C.08. Working in Schools Today: Between Public Space, Mediatization, New Managerialism and Inclusion

This panel examines contemporary transformations in schools as a professional field, with a focus on teachers and their relationships with other professionals. It invites contributions that reconnect classic research on the teaching profession—recruitment, careers, training and socialisation, classroom management and teacher–student relations (Lortie, 1975; Waller, 1961)—with developments that have emerged in recent decades: transformations of organisational contexts linked to New Public Management (Apple, 2001; Ball, 2003; Evetts, 2009), labour-market dualisation and precarious careers (Bertron et al., 2024; Carter, Stevenson, 2012), teachers’ malaise and lack of recognition (Barrère, 2017; Burrow et al., 2020; Garcia, 2023), and broader social changes associated with a “decline of institutions” and the loss of legitimacy of school professionals (Dubet, 2002).

A second focus concerns the growing division of labour in schools (Bois, Jacquot, 2022) and the emergence of new roles (psychologists, educators, nurses, etc.) with whom teachers are required to collaborate, notably within multiprofessional configurations around inclusion and diversity policies.

From a multidisciplinary perspective, the panel also welcomes research on how these evolutions intersect with contemporary phenomena that strongly affect teaching: the civic and political engagement of teachers and their public positioning, as seen in recent joint teacher–student mobilisations against the genocide in Palestine; new forms of heteronomy linked to the mediatization of education, such as teacher-influencers and YouTubers; and technological innovations, especially AI, which are reshaping teachers’ work and school organisational structures. Overall, the panel examines the tensions between professional autonomy and institutional, media, and political heteronomies that are reshaping educational work in schools today.