Call for papers
International Symposium, Lyon, 5-6 June 2019
Organized by LARHRA - Lyon University and CREHS – Artois University, with the support of: Centre d’études et de recherche sur les qualifications (Céreq), Comité d’histoire des administrations chargées du travail, de l’emploi et de la formation professionnelle (Chatefp), ESPE Lille Nord de France
From the Astier law to the “baccalauréat professionnel”. Young people and work : apprenticeship, training and vocational guidance
How did the extension of schooling and the economic and technical changes transform the relations between young people, initial vocational training and work ? A century after the Astier law of July 25, 1919, a major step in France that gives a first definition of technical education and that makes training mandatory for boys and girls under 18 employed in trade and industry, and a century also after the french agricultural education act of 1918, the conference scheduled for June 2019 will focus on the history of vocational training in the 20th century. At different scales and in an international perspective, paying attention to the diversity of training and their audiences as well as to changes in the labor market, the objective will be, through the history of vocational training, to deepen the knowledge of complex relationships between young people and work in the 20th century.
Argument
The upheavals in work history during the 20th century have been accompanied by changesin educational systems, in which the place devolved to training at work, both throughschooling and in apprenticeship training, has become preponderant : for example, in France,22% of bachelor's graduates, nearly 180,000 students, are in the vocational sector. Previousdecades have paid little attention in this regard, despite the extent of the changes reported :among the four million boys and girls aged 13 to 18 in France around 1939, 90,000 childrenbarely attended technical and vocational schools, and 105,000 girls and boys were enrolled inupper primary schools (Briand et al., 1987). To these numbers, we must add those of thecomplementary courses and especially those of professional courses - the latter beingfollowed only by 12% of young people under 18 years who worked in commerce and industrydespite the obligation enacted by the Astier law twenty years earlier. Despite the differencesin age, level and curriculum, for boys and girls over 13 years of age released from compulsoryeducation (14 in 1936), work remained at that time a massive reality, and education was stilllargely confined to primary school curricula. In 1954, 59% of boys and 42% of girls aged 16were already working ; in 1966, these percentages still amounted to 46% and 33%respectively. In 1968, one in four workers was under 25 years of age (Sohn, 2001). Behind"the school explosion", according to the formula initiated by Louis Cros, it is a wholerelationship with work that is undergoing rapid upheavals whose repercussions are to besought in the rise of "young cultures" (Sohn, 2001; Bantigny, 2007). The number of youngpeople in initial vocational training confirms the magnitude of the upheavals : in 1985-1986,nearly 800,000 students and apprentices prepared a professional degree (“BEP” or a “CAP”) -a whole section of the education system, gladly referred to a situation described as relegatedand dominated (Grignon, 1971). The prolongation of schooling, the rise in the level ofdiplomas, have tended to mask not only the maintenance of this work by young people andthe characteristics of their jobs, but also the situation of apprentices, who have left schoolstatus while still following a general and vocational training. In the collective representations,the figure of the young worker was then erased in favor of a summary opposition between"young student" and "young delinquent".The conference therefore aims to address the transformations of technical and vocationaleducation. Since the 1980s, the history of this education is a dynamic field of research, asevidenced by the first historical reviews (Tanguy, 2000 ; Marchand, 2005) and conferences(Gayot and Minard 2001, Bodé and Marchand 2003, Charmasson 2005). The collective workinitiated in 2011 by the centenary of the “CAP” (Brucy, Maillard, Moreau, 2013) and theresearch presented on the occasion of the thirty years of the “baccalauréat professionnel” in2015, highlighted this challenge of 20th century training of employees and workers at differentlevels of qualification. But much remains to be done to better understand the changes thathave occurred since the 1914-1918 war, which emphasized the urgency of the training issue,until the creation of this “baccalauréat professionnel” intended to rehabilitate a path oftraining battered by its full integration into the unified education system since the 1960s.Organized on the occasion of the centenary of the Astier law, this colloquium aims tocontribute to a better knowledge of vocational training in the 20th century by taking part inrecent historiographical developments. Thus, technical education and vocational training areconsidered here in all its diversity:
- Diversity of the scales of analysis and their crossing: from local to transnational, colonialand post-colonial situations, comparative approaches
The demonstration of the importance of the local supply of education has encouraged a fruitful reflection on the relations between the local and the national (Bodé and Savoie, 1995). The use of this interactionist perspective deserves to be extended by the study of intermediate levels, as the departmental inventories of technical education have undertaken (Bodé and Vènes, 2004; Bodé and Folz-Gaveau, 2005; Bodé and Le Buhan, 2007) or studies about a city (Suteau, 1999), an agglomeration (Thivend and Schweitzer, 2005), a department or a region (Lembré, 2013, Tomamichel, 2014). As an extension of this work, the issue of relations between formations and territories remains a major stake, which supposes to be studied in its diversity, including in its ultramarine configurations where, for a long time, the number of professional high schools and the proportion of adolescents who go (or are oriented) to it is higher than the national average. The transnational approach should also be fully integrated, as a result of innovative work that takes education, and especially technical education, as an international field of action (Matasci, 2012). The better consideration of the movements of actors and ideas, gives hope for the criticism of national models and the deconstruction of some myths about workforce training (Heikkinen and Lassnigg 2015, Berner and Gonon 2016, Lamamra and Moreau 2016). How can the French choice of schooling technical apprenticeship, willingly opposed to other models, at the expense, sometimes, of a careful reading of the internal diversity of national systems (Greinert, 2005), be understood from the perspective of other choices and other systems, regional or national ? Finally, we will pay particular attention to the proposals for surveys on technical and vocational education in colonial or post-colonial situations (Kallaway, 2002, Paterson, 2005, Sarkar, 2012). Working on the empire grounds allows to conduct investigations on the effects of vocational training on the emergence of new actors of colonization, these "subordinate auxiliaries of colonization" (Barthélémy 2010), employees and workers. How is vocational training in a colonial context specific ? To what extent does the study of post-colonial evolutions make possible to identify the weight of inheritances and the extent of transformations (Bandeira Jeronimo, Dores and Matasci, forthcoming)?
- Diversity of training specialties and their audiences : gender analysis and intersectionality
The historiography of technical and vocational education was first built from an implicit male figure, the skilled worker in the industry, and especially metallurgical. This bias can be explained on the one hand by the long numerical predominance of male formations - from the 1930s to the 1960s, boys were still in the majority in the training sectors - and on the other hand by their extreme concentration in the industrial sectors. However, the continuous increase of girls in the technical and vocational sectors from the 1940s (40% of students in vocational education were girls at the beginning of the 1960s) encourages further exploration of feminine training still too little known for the 20th century, from the craft trades (Divert, 2011), to tertiary ones - trade and office (Bodé and Thivend, 2012) or care professions inherited from the household sector. Gendered approaches of vocational education are excepted, in order to reveal the role of vocational education in the historical construction of gender inequality at work. Moreover, the symposium envisages studies mobilizing a grid crossing "class, race, gender". Finally, against a too homogenizing vision of vocational education, the conference aims to promote the diversity of sectors, from "massive" like metallurgy to small-sized sectors such as crafts ( Suteau, 2012), or agriculture (Boulet, 2003), the latter area being too often the subject of separate analyzes (Cardi, 2004).
- Diversity of mobilizable sources
Can we mobilize "new" sources for the exploration of relationships between young people,training and work ? We think here of the neglected wealth of the patrimony of technical andvocational education and the contributions of analysis to the prism of material culture(Lambert and Lembré, 2017). There is also a need to undertake extensive research on learningof technical gestures, on methodological contributions of works related to visual studies. Similarly, oral sources are still too little convened to expand the very contemporary history ofthe trainings (Frank and Mignaval, 2004). Finally, some archives rarely or never solicitedfrom this perspective should be consulted, for example those of the army. In short, thisconference hopes to renew the questionnaires by "inventing" new sources for investigationsthat are as much historical as anthropological or ethnological.
In support of these transversal perspectives, this conference will deal with four majorquestions :
1. Public policies and the development of vocational education : institutions and their actors
Studies of administrations involved in the training of youth at work / The question of financing public and private vocational training
Attitudes of the employers, the unions, the associations with regard to the training at work
2. Certifications and qualifications
The use of diplomas by employees and skilled workers to enter employment : economic use, but also symbolic one
The reception of diplomas by employers
3. Girls and boys, students and apprentices of technical and vocational education
Social history of students and apprentices The issue of career guidance / the use of psycho technical tests / the view of young people and their families on vocational guidance
History of technical and vocational education's social purposes, for example the development of agricultural education to prevent rural exodus
4. Knowledge of training, learning practices
General and practical training
History of the training of professors, workshop managers, technical teachers
The learning and incorporation of social skills expected in the world of work, determined by the class, gender, race relations.
Conditions of submission of proposals
Papers are expected to explore, around one of these themes, the diversity of professions at different scales, from clearly identified sources and explicit methodologies of analysis. Are expected analyzes based on national comparisons, still too rare on the subject of study concerned, on the mobilization of gender studies issues, and on the study of transnational circulations, questions that the symposium will seek to value.
Communications can cover a “long” 20th century and works from different disciplines are welcome as long as they incorporate a historical dimension. Proposals for papers, up to 4,000 characters long, must be sent before 30 September 2018 to the following address: slembre@gmail.com
Proposals should consist of :
- Name, first name of author
- Institution of attachment
- Email address
- Title of the proposed communication
- Axis in which it fits
- Summary of the proposal, not more than 4000 characters
- Keywords
- Languages : French or English
The response will be provided in early November 2018 ; travel and accommodation expenses may be covered to the extent of the financial possibilities.
Steering committee
Gérard Bodé (ENS Lyon - LARHRA)
Stéphane Lembré (COMUE Lille Nord de France - CREHS - University of Artois)
Marianne Thivend (Lyon University - LARHRA)
Scientific Committee
Lorenzo BONOLI, IFPP – Lausanne ; Guy BRUCY, Université de Picardie – Jules-Verne ; Sylvia CHIFFOLEAU, CNRS - LARHRA ; Jean-François CONDETTE, COMUE – ESPE LilleNord de France – CREHS – Université d’Artois ; Renaud D’ENFERT, Université de Picardie –Jules-Verne – CURAPP ; Fanny GALLOT, Université Paris Est – CRHEC ; Nicolas HATZFELD, Université d’Evry – IDHE.S ; Aziz JELLAB, IGEN ; Hervé JOLY, Université Lyon2 – Triangle ; Fabien KNITTEL, Université de Franche Comté – Centre Lucien Febvre ; Françoise LAOT, Université de Reims Champagne – Ardennes – CEREP ; Clotilde LEMARCHANT, Université de Caen – CMH ; Isabelle LESPINET-MORET, Université Paris 1Panthéon Sorbonne – CHS ; Édouard LYNCH, Université Lyon 2 – LER ; Damiano MATASCI, Université de Lausanne ; Gilles MOREAU, Université de Poitiers – GRESCO ; Catherine OMNÈS, Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin ; Emmanuel QUENSON, Céreq ; Xavier SIDO, Université de Lille 3 - Théodile-CIREL.