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Tradition and Progress in InitialTeacher Education in FranceSince the 1990sEstelle Brisard & Ken HallPublished online: 03 Aug 2010.

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Journal of Education for Teaching, Vol. 27, No. 2, 2001

Tradition and Progress in InitialTeacher Education in France Sincethe 1990sESTELLE BRISARDInstitute of Education, University of Stirling, Stirling FK9 4LA, Scotland

KEN HALLSchool of Education, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, England

ABSTRACT Developments aimed at transforming initial teacher education in France since theearly 1990s are examined and a contribution is made to the debate about the key factorsinvolved. The discussion is contextualised in earlier discussions in JET and in relation to thenew reforms for teacher education proposed by the Minister of Education.

CONTEXT, OBJECTIVES AND CONTENT OF THE REFORM OF TEACHER EDU-CATION IN FRANCE IN THE LATE 1980s

A Concern for Quality and a Teacher Shortage

After the Second World War France experienced the highest growth rate of national grossdomestic product in Western Europe, averaging nearly 5% annually between 1946 and1964 (Avril, 1969, p. 222). This brought about a rise in consumerism and provoked a leapin the birth rate. As was the case in many countries at the time, it was thought thatproviding a better standard of education to a greater number of individuals wouldcontribute to the growth of the economy. The French saw education as a response to socialinequalities and a possible instrument of social mobility and, consequently, populardemand for education started to rise. The school-leaving age was extended to 16 in 1959and a comprehensive lower secondary provision for all was introduced in 1975.

This democratisation, which coincided with an increase in immigration, resulted in asigni� cant change in the educational demographic landscape, a marked shift in publicexpectations for education, and a contrast in attitudes to learning. On the surface, thestructure of French schooling had been transformed to promote the ideal of equality ofopportunity. Underneath, however, the norm for success, the school’s expectations and thecurriculum, still very much re� ected the values of the higher classes. As a result of thisdichotomy pupils’ interest in school was no longer unproblematic. Many young people didnot attend school out of choice any more, and they were not too happy about the idea ofcompulsory schooling until the age of 16.

ISSN 0260-7476 print; ISSN 1360-0540 online/01/020187-11Ó 2001 Journal of Education for TeachingDOI: 10.1080/02607470120067927

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188 E. Brisard & K. Hall

With the oil crisis of 1973, any hope of long-lasting economic growth came to an end.The rise of in� ation and of unemployment, particularly among the young, led to sharp cutsin public spending. There was also an adverse discrepancy between the needs of the labourmarket and the quality of output of the education system, and it became clear that theeducation system had to be reformed if it were to adapt to the new economic and socialrequirements. Throughout the 1970s education became a favourite target for economiccutbacks and, within this context, the opportunities for a radical reform of the system werefew. Financial restraints and limited resources did not allow for the pursuit of neweducational initiatives and a reconsideration of recruitment and training policies was calledfor to address the issue of teacher surplus.

The literature of the 1980s and early 1990s revealed a keenly critical view ofeducation in France during the preceding years, induced by a growing concern for whatwas perceived as an ongoing deterioration of education provision (Forquin, 1993).Standards of literacy and numeracy were said to be falling (Bayrou, 1990). The key causesof professional unease felt among French teachers in the 1970s and 1980s were ‘thedramatic changes in the school population coupled with the fact that the imposed teachingsyllabuses and methods were the same as those used previously’ in the old schoolingsystem (Bourdoncle & Cross 1989, p. 47).

The French government eventually turned its attention to teacher training, whoseinadequate methods of teaching were held responsible for the lack of ef� ciency of theeducation system. In order to face the rising � ood of pupils entering secondary education,a large number of teaching auxiliaries (auxiliares) had been recruited at graduate level,without having to obtain a teaching quali� cation or undergo any prior training. Thisexpansion of the profession and the lowering of its level of quali� cation resulted in a lossof prestige and a decline in social status. All these factors created a negative image ofteaching, causing the applications to teacher training institutions to fall and the shortageof teachers to increase. Since teachers are major agents of change, improving the qualityof education requires a high quality provision of teacher education.

Additionally, the failure to recruit a suf� cient number of highly quali� ed teachersremained a serious concern with the prospect of the retirement of the largest generation ofteachers: those recruited in the 1960s in response to the expansion of education. Thisconcern, together with the inadequacy of the professional preparation of teachers (Judgeet al., 1994, p 68, 190; Prost, 1990, p. 180) provided the impetus for a reform of teachertraining provision.

The Inadequacy of the Existing Training Provision

Teacher training has a well-established history in France, having started as long ago as1762 with the introduction of the agregation, an academic competitive examination(concours), whose aim was to recruit teachers for the elite secondary schools of the capital(Judge et al., 1994). In the mid-nineteenth century, some practical and pedagogicalelements were introduced in both the examination and its preparation to pacify critics whodenounced their excessive academic and theoretical emphasis. These changes wereshort-lived and disappeared when the university and its faculties started to train studentsfor the concours in the late 1870s (ibid.). The agregation, however, was failing to provide

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Tradition and Progress in France 189

suf� cient teachers for the country’s secondary schools. A professional preparation for theagregation was introduced in 1902 which consisted of a short supervised teaching practicein a higher secondary school (lycee) and courses in pedagogy. After the Second World Warthe shortage of teachers was such that another competitive entry route into secondaryteaching was introduced in 1952, the Certi� cate d’Aptitude au Professorat del’Enseignement du Second Degre (CAPES), less demanding but still exclusively based onacademic performance. At the same time, local training institutions known as CentresPedagogiques Regionaux (CPR) were established to provide the successful candidates withone-year professional training. This training involved three periods of practical work inschools, including observation, speci� c classroom activities and teaching, but these CPRproved to be ill-adapted to the needs of the new teachers. From 1980 up to the reform,student teachers were given full responsibility for one or two classes during their trainingyear, under the supervision of a conseiller pedagogique , an experienced teacher but with nospeci� c mentor training. The rest of the preparation at the CPR consisted of lectures andseminars on educational psychology, teaching theories and practice and subject methodol-ogy. Although the amount of pedagogical studies in the course was increased in 1982 to ‘atleast eighty four hours of lectures, professional assignments or observation visits’ duringthe training year (Bourdoncle & Cross, 1989, p. 53), teacher education in the CPR failedto provide the students with the necessary connection between theory and practice and mostof the training happened, therefore, in situ. The inadequacy of this training provisionoriginated in its being based on two contradictory models of teacher training. The � rst, theapprenticeship model, regarded teaching as an activity that could be learned throughimitation of good practice in schools (Leselbaum, 1987). The second model, in whichstudent teachers were responsible for one or two classes throughout their training, stemmedfrom the traditional French belief that teaching is ‘inborn’ and therefore cannot be learnedor be broken down into technical competences (ibid.). As Holyoake (1993) rightlymentions, however, the one-year training at the CPR was also based on the assumption that,‘the essential characteristic of a good secondary teacher was subject knowledge’ for whichstudents were tested at � rst degree level as well as via the CAPES concours.1

The 1989 Loi d’Orientation and the Introduction of a New Initial Teacher EducationProvision in France

On the eve of the reform, three objectives were announced by the French government: totrain more, to train better, and to improve the quality of education. Teachers were toreceive a new training programme which aimed to promote teaching as a profession.

Lionel Jospin’s Loi d’Orientation (LO) came into force on 10 July 1989 and was therealisation of the then socialist government’s old dream to give all prospective teachers acommon professional training. In 1989, Francois Mitterrand’s re-election as president witha supportive new government, and with Lionel Jospin as the new Minister for Education,together with an increase of 90 billion francs in the education budget meant that allconditions were met to make the old socialist dream come true. The reform of ITE ismentioned only in Article 17 of the LO published on 14 July in the Journal Of� cial de laRepublique Francaise, under the title Les Personnels, and in the appended report under theheading Mieux Former et Mieux Recruter (MEN 1989). This new law proposed a new

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direction in teaching practice and pedagogy and placed the pupil at the centre of theeducation system. The role of the teacher had to evolve and, to this end, a new ITEprogramme was to be offered to all student-teachers from 1 September 1990 in newTeacher Training Institutions known as the Instituts Universitaires de Formation desMaitres (IUFM). The LO also requires these new institutions to provide in-service trainingand engage in educational research. Article 17 of the 1989 LO stemmed from thegovernment’s commitment to improve the image and the status of the whole of theteaching profession. A common preparation for all implied the standardisation of arequired quali� cation to graduate level for all prospective teachers and a general increasein teachers’ salaries. These were pre-requisites for a system that aimed under the initial� ve-year plan to bring 65% of pupils up to baccalaureate level, increasing this � gure to80% in the longer term. In order to achieve this the government would need to recruitapproximately 120,000 teachers by the year 2000 (MEN, 1989). The IUFM would beresponsible for recruiting and training well-quali� ed students and for providing them withuniversity-based training. This particular training was seen as the most appropriate in orderto integrate subject knowledge with subject methodology and the development of researchmethods.

Education Ministers, gathering in Paris for the OECD conference in 1990, all agreedthat ‘a well-quali� ed and adaptable teaching force was an essential factor in the quality ofthe education provision’ (OECD, 1992, p. 39). A reform of ITE, which would develop theconcept of teaching as a profession and, consequently, improve its image and social status,was essential to attract and recruit good prospective teachers. Hoyle’s de� nition ofprofessionalism (in Bourdoncle, 1991, p. 75) is useful in helping to understand what theFrench meant by une formation professionalisante . He argues that the promotion ofprofessionalism can be achieved in two ways: through the development of teachers’knowledge and competence, or alternatively through the elevation of teachers’ social statusthrough the increase in their academic quali� cations and their salary. Ideally, the � rstprocess would lead to the realisation of the second and both are perceived positively byall. Professionalism would provide teachers with higher status and salaries, and parentsand the government with improved teaching ef� ciency and thereby quality education.

The programme of teacher education � nally implemented in all 26 IUFMs inSeptember 1991, and set out in Circular n° 91–202, took up some of the propositionscontained in the 1982 Perreti Report commissioned by the then Minister of EducationAlain Savary. It was also largely informed by the report produced in October 1989 byRector Daniel Bancel on the IUFM teacher education provision which Lionel Jospin hadordered earlier that year (Bancel, 1989). The Bancel report favoured the concept of globalprofessionalism and de� ned seven competences2 which the professional teacher shouldpossess, as well as the three categories of fundamental knowledge3 on which eachcompetence is based.

The two-year secondary teacher training programme which was adopted centred onthe careful articulation of the theoretical and the practical elements of the course necessaryfor trainees to successfully analyse, re� ect on and improve their practical teaching inschools. This structure was to be achieved through a strong partnership between the IUFM,the university and the schools, and remained in place throughout the 1990s to the present.The � rst year of training is dedicated to the preparation of the theoretical part of the

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Tradition and Progress in France 191

CAPES teaching quali� cation through a competitive exam known as the concours, basedexclusively on the candidates’ theoretical knowledge of their subject.

In principle, a quarter of the � rst year is devoted to teaching practice, and to re� ectionon that practice, referred to as formation generale and formation commune,4 at the IUFMin order to prepare for the newly introduced professional elements of the concours (MEN,1991). During the second year, trainees share their time between the school and the IUFM,between practical teaching experience and the study of additional modules of generaleducational studies and subject-speci� c method courses. They also produce a professionaldissertation in which they must re� ect on a particular issue or problem relating to theirteaching practice. Overall, ‘300 hours are devoted to teaching practice in school, from 400to 750 hours to the training in the discipline, and 300 to 450 hours to general (common)educational studies’ (ibid. pp. 438–5). Student teachers are trained by highly quali� ed staffin the IUFM, most of whom come from former ITE centres for primary, vocational andsecondary education. Supervision of trainees in schools is undertaken by school-basedteacher tutors.

How successful then has the reform been in meeting its objectives?

THE ACHIEVEMENT OF THE REFORM IN LIGHT OF ITS THREE OFFICIALOBJECTIVES

Objective 1: To train more

In France, as early as 1995, the Ministry for Education reported that the objective of thereduction in teacher shortage had been reached (Robert & Terral, 2000). Bonnet notes that‘applications increased by 250 per cent between 1992 and 1994’ (1996, p. 257). Thissigni� cant increase can be explained in part by the rise of unemployment in the late 1980sand early 1990s which meant that many more students decided to opt for the stability ofemployment that civil servant status affords to teachers.5 Also, it quickly became clear thatentering the IUFM provided prospective teachers with a better guarantee of success forrecruitment via the concours (Robert & Terral, 2000). As far as the image of teachers andteaching is concerned, the results are split. The general improvement of teachers’ salariesand provision for more university-based ITE, reserved for graduates, did make theprofession more attractive in general. The government’s desire to take more account of thespeci� c nature of the training of teachers also promoted a better image of the profession.Rame reports that ‘when the trainees are asked about the societal image of the teacher,52.3 per cent of them think it is well-perceived by society in general against 47.7 per cent’6

(1999, p. 137). Clearly, though, there is still room for improvement. The fact that Frenchteachers have civil servant status allows for the attractiveness of the profession to beanalysed independently from its overall image, even more so at a time of high unemploy-ment.

Objective 2: To Train Better

In France, it seems that most studies which set out to evaluate the new ITE provisionidenti� ed two major problems: the articulation of the theoretical and the practical elements

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of the course, and the modules of formation generale and formation commune which mosttrainees condemned for being too far removed from the realities of the classroom andfrom their expectations and needs, especially during the second year of training (Asher& Malet, 1996, 1999; Charles & Clement, 1997; Coutty, 1999; MEN, 1993). As aconsequence, the trainees’ attendance at these courses varied greatly, with rates ofabsenteeism often reaching 50%, and in some cases up to 90%, despite their beingcompulsory (MEN, 1993).

Courses in subject methodology and practical application are generally well-perceived by French trainees, being more closely related to their teaching practice and totheir school-based needs (Asher & Malet, 1999; Charles & Clement, 1997). Traineesreported that the ideas, supports, strategies and methods for the classroom provided in thecontext of these modules by the IUFM or the university tutors proved very useful indeed,although they would have liked to bene� t from them much earlier in the training (Asher& Malet, 1999). Clearly, the government’s decision to place the competitive examinationat the end of the � rst year prevents any training that is not closely related to subjectknowledge and the preparation for the examination from being well integrated into the � rstyear of training. This results in a highly academic � rst year, with work very similar to whatstudents were doing during their undergraduate years. Their � rst teaching experience at thevery beginning of the second year thus comes as a great shock, since they have the feelingof not having been prepared to take responsibility for classes.

The structural inadequacy of the training has serious consequences for the quality ofthe training provided during the second year. The nature of the � rst year of training is suchthat trainees remain con� ned to the status of university students. The behaviour, workmethods and subject knowledge expected of them are still at odds with those of aclassroom teacher: hence the highly practical nature of their expectations from the secondyear of training and the rejection of anything which does not closely match their short-termneeds, teaching strategies, subject methodology and ‘recipes’ for classroom control.

The failure to establish an ef� cient connection between theory and practice in Francecan be explained by the fact that most IUFM trainers came from the abolished ecolesnormales (training centres for primary and vocational education respectively) or the CPR,and provided a type of training which was no longer adapted to the new prevailing model.University researchers in education were experts in only one of the fundamental disci-plines and as such they were not able to cover the whole education � eld. They thusprovided lectures which appeared rather remote from trainees’ preoccupations (MEN,1993). However, as Asher and Malet rightly assert, ‘the real and pervading dif� culty forthe successful operationalisation of the IUFMs … continued to be the antipathy of theuniversities to the “upstart” instituts’ (1996, p. 276). In France, the whole idea of a partner-ship between professional training institutions, the universities and the schools was no lessthan a small-scale revolution when one considers the weight of tradition. The Napoleoniclycees (elitist secondary schools) were established under the legal framework of theUniversite Imperiale,7 hence the strong link between secondary and higher education.As a consequence, France adopted an academic orientation in secondary teacher education.The model of the cultivated man requiring no practical training is deeplyentrenched in the culture of secondary teacher education in France (Bourdoncle, 1990). The

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Tradition and Progress in France 193

didactic models presented by the university in France are inadequate in the context ofteacher education, relying as they do on the cours magistral (lecture) as the main didacticapproach and not at all on any teaching strategies motivated by a desire to promotelearning. The concern for subject expertise can be traced back to the agregation and itshyper-specialised nature. Judge et al. rightly point out that the agrege (someone who hassuccessfully passed the agregation) ‘epitomizes the French concern with national aca-demic standards’ at secondary and higher education level (1994, p. 65). Pedagogy andfundamental educational disciplines have always been looked down upon in France. Notonly was their potential integration to the training of secondary teachers seen as detrimen-tal to specialist subject expertise, but it challenged the widely accepted belief in secondaryand higher education circles that one is born a teacher, and that teaching cannot be learned.In the light of this tradition, the collaboration of the university, the IUFM and the schoolsin a common, professional preparation for elementary, secondary and vocational teachersat postgraduate level after 1989 was a small revolution indeed.

Objective 3: To Promote Professionalism in Teaching

The formation commune and the professional dissertation were the two new elements inthe French ITE programme of the 1990s. The promotion of the model of the professionalteacher was to be achieved through the emergence of a common culture among allteachers, a necessary sense of belonging to the same professional body. The idea of theprofessional teacher necessarily lies with the existence and diffusion among the membersof that profession of a body of fundamental educational knowledge. This knowledge isgenerated through research and informs the professional teacher’s re� ection on practice,hence the introduction of the re� ective element of the professional dissertation. However,Charles and Clement reported in 1997 that only 25.8% of the students found it useful,whilst 74.2% considered it to be hardly useful or downright useless. The common elementsof the programme were neither well received nor adhered to, as explained earlier. As Langpoints out, continuity prevails over change in the training provided by the IUFM, and thenewly introduced professional elements of the course have not been successfully integratedso far (1999, p. 229). The reform has been successful in the second aspect of profession-alism, however, de� ned earlier as the elevation of teachers’ social status through theincrease of their academic quali� cations and of their salaries. The provision of university-based training, in autonomous institutions also in charge of in-service training andeducational research can, at least in principle, be recognised as a move towards moreprofessionalism. However, the IUFM were only fully recognised as HEI institutionsallowed to produce research from 1997 and in-service training only came within the remitof the IUFM in 1998.

In order to make professional teachers out of IUFM students, the gap between thetheoretical and practical elements of the course must be bridged. The existence ofcompetitive entry examinations as a recruitment process as a whole, or at least their timingand content, needs to be reconsidered. The concours, if it remains, should be moreprofessional and should generally take into greater account the original purpose: to recruitschoolteachers. There is also a need to rede� ne the concept of partnership between the

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university and the IUFM, and between the IUFM and the schools, as well as the role ofmentors in schools, whose need for formal training has not yet been acknowledged.Finally, new teachers should be made aware of the means available to them to further theirprofessional development through in-service training—the continuity of the two trainingprocesses being crucial in the promotion of professionalism. A procedure of induction intothe profession after the two years of training would also be advisable, in which newteachers have a reduced timetable and still bene� t from the supervision of a trainedmentor, who has been relieved of some of his or her teaching responsibilities for thispurpose. The current English model could serve as a template for this.

TEN YEARS ON: CURRENT PROPOSALS FOR INITIAL TEACHER EDUCATIONIN FRANCE

With the announcement of a new reform of the IUFM ten years after their creation, it washoped that an attempt to address the serious needs for ITE outlined above was under way.In Spring 2000 the Minister for Education, Claude Allegre, presented Jospin’s socialistgovernment’s reform project both for the competitive entry examination and for ITE ingeneral (MEN, 2000). The project introduced many relevant changes. Most importantly,the CAPES would now be more closely related to the national curriculum taught inschools, and the professional component of the oral examination would be based on acompulsory school-based experience undertaken by all candidates who pass the writtenpart of the concours. Additionally, an induction period of one year for all newly quali� edteachers would be introduced, during which they would bene� t from three hours’ teachingrelief per week in order to further their training at the IUFM or within the school with amentor. The mentors would be paid extra for their training duties and be granted partialteaching relief as well. Additional support would be available the following year as afurther means to facilitate new teachers’ full-time entry into the profession.

On 23 March, however, a press release announced the withdrawal of the reform of theconcours due to a lack of consensus on the project (Sirantoine & Demonque, 2000). The� nal nail in the cof� n came on 27 March when Claude Allegre was replaced by Jack Langat the Ministry for Education and the reform was abandoned.

Nearly a year later, on 27 February 2001, Jack Lang presented his own project forwhat he calls the ‘renovation’ of the IUFM training provision, to be implemented inSeptember 2002 (Baumard, 2001; Marshall, 2001). The new project differs greatly fromthat of March 2000. Hardly any major changes are introduced for secondary ITE.Moreover, for fear of rejection of the project and because of a tight education budget, itfails to address the two main concerns underlined in the above retrospective: a reform ofthe entry concours, and the need for a progressive and well-supported induction intoteaching for trainees. For secondary ITE, the new reform will introduce twenty hours ofschool-based experience in the � rst year of training, as well as various compulsorymodules on the history and epistemology of the subject matter at � rst degree level. AllCAPES candidates will now bene� t from the training programme provided by the IUFM,they will no longer be subject to a process of selection. Additionally, during the secondyear of preparation, new professional modules will aim to address issues such as violencein school, mixed-ability teaching and pupils’ learning dif� culties. Since most � rst teaching

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Tradition and Progress in France 195

positions after qualifying are at 11–16 level, trainees will have to be placed in a college(lower secondary school) as a priority rather than in a lycee (post-16) during the secondyear of training. The most costly aspect of Lang’s project is the provision of three weeksof further training for newly quali� ed teachers and another two weeks during their secondyear. Finally, the reform project will ensure that all IUFM tutors have recent and relevantteaching experience in order to improve the link between the school-based and IUFM-based components of the course.

CONCLUSION

Given the traditional rejection by universities of the fundamental disciplines of education(i.e. Sciences de l’education—sociology, psychology, history of education etc.), and of theneed for any form of professional training for teachers, the creation ten years ago, ofautonomous postgraduate teacher training institutes could be seen as a clever means tointroduce a model of preparation outside the university which the universities mightotherwise have rejected. The new training still retains a high degree of subject-knowledgespecialism but now favours an approach which actively promotes the concept of profes-sionalism. In the French context, this implies an HE-based form of training centred onthe careful articulation of the theoretical and the practical elements of the course and onthe development of re� ective skills and research methods. It seems that a belief that ‘theproper job of teachers is to hand down academic learning irrespective of circumstances’dies hard in France, thus accounting for the fact that academic achievement and theacquisition of decontextualised education theory are still paramount to actual teachingpractice and the development of professional skills (Bonnet, 1996). Whilst the 1989 reformwent some way towards addressing the practical needs of trainees it stopped short of aradical challenge to the old system, as exempli� ed by the continued existence of theconcours as a fundamental element of the training process, and the perpetual hierarchy ofthe academic over the professional.

The fact that Jack Lang’s current proposals maintain this status quo, for fear ofoverall opposition to the reforms, may be to the detriment of other innovative measureswhich they contain. However, the degree of success or failure of these latest reforms canonly be judged fairly when there has been suf� cient time to consider fully their implica-tions, monitor the public and professional reaction to them, and assess their impact on thesystem.

NOTES

[1] Holyoake (1993) provides a complementary account on the history of teacher education in Franceat primary and vocational level.

[2] Organise a pedagogical action plan; Prepare and implement a learning situation; Promote theemergence of a positive occupational project in pupils; Work effectively with partners; Monitor andassess the learning process; Manage relationships in the classroom; Provide methodological supportwith pupils’ personal learning needs.

[3] Knowledge of the subject matter and of its teaching; Knowledge of pupils’ learning process;Knowledge of the education system.

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[4] Circular 91–202 stated that formation generale aimed ‘to enable prospective teachers to acquire thenecessary professional skills’ while the objective of formation commune was ‘to promote theemergence of a common professional culture among all teachers’.

[5] Successful trainees receive accredited teacher status and become members of the Civil Service(fonctionnaires). The Ministry of Education can then assign quali� ed secondary teachers as requiredto a school anywhere in France (Asher & Malet, 1996; 281; Bonnet, 1996: 264).

[6] Authors’ translation.[7] In 1806, Napoleon established the Universite Imperiale (Imperial University), which had sole

authority for educational administration in France.

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