scientific goals

Scientific Goals

Context 

In the field of educative situation research, practices in the production and analysis of video recordings are locally diverse and often the result of isolated researchers, each “cobbling together” what they can in their corner with the limited knowledge and resources available to them. The methodologies used are often not very well supported from an epistemological point of view concerning their interconnection with the theoretical approaches and not very well elucidated in publications, creating big problems with collective control of analysis procedure validation. Finally, research practice remains highly individual, whereas the scientific and societal stakes which are considerable in the subject of education require collective research projects which allow for the creation of much bigger data corpora while working on problems common to different research groups.

Yet the tools and technical resources available for the production, processing, analysis and sharing of data and results have never been quite so numerous nor financially accessible, either for sound and image recording equipment, storage and digital processing media or analysis software (e.g. Atlas.ti; Transana; CLAN, etc.). The difficulty arises mainly from the overabundance of existing techniques (problems of compatibility and interoperability), the rapid evolution of equipment, the diverse theoretical founding principles employed by analysis software, the cognitive cost of handover and getting full use of the capacities and from the relative lack of high level epistemological discussion specific to the field.

These various observations have led to the creation of the Federative Research Structure known as ViSA, whose aim is to confer structure on a community of researchers working on educative situations and practices, based on the methodology of the creation and analysis of corpora constituted of video data and other associated types of data, in order to develop the instrumentation of these methodologies. The thematic School will be entirely based on the reflection of and the expertise existing within this national network, in particular within the ICAR and CREAD laboratories which are piloting this federative structure, and also on that of an ESERA (European Science Education Research Association) Special Interest Group (SIG) called “Video-based research of teaching and learning processes”.

Training goals

 Based around systematic interdisciplinary contribution and exchanges, the thematic School has two objectives:

 1) Detailing of methodological practices, in particular the categories of analysis used and their theoretical founding principles. That is to say:

-   help the researchers present to become aware of the need for coherence between research epistemology, the theoretical approach and the methodology used for collating and analysing data;

- allow them to construct theoretical and methodological elucidation skills corresponding to their own categories of analysis, notably by identifying the similarities and differences of various types of analysis which already exist;

- give them the means to carry out joint analyses, cross-referenced or compared on the same or different corpora, for example, by comparing teaching and learning the same field of knowledge in classrooms or situations in different cultures or countries.

2) Training in the use of video recording and associated data corpora creation and management tools, as well as the software for analysing these corpora. We would like to provide both hands-on experience of several of these tools as well as raise the researchers’ awareness that most of them are not neutral from a theoretical and epistemological standpoint: they were primarily created in order to meet researchers’ needs within a certain field and from a certain theoretical and methodological point of view. Knowing these presuppositions is of great importance if one is to create an interface between the theoretical and methodological approaches.

Intended audience:

-   PhD students, postdoctoral students,

-   Researchers (CNRS, ...) and Lecturers,    

 -  People in charge of training in research (Masters, doctoral establishments, continuing education).

The School is accessible to all French speakers.

 Prerequisites: 

Participants must at the very least have already worked on video recordings for their research work.

 Expected consequences:

We expect the following to happen after this School:

- reinforcement of the pre-existing scientific community working with the ViSA SFR, by promoting the entry of new researchers and encouraging them to contribute more to this structure, in order to help research communities working on educative practice and situations;

- the spread of theoretical knowledge, methodological practices and technical resources passed on during this School through the setting up of training courses on the creation of corpora and video analysis in training courses on research (Masters; doctoral establishments; continuing education).