Research Center for Education, Learning and Didactics (CREAD)

Presentation

The general objective of the research carried out within CREAD is to understand and explain training, teaching and learning practices and the contexts in which their different actors operate. To this end, theories in the humanities and social sciences are mobilized, in particular the educational sciences, sociology, psychology and didactics. The team’s work is focused on two areas: knowledge practices, particularly within the educational institution, and education and training technologies, i.e. their design, modeling and use in relation to human development.

Research Topics

The common issue is to identify the potentially emancipatory dimensions of the systems, tools and practices observed, with a view to guiding and supporting actors in understanding, regulating and even transforming action for the purposes of education and training. Epistemic approaches and specific survey methods are discussed and experimented with in order to harmonize them with the theories and concepts mobilized and the ethical perspectives supported. There are two main research topics.

Education institutions and practices

The aim here is to analyse education and training practices by taking institutional and social contexts into account. The socio-didactic approach to the studied phenomena is based, for the didactic part, on joint action theory. The research is divided into two programs. The first, Policy, Context and Actors, mobilizes frameworks and tools from a sociological approach towards institutions (school, training, etc.). The second, Knowledge Practices, Origin and Dissemination, is concerned with the didactic aspects of what is happening within these institutions, and in particular within the actual teaching-learning practices (in the classroom, in training situations, etc.).

Tools, instruments, activity

Claiming to have their roots in the enactive epistemology of the relationship to knowledge, two groups study the forms of coupling between the arrangement of technical objects and activities. A first program, Experience and Development, Human and Technical Mediation oriented towards socio-technics, is particularly interested in adult education in various contexts (initial and continuing education, popular education, distance learning, etc.). A second program, Educational Technologies, Designs and Uses, which is more instrumental, studies training environments, the role and functions of learning artefacts and instruments, from the design of tools to their use, including the different ”hybridization” effects of training tools.

N.B.: CREAD is involved in calls for projects mobilizing numerous lecturer-researchers, research fellows and PhD students, in particular the e-FRAN project (Digital innovation for educational excellence – Digital interactions for education and teaching).

Several projects also involve partnerships with the MSHB (Human Sciences Institute in Brittany, Arts and Creation centre), Marsouin Scientific Interest Groups (GIS), and various institutions in Brittany and Pays de la Loire (Brest, Nantes, Le Mans, etc.) on university pedagogy, video artefacts, didactic approaches or the use of digital technology in education and training.