Éditeur(s) : HAL CCSD
Résumé : International audience
The French education system remains highly centralized and only allows limited local adaptations for overseas territories. For example, if some laws (the last in 2013) allow the use of regional languages (e.g. Creole in the French West Indies) when they constitute a relevant contribution to the teaching, many official texts remain mainly based on the geographical, economical, historical, environment of the French mainland. We focus on some French BTS (Brevet de Technicien Supérieur / Advanced Technician Certificate), namely tourism and assistant manager, which are two important diplomas for the local development and in which microeconomic and management sciences plays a great part. The French BTS is a professional diploma prepared in two years after the “baccalauréat”, with national programs and evaluation criteria. The successful candidates are supposed to be immediately employable, especially in their local geographical environment. Thus, there exists a paradox between the national definition of the diploma and the local contexts of teaching. We discuss how teachers concretely deal with this situation on a day-to-day basis. Our hypothesis is that they act pragmatically, using their practical pedagogical content knowledge, without theoretical support for their action. In order to verify this hypothesis, we have conducted semi-structured interview with Guadeloupian teachers of the two aforementioned BTS. The main results shows that teachers adapt the national framework of the diploma, essentially by using local examples. This can be called a weak contextualization of the national texts. Indeed, these adaptations remain limited by fear of disadvantaging the students for the national exam. In addition, many context effects are shown, for example linked with local rules (concerning VAT, custom duties...) which are only partially taken into account by teachers. This demonstrates that the French educative system has not yet completely solved the opposition between national guideline and decentralization of the educational action.
19th General Meeting and Biennial Conference “Harnessing Science and Technology to create knowledge-base Economies and preserve Caribbean Ecosystems”
Tobago, Trinidad and Tobago

hal-01535045
https://hal.univ-antilles.fr/hal-01535045