Plan
Haut de pageReflecting on knowledge and learning in the institutional management of academic underachievement (practices, measures and policies)
Issue coordinators
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Sandrine Garcia: Professor of Sociology, IEP Lyon, member of the Triangle Laboratory, associated with IREDU, sandrine.garcia@sciencespo-lyon.fr
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Fabienne Montmasson-Michel: senior lecturer in sociology, Inspé, member of GRESCO, University of Poitiers, fabienne.montmasson.michel@univ-poitiers.fr
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Charlotte Moquet: Doctor of Sociology, associated with GRESCO, postdoctoral researcher at CRESPPA-CSU, CNRS research engineer, charlotte.moquet01@univ-poitiers.fr
Argument
This issue will focus on a central dimension of educational inequality: the undervaluing, relegation and even prevention of school learning in systems that are supposed to support pupils who have fallen too far behind in academic expectations. In a society of “total schooling” (Cayouette-Remblière, 2016), schools now provide long-term education for all children and young people, managing heterogeneity through individualised pathways (Frandji & Rochex, 2011; Losego, 2024) in line with programmes that deviate to a greater or lesser extent from the “for all” curriculum (Barrère, 2013). In France, they have been present in the Republic's schools since the remedial classes created in 1909 for “backward” children, and their numbers have gradually increased, particularly in recent decades: “remedial” or “reschooling” programmes such as bridging classes or workshops; second chance schools (Asséré, 2018; Millet & Thin, 2003); “specialised” or “adapted” schooling in CLIS [localised classes for school inclusion] (Millet & Croizet, 2013); SEGPA [adapted general and vocational education sections] (Moquet, 2023; Roiné, 2010); and therapeutic and educational support through CMPPs [medical-psychological-pedagogical centres] (Morel, 2014), IMEs [medical-educational institutes] or ITEPs [therapeutic-educational institutes] (Dupont, 2016). These measures are now being rolled out as part of the so-called “inclusive school” policy (without, however, replacing the previous ones): ULIS [localised units for school inclusion], UEE [externalised teaching units], DAR [self-regulation measures], etc., where the school world and the medico-social sector come together more closely. The aim here is not to gather contributions that aim to assess the progress made by inclusive schooling, however, but to objectively assess the status accorded to knowledge and its transmission in the management of educational difficulties, whether or not they relate to situations of disability.
Special educational needs, an international inclusive paradigm
These specifically French measures more broadly reflect the advent of the inclusive paradigm in public education policies, which is now widely disseminated, albeit unevenly depending on the national context (Plaisance, 2024). In Switzerland, for example, the Canton of Vaud's policy of inclusive education within a national and administrative framework that differs greatly from the French context reveals unique variations but a similar logic (Bovey, Durler, Losego, Angelucci, & Sotirov, 2025). Beyond disability – a concept that is obvious to common sense but has scientifically unclear contours – the logic of the measures has been extended to the broad category of “special educational needs” [SEN]. Forged in England in the 1960s and institutionalised as a category of public action in the 1980s (Woollven, 2021), the concept of “special educational needs” spread worldwide in the 1990s, promoted by international organisations, with a “vagueness” and “instability of contours” that is inherent in the concept (Ebersold & Armagnague, 2021). With a focus on the “specific needs” of pupils, we see a logic of individualisation in the countries of the “North” from the end of the 20th century that tends to erase the political issue of social inequalities in education (Frandji & Rochex, 2011). However, other national contexts have developed an understanding of inclusion in conjunction with certain social issues. This is the case in Latin American countries, and is the result of a political construct inherited from the trajectories of intercultural bilingual education (IBE) and the struggles for epistemic plurality. Nevertheless, the question of understanding what is taught and to whom remains relevant in segmented systems that distribute school time, educational options, expectations and material learning conditions unevenly based on social origin (Brenet & Galli, 2017; Dussel, 2004; Pérez & Krichesky, 2015). Diverse national contexts and BEPs in the broad sense will therefore be included within the scope of the topic when it comes to studying the institutional management of student “diversity” that signals an (excessively) significant gap between institutional expectations and the curriculum-programme, “common core”, basic skills: in other words, a “school handicap” from the perspective of institutional sociology (Bodin, 2018).
Undervaluing knowledge: an often overlooked aspect of school inclusion policies
While educational inclusion can be defined according to two components – attending school among one's “ordinary” peers on the one hand, and receiving the school curriculum “like everyone” on the other – it must be concluded that the latter term is only rarely central to political, and even academic, reflections on educational inclusion. The signs of knowledge undervaluation are not unique to France. A report by the French General Inspectorate, which travelled on a mission to seek sources of inspiration in Italy, which is a pioneer in educational inclusion, observed the particularly kind and attentive welcome young Italians reserve for their peers with disabilities in schools, while emphasising that the issue of learning is not a priority and is rarely questioned in this institutional system, which is exemplary in many respects (Caraglio & Gavini, 2018). More recently, an analysis of the inclusive education programme in the canton of Vaud in Switzerland (“Concept 360°”, which came into effect in 2019) shows the centrality of the concept of “needs” in this programme, while knowledge, learning and inequalities are a glaring blind spot (Durler, 2025). It is therefore in our interests to examine these public policies and their concrete implementation from close up.
Despite their differences, these various measures, programmes and structures are all presented as a means of helping and supporting schooling, even though they often circumvent academic difficulties rather than addressing and overcoming them. Thus, when the “interstitial measures” of special education were converted to “inclusive schooling” (Bovey, 2024; Ebersold, 2021), pupils were put in a state of permanent uncertainty as to whether they would remain in “mainstream schools” and imposed a “shared schooling” system on them that compromises the continuity of their learning (Lansade, 2021). All these characteristics might be imagined to be detrimental to pupils with low achievement and more difficult and lengthy learning processes. These approaches can lead to the amplification, crystallisation and normalisation of persistent – and sometimes considerable – gaps in terms of the acquisition of academic knowledge. This circumvention can be rationalised by the people involved as a way of someday returning to knowledge that has been difficult to grasp, as in what has been theorised as a “pedagogy of detours” (Panabière, Renard and Thin, 2013), but a return of this kind is still highly uncertain. It may also be a conscious decision to give up certain types of learning in the name of adaptation: no longer writing, reading or calculating, using various technical aids that are abundantly available in contemporary digital resources (such as text-to-speech, voice dictation and soon artificial intelligence). At the same time, this relinquishment can take the form of replacing general knowledge with vocational content as a prelude to a shift towards vocational education, whose courses and qualifications are still overlooked in secondary education (Cayouette-Remblière, 2016; Palheta, 2012). It can also refer to challenges for professionals, allowing them to distinguish themselves from ordinary teachers whose attitude is felt to be rigid or school-centred (Barrault-Stella, Garcia, & Vélu, 2016) or to free themselves from the heavy programmatic constraints of the school while retaining their legitimacy (Kherroubi, Millet, & Thin, 2018; Moquet, 2023). Thus, far from being “equalising”, these adaptations and methods of accessing knowledge may more often prove to be “palliative” or “adaptive” “ (Garcia, 2021): they may make it possible to share a mainstream education with peers of the same age group, which is undoubtedly a social improvement over segregation-based approaches, but they do not guarantee the best conditions for acquiring crucial academic knowledge. In fact, these practices may hinder the empowerment of young people who will soon – and earlier than others – be required to become employable (Agraz, Jacques, & Montmasson-Michel, 2023; Moquet, 2020).
From the margins to a structuring principle of education systems?
This undervaluing of knowledge has often been criticised through the theme of teachers “adapting” to pupils from working-class backgrounds in EAZs (Laparra, 2012). However, it may also be systematic in nature, as a form of “support” provided to pupils in difficulty, which we believe justifies making it a subject in its own right; the “inclusive schooling” policy could serve as an emblematic example of this. What was perceived as a logic of “margins” could well be treated as a structuring principle at the heart of the logic of educational policies and school institutions in France and elsewhere. Our hypothesis is that it reinforces and legitimises mainstream schooling dominance in the sense that while making the still-prevalent logic of social inequalities in education invisible, it also captures young people's school and out-of-school time by means of mechanisms and practices that ultimately maintain or reinforce their difficulties, while at the same time serving all kinds of professional interests (but that is not our primary purpose here). Far from being simply useless or ineffective in terms of academic achievement, the mechanisms, programmes and structures of “inclusive schooling” constitute an institutional investment in the renunciation of “normal” schooling (that is, also leading to the modal baccalaureate level) and the “social returns of wasted time” (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1970, pp. 251-252). In other words, it is a gentle form of elimination that is certainly costly in terms of time and resources, but that allows the institution to divert attention from intractable academic problems by shifting the responsibility for their “failure” to acquire the knowledge that the nation has established as a “common core” on to students who have received long-term support.
Disciplinary scope and proposed areas for reflection
The issue will seek articles that examine various forms and rationales for circumventing, undervaluing or preventing school learning at various levels, within the framework of social science research with a strong empirical basis: sociology, history, education science, political science and anthropology. Historical approaches can, of course, contribute to these reflections by studying the rationales that preceded, and perhaps paved the way for, the emergence of schools of measures and “inclusive schools” as they manifest themselves in contemporary society. The issue will also welcome contributions that show approaches that are more conducive to effective school retention or re-engagement in terms of knowledge, with the objective of outlining the social conditions that make this possible. Contributions focusing on non-European contexts are also welcome in order to gain an understanding of the place of knowledge in approaches or measures for pupils experiencing difficulties in such contexts. Four areas of focus are envisaged, with indicative and non-restrictive suggestions for questions:
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Theme 1 focuses on the school experience of pupils with “special educational needs” in relation to learning and school knowledge. What relationships with knowledge and learning do these pupils develop? What difficulties or “socio-cognitive misunderstandings” (Bonnéry, 2007) do they face? What ways do they use to take in knowledge and get around learning? What mismatches with expected knowledge do they show, and what's the logic behind it?
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Theme 2 focuses on the professions, professional skills and teaching practices of inclusive schools and their effects on the transmission and acquisition of academic knowledge. Who are the professionals who have to deal with pupils' distancing themselves from academic expectations? What are their professional socialisation and working conditions? What practices result from this and what are their socialising effects on pupils in terms of the knowledge transmitted or learning achieved?
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Theme 3 analyses the differentiation or adaptation strategies implemented by teachers to resolve “ordinary” academic difficulties relating to pupils who are not, or not yet, considered to have “special needs” but who fail to complete the tasks laid down in the common curriculum. What practices are implemented by these teachers and in what contexts? What constraints, resources, conceptions of pupils and expected learning outcomes are these practices based on? What effects do they have on the knowledge transmitted or learning achieved?
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Theme 4 focuses on the place and treatment of knowledge in educational policies and institutional approaches to managing gaps in curricular expectations in the North and South alike, whether in the form of “inclusive school” measures, support for pupils with “special needs”, “specific needs”, “difficulties” or “severe difficulties”, etc. What does the adaptation of school learning cover from the point of view of institutional discourse? What form(s) does it take depending on the context, the subject area, the teachers and the pupils?
The aim of this issue is to examine the role played by knowledge and learning in managing deviations from curricular expectations through a study of institutional logic, professional practices, teaching methods and measures, and student experience.
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Schedule
The special issue will be published in the Cahiers de la recherche sur l’éducation et les savoirs, no. 26 scheduled for release in autumn 2027.
Using the form attached to the call for papers, abstract proposals must be submitted by 28 February 2026 at the latest, simultaneously to the dossier coordinators and the journal's editorial board.
Proposals, which may cover any social science discipline, may be written in French, English or Spanish. After review by the CRES editorial board, authors will be notified of the outcome by 15 March 2026 at the latest.
If accepted, articles must be submitted by 31 July 2026 at the latest.
The editorial board would like to take this opportunity to remind contributors that the journal also has a ‘varia’ section for which articles on education and knowledge may be submitted.
Contacts
Etienne Gérard, etienne.gerard@ird.fr
Pierre Guidi pierre.guidi@ird.fr
Sandrine Garcia, sandrine.garcia@sciencespo-lyon.fr
Fabienne Montmasson-Michel, fabienne.montmasson.michel@univ-poitiers.fr
Charlotte Moquet, charlotte.moquet01@univ-poitiers.fr
Document annexe
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Proposal form (application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document – 35k)


