2There are several approaches within the teaching of the arts, situated within the different disciplines contributing to education sciences. One major body of work stems from a didactic or anthropo-didactic approach focused on the student’s learning, understood in generic terms (Baeza and Le Floch, 2015; Mili & alii, 2013; Rickenmann & Mili, ed., 2018). Sociologists, on the other hand, tend to study the social issues and inequalities associated with this learning, but do not always engage with the knowledge that is to be appropriated. A second major approach has come out of the ECP research laboratory in Lyon and looks more at aesthetic philosophy, advocating education by art (Kerlan, 2004, 2007), questioning the “educational values” of art (Boudinet, 2006), or the effect of “encountering works of art” (Chabanne, Parayre & Villagordo, 2012). This second approach focuses on the educational issues associated with arts, unlike sociological studies that are more suspicious and emphasize the social issues of the injunction to develop the teaching of the arts at school. Other research combines the two to show how teachers are torn, in trying to bring together artistic and academic concerns, whilst also emphasizing personal development (Carraud, 2012).

3The articles brought together in this issue take a sociological approach within a field of research that has been emerging over the last twenty years, in a context in which certain practices are unreflexively promoted from above. These studies emphasize the importance of taking a cautious approach and questioning the social stakes of these injunctions and evolutions, looking, for example, at the ways in which artistic and cultural practices are appropriated by students, which are never as straightforward and mechanical as their proponents would like them to be.

4Thirty years ago, there were few sociological studies on the transmission of artistic practices. Of course, there were precedents in the 1980s, with Snyders’ philosophical research on the teaching of music, which advocated constructing streamlined trajectories to bring students from repertoires that they already enjoyed toward the “masterpieces” of human heritage. There were the studies by Mialaret, also looking at music teaching from a didactic perspective (1978, 2001), which provided an overview of the research field and concluded that there were relatively few francophone studies by comparisons with English-speaking publications (Mialaret, 1988). We can generalize from this observation of music teaching, to artistic education more broadly and the place of the arts in the French school system. Moreover, the rarity of sociological studies on this question is particularly evident prior to 1990.

5Yet the revival of the sociology of education and culture in the 1960s was centered around the relationship between school and culture, because the essence of Bourdieu’s The Inheritors (the subtitle of which was French Students and Their Relations to Culture) was precisely to conjointly analyse what occurs at school and in cultural socialization in different social classes (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1979 [1964]). The core idea was that success at school and university was more readily accessible for students who had significant cultural capital, acquired in family socialization to arts and culture, through reading, museum visits, attending classical music concerts, and discussing these practices. Moreover, success at school and university, particularly in the humanities, in turn explained some young adults’ more assiduous practices of cultivated and socially legitimate activities, particularly with the example of museum visits (Bourdieu, Darbel & Schnapper, 1991 [1969]). But the specific modalities of this cultural training at school were not fully explored by these researchers.

6Since then, other studies have been conducted (we will return to these later) but it is especially since the end of the 1990s that a new generation of researchers has begun to explore this object, articulating the various sub-fields of the discipline: sociology of education, of culture, of professions, of youth or childhood, of family, and of social classes. Some of the research also coordinates these approaches with studies of the public policies that encourage the encounter between education and art, and/or articulate this with a study of different works of art. Here we will particularly look at the exchanges between these sub-fields of sociology, and their interaction with the other disciplines that contribute to education sciences and the areas in which there is a mutual lack of familiarity. In spite of our broad focus over this domain, the recent development of studies in this area means that there are probably some that have escaped our notice.

7One of the first reasons for this increasing interest in art and culture education (known in France as “EAC”) probably lies in the fact that cultural practices have spread (although with significant qualitative and quantitative variations) to the whole society (through TV talent shows, the generalisation of listening to music, etc.). This is an area that is evolving and whose presence at schools is increasing, along with the political injunctions to implement “EAC”. It is therefore logical that researchers look to investigate it. The fact that they were not so interested previously is due to the fact that this domain was at the intersection of several fields, in the Bourdieusian sense. Moreover, between the 1960s and the 1980s the then developing social sciences may have focused primarily on the objects that were central to each field because the researchers in question were specialists of these fields and looking at the objects between them requires additional theoretical and methodological work.

8This article does not take a chronological approach, it does not trace the genesis of this subfield of research. Instead it identifies the main research objects, a few major questions that are studied or emerging, without attempting to be exhaustive on each of the aspects mobilised by the researchers. We also focus on the studies on the margins of the sociology of education and culture, the advances made in each area, and the combination of these approaches. It is in this context that the articles in this issue are situated, with the transmission of cultural practices within the school system (primary and secondary school, we will not cover higher education here), and then in less institutionalized practices through indirect or project-based learning and/or with partners in cultural institutions.

“Academic” cultural practices in school disciplines: the role of the curriculum

9The issue of cultural and artistic education is not posed in the same way in different school disciplines or between primary and secondary school in the French system. Indeed, certain artistic practices constitute subjects in themselves, and others do not. As a result, research does not approach them in the same way.

10Music, for example is one of the oldest subjects taught at school, since the traditional quadrivium (Durkheim, 1938/1999). Among the rare studies conducted on the teaching of music at primary school (ages 3 to 10), one in particular looks at the reasons that have led teachers to focus more or less on this subject. Being an amateur musician oneself, for example, leads teachers to cover this aspect of the curriculum more in class (with an emphasis on singing), and this is even more frequent when the teacher also makes room for other aesthetic activities in the classroom (Suchaud, 2002). But the comparison with teachers who are also amateur musicians shows that internal differences exist, particularly according to the kind of musical training they received (Maizières, 2009, 2011) and even according to the values associated with artistic practices and how to teach them (Tripier-Mondancin, 2008). Although these studies allow us to identify quantitative differences in the practices of the teachers, whether in their duration or whether they are more choral or instrumental, they do not tell us much about the repertoires that the students are socialised to and what they learn, or the aspects of transmission that are promoted (using written notation or not, identification of the structure of the piece of music, and so forth). Inversely, a more recent study from the same research centre shows that classroom musical practice is correlated with increased academic success more generally, although the research did not study the processes that would explain how greater exposure to this specific aspect of the curriculum could contribute to an improved appropriation of other subjects (Lecoq & Suchaut, 2012). The broader question of the relationship between the teachers’ artistic practice and their training in this area is explored in order to understand the differences of how the curriculum is implemented in other countries and situations, for example the institutionalisation of Greek traditional music as a school subject (Hatzipetrou, 2018).

11As far as high school music education is concerned, a recent doctoral thesis, at the intersection of the sociology of education and the sociology of culture, demonstrates that teachers choose repertoires and teaching styles according to their own tastes and trajectories, their perspective of the students and of youth and/or working class cultural practices (Eloy, 2015). Moreover, the evolution of the curriculum in this discipline has changed significantly. Firstly, initial contact through intuition has been progressively developed as a way to then move on to studying the form of a piece of music (structure, composition, effects intended by the use of certain instruments, etc.). The use of repertoires that are familiar to and appreciated by adolescents was developed as a way to lead them into more classical or prestigious pieces (Eloy, 2013). The author of this study deal with a central question, providing important nuances to the preconceptions that many adults, themselves socialised in the artistic and cultural spheres, have about the beauty of “art for art’s sake” being automatically lessened or adulterated by rationalised “academic” teaching methods. Yet in order to transmit specific content to a group of students, or even to a whole generation, the characteristics of the graphic-academic form of socialisation at school (disconnected from active practice, disincarnated objectivation of the curriculum’s contents, and thus planning, impersonal knowledge, learning through exercises, see Vincent, Lahire & Thin, 1994, inspired by Goody, 1977) seem unavoidable in the French system. The aspects of the physical, cultural, and living world that are taught at school are covered in a particular way, and seen as secondary (Bautier & Rayou, 2009), through a discourse inscribed in conceptual disciplines and in forms of reasoning associated with written culture. The evolutions of the school as an institution, particularly the increased permeability of the material boundaries, where students go “outside” the school more and new social and cultural practices are brought into the classroom, do not alter the fact that objects encountered and envisaged in the school context necessarily intellectually become “school objects” (Rayou, 2015); indeed this requirement is also transferred to the child who must become a pupil and a student (Bonnéry, 2007). Indeed, in this study on music education in high school demonstrates that behind the use of intuition and youth repertoires, the objective is indeed to arrive at an academic appreciation of the musical code, through an “aesthetic disposition” and academic reasoning, and not through “corporeal” reception (Bourdieu, 1984). The author of this study found similarities with the high school literature curriculum (Eloy, 2015), in which “analytic” readings were preferred to “participative” ones (based on identification, suspense), which are more common among younger and/or lower-class audiences (Renard, 2011). By combining the sociology of education and the sociology of culture, Eloy argues that although the repertoires used with high school students are more “eclectic” (Donnat, 1994), or “omnivorous” (Peterson, 1992, 2004), the preferred ways of reacting to them remain traditional signs of distinction. As we will see, these questions shed light on many other aspects of the transmission and appropriation of cultural practices.

12There are few sociological studies on the teaching of visual arts, except for those on nursery school. Among the latter, is the research conducted by Plaisance on the question of the “expressive” model, in particular for the introduction of graphic arts, following Chamboderon & Prévot (1973). This was recently taken up in doctoral research by Leroy (2016) that incorporated the evolution of the instrumentalization of children’s drawings for purposes other than teaching art, and in particular for mastering handwriting techniques. But there is very little research on primary school and secondary school, although art is a subject in itself at these levels. One exception is Fabre’s doctoral work at the intersection of sociological, didactic, and aesthetic research, looking at elementary school; the objective being to understand how this teaching aims to help students appropriate the notion of what is “artistic” (Fabre, 2013a, 2015).

13Finally, beyond the question of the transmission and appropriation of this knowledge, these studies have also emphasized that artistic subjects constitute a form of selection through electives as part of elitist recruitment streams, whether in high school (Baluteau, 2013), or afterwards, in relation to the “choices” of families looking for distinction through the promotion of personalities and expression (Van Zanten, 2009), or through the “seriousness” or perceived “academic” nature of these activities (Tranchant, 2016).

Looking at practices that are not subjects in themselves

14Unlike music and fine arts, literature is not a subject as such in the French primary school and high school system. Rather, it is included within “French”, but it remains less important until senior school (lycée) when it becomes the heart of the curriculum in French class for those in the generalist (as opposed to vocational) stream. As we have seen, at senior school level, students are evaluated on their ability to provide an “analytic reading” with specialised knowledge of structure, style, and so forth in their commentaries and essays. In this respect, students are unequally prepared for reading through their family socialisation, and specifically for the types of repertoires and ways of reading expected by the school, and the ability to review their reactions in view of literary techniques that the author uses to provoke a specific reception in an “average reader” (Renard, 2011). This reflects the distinction between “academic” and “ordinary” high school readers (Détrez, 1998), or between “aesthetic” or “ethico-practical” appropriations (Bourdieu, 1984). The didactic or literary studies of literature teaching are far too numerous to be mentioned here and deserve specific treatment. However, it is worth mentioning the studies on “shared reading” for nursery and elementary school (Grossman, 1996, 2006; Frier, 2006) which paved the way for studies on practices of socialisation to literature, conveying concerns about social differences in the appropriation of initiation to literary reading.

15From this perspective, several recent studies have compared reading in nursery and primary school with reading in the family home (Boiron, 2006; Bonnéry, 2015; Bonnéry & Joigneaux, 2015; Cèbe & Goigoux, 2015; Delarue & Bautier, 2015; Lahire, ed., 2019: 981-1116; Montmasson, 2016; Montmasson-Michel, 2018; Tiré, 2017; Vinel, 2014). They converge in their findings that the school’s importation of shared reading practices with young children occurs with the assumption that these practices are the same in all families, with little awareness of the progressive literary socialisation that occurs in middle- and upper-class families. In other words, the school expects a relatively “analytical” reading in which the child looks for clues to construct meanings that are not explicitly provided by the book, without the teacher giving much guidance as to the kind of reading required. Yet as reading practices also develop in working class families using picture books which are much more explicit in conveying content, many children incorrectly assume the way the read in their families (characterised by lower levels of education) reflects the expectations at school. Moreover, whether children attend schools in disadvantaged areas also has an impact on the repertoire of picture books available to them; this repertoire being characterised by more explicit books that are used to acquire vocabulary rather than to understand their structure or literary qualities, the latter being more the case of books in socially diverse or privileged neighbourhoods (Bonnéry, Crinon & Marin, 2015). These results coincide with what has been observed in English-speaking countries like Australia (Williams, 1999). Recent research therefore demonstrates that the school system constructs unequal curricula from an early age and trains students for different dispositions according to their social backgrounds, which partly confirms and explains the observations in middle school and senior school of an unequal familiarity with school expectations in terms of literary analysis (Détrez, 1998; Renard, 2011). In keeping with these considerations, Pinto’s article in this issue looks at how learning to read with children’s literature in first grade (CP) developed between the fields of education and publishing, emphasizing all of the sociocultural assumptions associated with making pedagogical tools fun, and developing the “pleasure of reading”.

16Dramatic arts and theatre are essentially covered in the school as a repertoire of works studied along with other genres in French, without concern for the specificity of their practice. There are few studies on how this repertoire is taught in French class, whether it involves the study of texts or readings, or staging the plays. The development of theatre as a subject in senior school, relying on teachers from cultural streams, institutionalises an ambivalence relating to the reciprocal influence between school and the arts (Lemêtre, 2009), that can lead to misunderstandings (Bautier & Rochex, 1997) among students who do not understand that the subjects’ objectives are both artistic and typical of schoolwork; in other words that there are indeed academic expectations behind the instructions to “act” during classes (Lemêtre, 2015). Although in these instances, teachers and artists converge to train the viewer via the initiation into the actor’s craft and the directing of performances, the studies of experimental partnerships between teachers and artists in different sectors of the school system demonstrate that the teaching of dramatic arts becomes a stage for tensions between different conceptions of this artistic practice, between the text and the performance, between classical, youth, or original repertoires; although these observations seem to sometimes be formulated without critical distance from the divisions at work in artistic and pedagogical debates (Desmarets, 2015; Page, 2005).

17Dance may have a place in physical education and sport classes in elementary or high school, depending on the teachers’ choices among large range of existing activities. The aestheticization of the body is studied from an anthropo-didactic perspective, indicating what students and teachers have to un-learn and reconstruct (Mili & alii, 2013; Chopin & Saladain, 2017). More sociological studies emphasise the social issues associated with this encounter between bodies that are already socially shaped (according to social class and gender) and the bodily models promoted through dance in physical education. This leads the teachers to “disguise” the activity, so as to not put off the male students (Pasquier, 2016), or even to lean towards contemporary urban youth dances like hip hop, in high schools in working-class areas (Faure & Garcia, 2003a). But this pedagogical adaptation of the repertoire and practices, which is a kind of local negotiation of the actual curriculum, runs the risk that (to use a hunting metaphor) “luring” the boys from the suburbs leads them to “poach” on school ground by imposing their practices and escaping from the appropriation of the traditional graphic-academic form (repetition of strictly timed exercises compared to open-ended freer time, aesthetics vs acrobatic performance, etc. See Faure & Garcia, 2003b).

18Looking at the example of fashion design, Divert’s article, in this issue, proposes a study of one of these subjects that is still not well developed. The author explores the specificity of an applied arts subject, which specialises in the creation of fashion, to emphasise that although the stated objectives and valuing of a sensitive approach appear removed from traditional schooling, the latter is nevertheless present in the teachers’ requirements and practices.

19Although students do encounter cultural practices during school time, these are more dilute and run through other disciplines, as we will see in the next section. Or they may take place as part of partnerships or indirect pedagogies (used to transmit non-cultural or artistic elements of the curriculum) as we will see later, with the case of cinema and museum visits in particular. But there is one final cultural component of the school curriculum, which is both a sub-discipline and an intersection of cultural practices: art history. The institutionalisation of this subject in primary school and secondary school in 2008 gave rise to few research studies, probably because it did not result in much actual class time, shared as it was between history, geography, and civic education. The rare studies that do exist on this evoke an “unclear” object whose content wavers between training the viewer and the historian, giving rise to a diversity of knowledge and positions mobilised by the teacher, whilst also constituting a space for possibilities in which students might gain an awareness of the historicity of artworks (Fabre, 2013b).

Teaching that is transversal to different academic subjects

21Thus a recent diachronic analysis of primary and secondary school textbooks between 1950 and 2010 showed an increasing presence of artworks (paintings primarily, but also sculpture, architecture, tapestry, cinema, and so forth) in history class, which increasingly serve less as illustrations and more as documents to be studied from a historical, and to a lesser extent aesthetic, perspective (Bonnéry, 2019). The presence of these works appeared self-evident, as though all the students were used to looking at images as objects to be studied, decoded, situated within a historic context or an artist’s production, and so forth. This means that the textbooks do not present them explicitly as such. Although they are less present in subjects like French and mathematics, they are nonetheless increasingly used as a way to acquire other notions (the golden ratio, symmetry, the concept of metamorphosis to prepare the study of the text by Ovid, etc.). They are less present in science and geography manuals that contain other images, often diagrams or photographs. Evolutions in teaching methods and an increased emphasis on students actively analysing documents (Bautier & al., 2012) has also led to the more frequent use of pictures of artworks in school textbooks, and to them becoming relatively banal in the classroom, much as they are in middle- and upper-class families. Thus, the students’ relationship to culture may remain as strong a differentiator as it was in the past, even though arts are not at the heart of the curriculum hierarchy.

22This hypothesis corroborates what has emerged since the 1970s and which has been emphasised particularly in research on nursery school. Indeed, sociology has shown that with the emergence of new middle classes who are highly educated and great consumers of cultural practices, a new social definition of the child has emerged as an object for education through culture. This evolution has led to the incorporation of artistic creation methods (painting “like Klimt”, or Picasso, and so forth), or the reading of picture books that were previously kept at bay because they were considered too frivolous (Chamboredon & Prévot, 1973; Chamboredon & Fabiani, 1977). Thus, in the wake of a “productive” model focused on schoolwork, an “expressive” model focused on the child’s personality and expression emerged progressively between 1955 and 1975, accompanied by an “aesthetic” model that considered the child as a potential artist (Plaisance, 1986). Although since the 2000s, the preparatory aspect of primary has been reinforced in nursery school, with an increase in academic exercises, this has not resulted in a rarefication of cultural practices. Instead these have been normalised, less geared towards creation than used as works or techniques to access other academic objectives; with books, drawing, or painting serving as a means to acquire other knowledge (discovering a country in which the story occurs, recognising shapes, improving writing movements, etc. see Leroy, 2016).

23From another perspective, the comparison between artistic disciplines is rarely pursued. The doctoral research by Claude-Carpentier (which is revisited in this issue in her article with Rayou, expanding her results) shows that in a generalist high school, students confronted with a similar instruction to write a commentary on a text or a painting, self-censor more in literature than in art, because of the symbolic weight of expectations in stylistic analysis. Inversely they allow themselves more freedom in outlining an analysis in response to an image, because the lack of academic discipline leads them to feel less illegitimate in doing so. This observation is a brutal interrogation into the way in which artistic practices are taught (Claude-Carpentier, 2015).

24In these different studies, there are recurrent crosscutting questions in response to various evolutions in the curriculum, even though they are not uniform. Firstly, in the French school system, the education of an enlightened public trumps the education of artists and creators. This is clearly case in music, to the detriment of instrumental practice (Eloy, 2015), in theatre in which even the “performance” of an actor contributes to forming spectators’ dispositions (Lemêtre, 2009), or in literature in which practices of “writing like the author” are increasingly rare and replaced by academic commentary (Renard, 2011). In fine arts it is slightly different; artistic practice remains present, although it is accompanied by requirements to mobilise aesthetic knowledge (Fabre, 2013a). It appears that artistic practice is more present in partnership programs, where it is facilitated by cultural actors and mediators from outside the school, which will be the subject of the next section. But this observation is worth refining through a more systematic confrontation of the results of different cultural activities and according to the different levels of schooling in which they take place, because for example the Minister for Education has recently made choral singing in primary school compulsory which seems to be a step in a different direction.

25Finally, most of the research on the teaching of the different arts shows that these practices are subject to logics that may partly converge or diverge, between academic and aesthetic concerns, and youth, media, or popular practices. In particular, this is the case concerning the repertoire of works used in class, caught between the objective of acculturation to classical works and the importation of repertoires that the students are already familiar with (Bantigny, 2008; Barrère & Jacquet-Francillon, 2008), or which they are assumed to like, in order to attract them and lead them onto less easily accessible works. But this raises the question of the difficulty in conveying the understanding that this change in repertoire is a means of transmitting the same school expectations in the ways of reacting to an artwork: an aestheticization of popular culture is expected (Eloy, 2015) in which the intuitive reaction and appreciation must be articulated with elements of analysis, or at least a reflexivity about the work that draws on cultural knowledge (Bonnéry, 2015; Renard, 2011). These studies show that there are frequent misunderstandings as to what studying art at school signifies. These tensions have been particularly apparent since the introduction of mass schooling, given the shared references of a whole school generation stem more from youth and media culture and less from the legitimate repertoires, which were often those of the previous generations that were socially selected for long studies (Coulangeon, 2011). This accentuates the debates on cultural eclecticism or omnivorousness, given that young people’s repertoires of artworks are more or less extensive depending on their social backgrounds, and that the ways of reacting to these works are as important as the knowledge of the works themselves in mechanisms of social distinction (Bonnéry, 2018; Coulangeon, 2004; Donnat, 1994; Eloy, 2015; Fabiani, 2013; Peterson, 1992).

26From a closely related perspective, about the student’s tutored project work in senior school, students are required to draw on knowledge from different disciplines to explore a “problem question” (as the teachers call it) on a particular theme. The choice of the theme is conditioned by the social background of the students, particularly in its cultural and artistic tone. Moreover, there are significant social inequalities between students who remain in a thematic adisciplinary approach and those who are able to satisfy the requirements to problematize a question by mobilizing different school subjects to analyze it, particularly when it coincides with adolescent tastes, such as music for example (Vaquero, 2019). This approach echoes that of Bernstein (2007), distinguishing vertical discourses (clear classification of kinds of knowledge, distinction between the academic and the everyday) and horizontal ones (articulation and interactions between these different dimensions).

27These questions run through the study of cultural practices at school and can be found, somewhat heightened, in studies on partnership projects between schools and cultural bodies, and in indirect teaching practices that use art, which are the object of the next section.

Cultural activities in project-based and indirect pedagogies

28Partnership programs between schools and museums, in which the latter host class excursions or send mediators into schools (Desmitt, 2019; Fenard, 2018; Netter, 2018) lead to a similar observation. Research here suggests that the expectations of cultural mediators are often quite academic (in terms of the type of attention, commentary of artworks, and so forth), which runs counter to their often anti-school discourses. The question of sensorial appreciation and emotion (Passeron, 1990) is not excluded from the school or from these partnership programs, on the contrary, it is mobilised within them to confront and shift the initial personal reaction to one based on objective clues, from the work and context of creation, as to what the artist’s production seeks to provoke. The initial intuitive contact based on “feelings”, along with the students’ familiarity with the images, produces ambivalent effects whereby the students are able to identify the semiotic elements in paintings or photographs, but not necessarily able to use them in an aesthetic approach. These questions are pursued further in the article by Coavoux and Giraud, which also emphasises the weight of the anti-school discourse in museums programs for students, yet also sheds light on the way in which cultural mediators in these programs in reality re-integrate the academic form and rely on the scholarly dispositions of their audience.

29Research on school theatre programs for young audiences, for example the Ecole du Spectateur (Spectator School), arrive at similar conclusions, emphasising that the importance of feelings and sensations, which are nevertheless prominent in the discourses of cultural mediators, may, in fact conceal more formal expectations (Eloy, ed., 2017). Alternatively, once back in the classroom, the plays may essentially serve as a support for traditional academic schoolwork (dictation, studying vocabulary, etc.) to the detriment of more strictly aesthetic aspects (Eloy, ed., 2017; Richard-Bossez, Girel & Broyelle, 2017).

30For their part and from a closely related perspective, the studies about education in the visual image allow us to see how academic logics encounter a love for cinema in the relationship between teachers and artistic speakers from outside the school. On the one hand, there are tensions, for example if these speakers reject a relationship that is too much like a traditional teacher, or if the teacher instrumentalises the films as a way to cover points of the curriculum (the First World War, for example, which is covered in didactic tasks, Doussot, 2015; Mesclon, 2018). On the other hand, the actions of the school and the cinema consolidate each other in asking the students to take a reflective position in relation to the films, in the role of an enlightened amateur, whilst tolerating, or asking students to draw on their youth or popular cinema culture as a path towards more legitimate repertoires or forms of appreciation, which can lead to misunderstandings (Barbier, forthcoming; Legon, 2014; Marx, 2014). In passing, from a more didactic than sociological perspective, Tupin stresses the benefit of using the students’ television and cinema culture (television series in particular) as a profitable indirect teaching method in other disciplines (Tupin, 2014), which reflects the propositions of researchers in information and communications (Laborde, 2017; Odin, 2015) but raises the questions of the methods that could achieve this. Archat’s socio-didactic analysis shows that having access to works of cinema (whether they are high culture, youth culture or popular culture) is not in itself a vector of success, and it stresses the importance of the language, cognitive, and subjective processes that are at work in the elaboration of the cinematic gaze (Archat, 2013). Finally, from a more behavioural and cognitive perspective, Boutin shows that programs for cinema education defend the role of excursions to the cinema, in the face of the development of digital tools, partly due to bodily discipline, which we know is closely connected to the academic form of socialization (Millet & Thin, 2007) that it generates.

31Moreover, disciplines which exist within the school, such as music or fine arts, can also give rise to outside partnerships that aim to give students access to other repertoires (Bonnéry & Fenard, 2013a, 2013b). A good example of this is the case of a projects between classes from disadvantaged schools and the Paris Opera, which implies the confrontation of logics between the cultural dispositions expected, and those mobilised by the students (Morel, 2006, 2013). The profile of the cultural mediators from these outside institutions also helps to guide the kind of action that is undertaken, more or less oriented towards active practice (for example musicians – Lebon, 2013), or towards training spectators.

32These programs are often implemented with the stated objective of reinforcing teaching and redressing academic difficulties, particularly in “priority education” schools (these schools are in disadvantaged areas or with students from low socio-economic backgrounds and are known as ZEP, or REP+). Since the 1990s, art has been increasingly mobilised at school from the perspective of remediation, which in the official texts and in teaching practices translates as indirect teaching methods and classroom adaptation. An example of this is the pioneering study on “Rock music and school failure”, from an aesthetic and didactics perspective (Boudinet, 1996). And then more sociological approaches to these cultural projects developed. For example, the study of 500 applications from disadvantaged schools (ZEP) demonstrated the preponderance (in 62% of applications) of cultural and artistic activities, or to promote reading or written and oral expression (Charlot, 1994). This observation is corroborated by the study of activities planned as part of the first national reform of school rhythms (Bautier, Kassimi & Deperetti, 1999), or in boarding schools promoting academic excellence for disadvantaged students (Rayou & Glasman, 2012). However, among the studies conducted on cultural practices at school, or on its margins, a certain number also looked at the dispositions expected and mobilised in cultural appreciation, which the official text and partnership programs often affirm would be spontaneously present among all students encountering artworks, and would be directly beneficial to academic success. Other research has looked in detail at the dispositions and knowledge that are expected in the context of cultural activities conducted during school time, comparing them both to what is required of students in teaching disciplines, and what the students actually mobilize (Bautier, 2006; Desmitt, 2019; Eloy, 2013; Fenard, 2018). Moreover, Fenard compares the partnership programs that aim to combat school failure through musical practice (based on the assumption that students like music and that it is a good way to indirectly develop dispositions for study), and those that opt for practices in a contemporary art museum (from the inverse position, that of decentering cultural habits). It shows that the proximity or distance from the cultural tastes of teenagers in working-class high schools produces different effects depending on the way in which the adults, teachers and outside participants, conduct the activity, present their knowledge, and guide the mobilization of dispositions (Fenard, 2018). Coulangeon and Fradkine’s article in this issue challenges this question of academic profitability, based on a qualitative and quantitative study of the Dix mois d’école et d’opéra (ten months of school and opera) program, by emphasising differentiation of this impact by gender and social origin of students and the highly uncertain academic effects of these programs.

33Indirect teaching methods therefore raise the question of the conditions needed in the school space, for this to genuinely reflect back onto the learning in the curriculum, or dispositions for learning (Bonnéry & Renard, 2013; Henri-Panabière, Renard & Thin, 2013; Netter, 2018). The wager here lies in whether cultural appropriation will indeed facilitate the transfer of skills and dispositions for learning onto the learning of other knowledge, when we know that students from working-class backgrounds are not entirely comfortable with either pedagogical codes or the codes of cultural works. This is particularly true for the students involved in bridging programs or extracurricular remedial programs, who are therefore experiencing significant difficulties. In addition, these studies, like those on classroom artistic teaching, raise the issue of the difficulty in bringing students to adopt aestheticizing cultural dispositions on cultural objects that they already know and practice in a “bodily” or “oral-practical” way.

34Research also shows that partnership activities in cultural projects leads to organizations respecting a specific protocol that may be a part of what is now defined as EAC, or which may predate this in certain areas. It therefore seems like the “apparatus logic” (Barrère, 2013) seems to trump reflection on the type of action of practitioners (Frandji & Indarramendi, 2016), and particularly on the conditions of the transmission-appropriation of artworks and cultural practices (Bautier, 2006).

35Yet cultural practices are not only instrumentalized as an indirect tool in remedial teaching. They are also used as a detour towards other educational objectives beyond the school and the period of formal schooling, for example, pre-school music discovery workshops for young children which question the concept of art and cultural practices for children more generally (Bois, 2013). Finally, artistic and cultural practices are also used to broadly influence the range of attitudes and behavior considered “abnormal” among children from working class backgrounds and their families. The article by Deslyper and Eloy reveals all the work of normalizing the attitudes to time, the body, the world of children and their families, that is carried out by two youth orchestras for children from disadvantaged backgrounds. It complements the results of several other studies on youth orchestras (Deslyper & alii, 2016; Giraud, 2017).

36This now brings us to consider the question of the transmission of culture in other institutions.

Training within cultural institutions

38For example, 30 years ago, Hennion’s research on music schools and conservatoriums covered by the Ministry of Culture revealed several characteristics of these institutions: they prioritise “academic” teaching methods and a nearly exclusively “classical” repertoire to train future professionals, with a heritage of music theory from the late 19^th century, and teaching methods that focus on reading written music and solfège rather than listening appreciation (Hennion, 1988). These characteristics contrast with those of private music schools that are more open to “contemporary music” (including rap, R&B, and pop) and which promote other values to distinguish themselves from public conservatoriums. Private schools tend to be more open to the training of amateurs, they use “active pedagogy” and instrumental practice and are less focused on written music and more on oral skills and learning by example. Teaching methods in private music schools are said to be less asymmetrical and focused on transmitting programed techniques and knowledge, instead emphasizing guided learning based on pieces taken from more varied and contemporary repertoires. Behind the effects of presentation and promotion, we might question the actual teaching practices used in these private music schools, because the values demonstrated by these schools reflect the opposition in educational debate more broadly between “active” and “traditional” teaching methods. The sociology of the school has since demonstrated that these oppositions were not particularly useful in understanding either the evolutions running through the curriculum, or the learning difficulties some students may encounter (Perrenoud, 1985 ; Rochex & Crinon, 2011).

39In passing, Hennion’s research on specialised music teaching draws on the sociology of social reproduction through educational initiatives, with its observation that children of musicians were overrepresented in the senior classes of the conservatoriums. The author sees this as being due to the central place of solfège (sight reading using sol-fa syllables) in the conservatorium curriculum which serves as a social filter. This hypothesis can be examined using the knowledge produced by the sociology of education on the new renewal of implicit teaching methods. Indeed, it is perhaps not so much the importance of written notation that acts as a filter, as the tacit requirement (concealed by the focus on theory) that the student is able to articulate the reading of sheet music and the understanding of music theory with aesthetic practice, the latter being potentially conducted outside the music school in certain families.

40A similar idea is present in the research conducted by Coulangeon on the teaching of jazz (with the creation of specific schools). This “partial” schooling (because in the spirit of jazz and of these schools, overly “academic” teaching is disdained) is based on the “prerequisite of prior musical training” (Coulangeon, 1999a : 65) so that the musician’s playing is “liberated” from the constraints of the beginner. Moreover, jazz schools do not promote the same image of what a musician is, depending on whether in different periods they encourage the faithful interpretation of a preestablished repertoire or allow greater room for improvisation (Coulangeon, 1999b : 151; Lizé, 2010: 62).

41This idea of what facilitates the appropriation of music in specialised institutions can also be elucidated by the standard tools of sociology of education, particularly in terms of the invisible or implicit pedagogy (Bernstein, 1975), and prerequisites, in collusion with cultural and pedagogical codes (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1979). This allows us to question the teaching that takes place in these conservatoriums and art schools, beyond their pro-school or anti-school discourses, in terms of what they objectively enable students to appropriate of “bodily” or scholarly dispositions (Bourdieu, 2000). It also allows us to explore the coexistence or tensions between oral-practical learning, based on seeing/doing and listening/speaking, and the graphic-academic (written) form of socialisation to the arts. These questions emerged in studies on schools that teach the arts. This is the case of the study by Deslyper on “musiques actuelles” (modern/new music) schools frequented by senior school students or adults, which claim to break away from “academic” teaching and classical music. This research showed that teaching methods are still inscribed within the academic form, although it was less visible. It also showed the benefit of exploring both the choice of repertoire emphasized (contemporary music and the choices within this category) and the teaching methods (Deslyper, 2013). Deslyper’s research also revealed the effect of school socialisation on the ways in which these musicians, who all began to play outside school, practice and conceive music. After they begin studying at these schools, these musicians develop a more distanced attitude toward playing and one that was radically different from their previously more practical approach to music (Deslyper, 2018a). In this respect, this study emphasises the importance of taking into account the different kinds of (music) education in understanding artistic practice, which is still often perceived in ways that are substantialist, or at the very least extremely homogenizing, through the categories of musical genres (Deslyper, 2018b).

42Other research, still in the area of music, looks at the important role played by schools and conservatoriums in producing musicians and orchestras (Lehmann, 2002; Dubois, Méon & Pierru, 2009), or future cultural administrators (Dubois, 2013: 83-84). But these studies are mainly conducted from the perspective of the sociology of professions, and with only a few exceptions (Pégourdie & Messina, 2013) do not generally look at the specific content of this education and its teaching methods. When they do so, they demonstrate that the repertoires taught in public music institutions are always very “academic”, and often “classical”, although the latter now coexist with more “contemporary” repertoires (Lehmann, 2002: 52-56) due to the effects of competition and a greater variety of tastes among students.

43There are fewer studies (at least in the French-speaking world) on institutions for artistic education apart from music, but it would be interesting to compare the kinds of teaching – academic or oral-practical – and their effects on the reception of popular culture with reflections like Deslyper’s on “musiques actuelles” schools. The doctoral research by Vandenbunder (2011, 2015) on university level visual art schools, which takes an interactionist approach to the sociology of professions, demonstrates that behind discourses of the “unteachable” transmission of art, there is a coexistence between expectations of charismatic and spontaneous dispositions, and more traditionally academic ones. Faure also demonstrates that for dance too there is a link between “bodily” learning and ac ademic learning, looking at three institutions, a classical dance school, a contemporary dance school, and a conservatorium (2000). The training of dramatic artists has not been the subject of much research. Menger’s 1997 study looks at the wide range of educational streams and performing arts schools, situating them within the social space, but not focusing so much on the forms of transmission and appropriation (Menger, 1997). By contrast, Thibault’s monography of a British elite drama school (2016) demonstrated that the “academic form” was not a priority in the expectations of teachers during the selection of students, and even that it was kept at a distance. It would be interesting to know whether this observation continues beyond the selection process and into the teaching methods used in training actors.

44Here we have different options, essentially for the artistic training of adults in conservatoriums, which reveal that the academic form can be structural, whether denied or explicit, or it can be relatively absent. Researchers would have much to gain from exploring what lies behind these results – do they rely on the analytic criteria mobilised by researchers? Or rather the history of the arts in question and their integration into conservatorium curriculum, for example according to the place of the “body” and “bodily” learning? It would be interesting to push the debate and comparisons further by varying the criteria, for example. Given that the academic form implies repetition and practice, perhaps its greater or lesser presence in conservatoriums, depending on the artistic discipline, could be due to the different relationships between creation and interpretation of a work in that discipline; for example, “copying” in fine arts is essentially limited to sketches or distained, while interpreting and performing an non-original piece of music is considered art in itself.

45There is also a need to explore other artistic areas and confront arguments, for example in schools for “creative writing”, or cinema, or fine arts (the research conducted to date has not looked at the characteristics of the student body concerned or the teaching methods here – Talbot, 1996), although there are localised studies on fine arts programs within the university system.

46Although they do not constitute training for professional artistic practices, other forms of education have developed for children in cultural institutions. This is the case of workshops in certain museums during out-of-school hours, on Wednesdays (when there is no school), or school holidays. Upon closer investigation, these programs strongly resemble the forms of appreciation expected in the school system, reflecting the requirements for aesthetic appreciation (Desmitt, 2019). The same is true for children’s visits to museums during school time or out-of-school hours, guided by cultural mediators, the transmission of knowledge and regulated exchange remains important, an observation that is shared both by researchers who consider that traditional form of transmission is inevitable to enable cultural appropriation (Coavoux, 2015; Desmitt, 2019; Eloy, ed., 2017) and those who seem to regret the fact that visits during leisure time are so similar to those during school hours (Nouvellon & Jonchery, 2014). More generally, the study of cultural mediation has often taken into account the points of view of actors, but not necessarily compared their discourses and practices with other forms of transmission. Thus, the stated principles about breaking away from the school system appear unconvincing when compared to actual practices; for example, in comparisons between reading sessions with librarians and those with nursery school teachers (Bonnéry & Eloy, 2017). Moreover, for areas such as youth theatre, or children’s literature, cultural mediators have to grapple with the debates on preferences for works specifically targeted at young people and children, or adult works adapted to these publics (Eloy, ed., 2017; Brougère & François, 2018).

47The question of artistic education benefits from being addressed outside of situations of formal teaching. Recent pedagogical evolutions and their effects cannot be dissociated from cultural policies in this respect (Lefebvre, 2014 ; Arnaud, 2018), or from the representations that students have of musical practice and how it is taught (Burban, 2007 ; Chagnard, 2017), or even from the evolution of modes of access to employment and certification in professions related to teaching the arts (Pégourdie, 2013). Two articles in this issue adopt this perspective. Hatzipetrou-Andronikou’s article analyses the transformation of music teaching in Greece following the creation of musical secondary schools, and Cintero’s article looks at the relationship music teachers have to the pedagogical heritage of the conservatorium and the various pedagogical instructions that they are led to introduce, and of which they are also the object.

48Other research has explored the gendered dimension of institutions for teaching the arts, in particular examining the link between schooling and feminisation. The research by Faure and Garcia on the institutionalisation of hip-hop dance (Faure, 2004; Faure et Garcia, 2005) or by Hatzipetrou-Andronikou on secondary level music schools in Greece (Hatzipetrou-Andronikou, 2018) reveal a relationship between the development of teaching institutions and women’s access to artistic practices that were previously almost entirely male. Yet Hatzipetrou-Andronikou emphasises that the feminization of these practices is probably at least as much the result of the upheaval created by the institutionalisation of artistic registers previously dominated by informal learning, as it is by the creation of the institutions themselves. This enables a reorganisation of gendered social relations, at least temporarily, (Hatzipetrou-Andronikou, 2018: 146-148) because it is clear that as far as the traditional, long-established structures of artistic learning in France are concerned, education in the arts remains highly gendered (Monnot, 2012).

49Finally, the role of specialised teaching institutions has also been analysed from the perspective of their participation in the construction of a sense of vocation. This is particularly the case for Laillier’s research (2017) on the training of dancers at the Paris Opera, and, to a lesser extent, Deslyper’s work (2018c) on “musiques actuelles” schools Hatzipetrou-Andronikou (2018 : 176-182) on the musical secondary schools. The studies show how these institutions, with the support of different instances of socialisation, help students develop a feeling of being “made for this”.

Transmission in less-institutionalised practices

50Alongside the institutionalised training of adults to become professionals or amateurs there is also a whole range of other types of transmission, often described as informal, or autodidactic that take place outside of any institution and which are studied even less. From a different perspective than the one adopted in this issue, certain studies have considered the cultural training of adolescents not as socialisation (through a relationship with the other), but through themselves (Barrère, 2011), particularly by assiduous listening to recorded music, or autodidactic learning of a musical instrument (Caron, 2011). There are also practices outside institutions where amateurs give their opinions on cultural productions, which de facto contributes to their training in the arts. This is the case of fanfiction, which particularly developed through online networks around Harry Potter (François, 2013). Since then, specialised sites have emerged, such as Wattpad, where amateur writers, or simply readers read each other’s work, and comment, judge, and advise each other. What is academic about such practices? Or rather, what do they borrow, explicitly or implicitly from the “graphic-academic form” of school learning about the arts?

51In a study of peer-learning of hip-hop dances, Faure and Garcia demonstrate differences in gendered appropriation among working class girls and boys. The girls’ choreography, with exercises, repetition, and the submission of movements to musical structure, is much closer to the academic form, whilst also including an aesthetic dimension, whereas the boys’ acrobatic or athletic “performances” are often more individualised and disconnected from musical constraints, prioritising fluidity and the avoidance of pauses and repetitions (Faure & Garcia, 2003a).

52Ethnological studies on the learning of popular music practices outside specialised teaching institutions reveal both similarities with the academic form (repetition in particular), and differences (transmission through examples and immersion in active practice, without exercises disconnected from the pieces to be played – Mabru, 1996; Perrenoud, 2007: 15-52; Williams, 1998). From a similar perspective it would be fascinating to see how one learns to play music, or practice other arts with family, friends, using online tutorials, and so forth. Perhaps this would reveal different ways of resorting to what constitutes the graphic-academic form of teaching/learning; is it an echo of the traditional academic approach via an intermediary program or presenter? Or is it more through seeing/doing and hearing/speaking, as is the case in young gypsy musicians (even though these students are also encouraged to practice)?

53Finally, there are different studies that have looked at the role of parents (Jonchery, 2010; Octobre & alii, 2010; Renard, 2013a), siblings (Court & Henri-Panabière, 2012; Octobre & Berthomier, 2012), or peer groups (Arleo & Delalande, 2010; Aquatias, 2013; Becker, 2015; Legon, 2011; Octobre & alii, 2010; Pasquier, 2005; Renard, 2013b; Sirota, 2006; Vanhée, 2019) in terms of cultural practices and the construction of tastes in this area. These research studies show how different spaces of socialisation can – to different degrees and with more or less contextualised effects (Lahire, 2004) – reflect forms of socialisation at school, or, on the contrary, oppose them

54This overview allows us to gauge the acceleration in the number of recent publications in this area, and to see that although differences exist both in disciplinary approaches and ways of problematizing issues, we can see that transversal concerns and results are emerging. The pursuit of dialogue and debate in these areas can only be beneficial to the pursuit of knowledge in future research.