2015.1090967
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