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This book is the result of the communications that took place during the conference organized by CAREF (the Amiens Center for Research in Education and Training), part of the University of Picardie Jules Verne, Amiens. This conference, entitled “Objets pour apprendre, objets à apprendre : quelles pratiques enseignantes pour quels enjeux?” (Objects to Learn About and Objects for Learning: Which Practices for Which Issues?), took place on June 11 and 12, 2019, following a study day on the same theme held on December 10, 2014, in Amiens.

The objective of this colloquium was to question the place and role of objects mobilized within classical or innovative pedagogical practices, from kindergarten to university, in France and in other national contexts. It favored a transversal approach that enabled a coming together of various educational fields (disciplines, subjects, fields of activity), comparing the views of practitioners, trainers and researchers, statuses that are sometimes held cumulatively by the same individuals. From this perspective, the work of the conference focused on the objects that teachers and educators use, ask for, call upon, interrogate or create, together with their pupils, in the various educational fields.

We consider an object to be a “learning object” if it is included within a teaching–learning project. The use of one or more objects results from a pedagogical choice made by the teacher or the facilitator; this choice, restricted to a greater or lesser degree by the institution, is more generally an educational decision, or a policy decision. This object must be considered both in its materiality that permits engagement with the senses and under other aspects – the object as a production, as a creation, as a symbol, etc. – enabling it to be engaged in a variety of ways, both material and intellectual. It is generally considered not on its own but within a wider set of objects, functions and uses that form a system within or outside the educational context. Moreover, each object is generally involved in a set of relationships: it can also be considered singular or general, contingent or universal, moving from uniqueness to collection or series, from its singularity to the category that encompasses it, the same term sometimes pointing to these different definitions. These “objects for learning” are also “objects to learn about” when the learning objective for the pupils or for the teachers is the object itself: the term “object” then covers a set of knowledge and skills associated with a specific area of learning.

Choosing these objects, the ways in which one makes use of them and the effects that one expects from them are first and foremost a matter of the point(s) of view: these points of view can be very different according to the field in which these objects are apprehended or according to the educational level. The status and nature of the objects in the classroom are diverse, as Joël Lebeaume analyzes in the introductory text to this book: some exist outside school, others are designed specifically for educational or, more specifically, school uses; some of them remain school objects despite being obsolete in everyday life (the Roberval balance¹, the 4.5 V battery²); conversely, others have disappeared from schools (slide rules, spirit duplicators and other now-vintage objects). Certain objects are integrated into the school tradition and are iconic of particular disciplines (geography wall maps, the compass, the set square, the microscope, the chronological timeline and flash cards), areas of learning (temporal and spatial points of reference, learning about the world³, etc.) or even more generally of the school (posters, mascots, etc.). Furthermore, the generalization of information and communication technologies legitimizes the introduction or integration of new objects or systems in the classroom.

This book tackles the question of objects in education and teaching by adopting different points of view without seeking to be exhaustive. Its approach lies in attacking, as it were, this theme by calling upon various stakeholders (researchers, teachers, trainers) who work within different communities and who often have little to do with one another. This aspiration, which the scientific committee adopted and fully supported, is reflected in a wide variety of contributions. The levels of education concerned thus range from pre-school to university and the objects referred to cover a very wide field from the train of the days of the week in kindergarten to the Minkowski diagram in a 12th grade science major, via the geographical map at the end of elementary school and the start of junior high (middle school).

Varied corpora have been constituted: video recordings and transcriptions of sessions, output from pupils or learners more generally (musical scores in pre-school, maps, drawings, printouts, etc.). Depending on the frameworks of analysis and the opportunities for observation or experimentation, they may give rise to case studies or call for various work to identify typologies or enable quantitative analyses. The relationships between researchers and practitioners are multiple too: the researcher can also be the practitioner, the designer of an engineered device, the external observer of a situation or a stakeholder in collaborative research. Professional testimonies (Chapters 5 and 8 of Volume 1 and Chapters 4, 5 and 9 of Volume 2) accompany the research texts in this book: these testimonials, which provide more detail on the pedagogical descriptions and professional issues raised, come from teachers involved in the research or from researchers who have undertaken careful analysis of the research in which they have participated. These different researcher positions invariably shed light on what is being described and investigated: standard practices or more expert practices in collaboration with the researcher(s). Finally, these analyses also make it possible to learn more about professional practices and institutional frameworks specific to various national contexts: mainland France and its overseas territories, and also Spain, Greece and Switzerland.

The book begins with an introductory text by Joël Lebeaume that contextualizes and problematizes the theme of the book by summarizing the inaugural presentation of the conference. This is followed by an Introduction to the Subject (contributed by Sylvain Fabre) that demonstrates, for one type of object and one particular disciplinary context (the plastic arts), how pupil activity can result in the creation of an artistic object from an everyday object (a chair).

The two volumes consist of five parts, drawing together research texts and professional testimonies. Part 1 of Volume 1 examines the links between objects and language. Part 2 of Volume 1 is devoted to the place of objects in early learning in nursery school. Then, Part 1 of Volume 2 explores one specific area of teaching–learning content – space and time. Part 2 of Volume 2 investigates records of activity with objects. The two volumes conclude with Part 3 of Volume 2, comprising three chapters that offer, transversally, contrasting points of view on objects, as well as perspectives for future work.