Education and Politics is a social sciences laboratory specialized in education and concerned with constructivist approaches.
The change in education and training systems calls for the development of policy studies that take into account different regional, national, european and international levels.
This research unit has a prospective approach and puts forward emerging issues.
Since the end of the 1960s, societies have been concerned with the diversification of principles of justice as a basis of relationship between action and universal references.
The empirical work of the joint research unit focuses on the renegotiations about these issues in local, national and international contexts. Its aim is to tackle these new approaches by considering issues of organization, content and the work of agents.

In previous years, the team has worked on deregulation and devolution policies in education, the autonomy of schools and the evolution of management. Its current work is to use this experience in a European context: organization of educational systems in networks of schools governed by quality standards. Assessment plays a central role in those operations and invite to think on measurement and building of assessment indicators.

The research focuses on:

• quality networks and standards of proficiency
• building indicators for education: elements for historical and epistemological issues
• local expertise in the area of public policy: production, circulation and translation of assessment tools
• teaching identity and culture at European level.

In terms of social knowledge, there is a distinction between knowledge acquired at school, at home, within the community, at Church, at work, etc.
This division settled down at the end of the 19th century: school took care of universal knowledge and the other agents took care of knowledge at local level. This conception is currently being modified.
Just as there are many definitions of “universal”, there are also many ways to gain access to this knowledge.

The research focuses on:

• School culture and other cultures: testing universalism
• Art, education, training: school and culture redefined
• Architectural culture and citizenship: curricular reconstruction

The new type of organization requires deep-set change in the work of educators, as many areas of responsibility that used to be borne by central government have now been devoluted to the local level. This event creates new forms of distribution of knowledge, of involvement or distress for those concerned by these transformations.

The research focuses on:

• teaching work and evolution of performances
• teachers resorting to psychological and sociological knowledge
• problems at work and the redefinition of the profession of teacher
• new forms of involvement from parents
• decision-making procedures in primary schools and how they affect pupils
• political socialization of youth in high schools
• choices, training methods and motivations of future elites
• design and use of on-line resources at university

ARCHITECTURE IN SCHOOL, TEACHERS AT WORK,
CULTURE, DECENTRALISATION, EUROPE, ASSESSMENT,
LIFELONG LEARNING, TEACHER TRAINING, VOCATIONAL TRAINING, EDUCATIONAL POLICIES,
TEACHING METHODS, DEVOLUTION, KNOWLEDGE,
SOCIOLOGY OF EDUCATION.