What Practices for a Better Democratization of School Aids?

Abstract

A recent strong thesis questioned actors in the field (teachers, college principals, teaching assistants, students, senior education advisors) on the question of aid as a means of democratization of the school, success of more destitute. Four positions emerged with institutional, pedagogical and family recommendations. They all express practices whose aims are the fight against failure, school dropout and inequalities. The theoretical framework is part of the work of Bautier and Rochex, (1997), and Broccholichi (1995), Meirieu (2001). The methodology consists of thirty-nine semi-structured interviews and the treatment is a thematic analysis of content. The originality of the study is the reflection at better conditions for useful aids outside the classroom.

Thus, through a deductive approach, we have drawn some conditions for the help to be useful to students outside the classroom: to improve the diagnosis of school difficulty; target aid; put coherence in the actions; promote student volunteering with complementary modules based on a skills framework; reform the tasks. The success of aids also depends on changes to be made outside the classroom; reorganize the personalized help; focus on fundamental learning and diversify teaching methods: set up complementary modules with a reference system of skills; avoid the multiplication of aids; change the structure of the aid; integrate help into the teaching profession; train the actors of the helpers; change school rhythms, really involve families; evaluate the aid Strengthen the partnership between the aid and external actors.