his or her response, and to recognize the effects of this production […]. Class work is only the most visible part of his or her professional activity. The knowledge that we are looking for will therefore relate to a situation of which the intervention phase in class is only one element (Margolinas 2006, p. 331).
With its objects, the devolution invites us to think about its spaces and temporalities in all their extent. This is also what this book proposes, and most of the chapters present a study of devolution on a large scale, well beyond a specific situation. For example, Florian Ouitre questions devolution in the field of teacher training. He sees it in a complex way, as an embedding of problematization processes, where the devolution of the problem oscillates in a game of small and large loops, between its position, its reconstruction, its resolution and its socialization. In the same field, but from a different approach, Bruno Hubert questions a whole professional writing system in which storytelling, narration, fictionalization and sharing with peers constitute a complex space of devolution deployed over a consequent tempo.
1.2.3. Objects and subjects to devolve
In order to apprehend the activity of the devolving subject in its entirety, it seems necessary to clearly circumscribe what it manipulates (situations, spaces, temporalities, resources, knowledge, etc.), which we will consider here objects to be devolved, themselves linked to the objects to devolve. We must also not forget the devolving subject himself or herself who, like his or her objects, puts himself or herself at stake in order to devolve.
To consider objects that a subject can manipulate to “make the subject accept […] responsibility for a learning situation” (Brousseau 1988, p. 325) is first to remind the teacher that he or she is not alone; that is, that he or she is making progress with the help of a “milieu”, or even for Rousseauists, with the help of “things”. As a result, the philosopher’s things or the didactician’s milieu invite awareness of the “objects that affect us” (Rousseau 1966, p. 36) or the “objects (physical, cultural, social, human) with which the subject interacts” (Brousseau 2010, p. 2). Among these objects, the forms are then particularly varied. Some pre-date the teaching project, others are constructed for it, some have a strictly didactic aim, others are didactically “diverted” social objects, while some have a materiality that makes their access easier, others refer to symbolic conditions, or even to imaginary worlds…. The multiplicity of what the devolving subject can manipulate to optimize his or her devolving activity is infinite. The study of devotional processes in a variety of disciplines and educational fields then deserves some order. Within the framework of this introduction, without yet envisaging a systematic construction, we can already modestly underline the variety of these objects in three dimensions: materiality – physical objects that can be manipulated to a greater or lesser extent, a greater or lesser spatial and temporal amplitude, and didacticity – a more or less strong didactic intention when they are created. As a result, among the material objects, whose extent is modest and whose didacticity is strong, we will find the “worksheets”, as they are usually promoted in kindergarten to promote the autonomy of the pupils within workshops. In this book, Sophie Briquet-Duhazé offers an analysis of these “record” objects to show precisely how their scope, often considered in a restricted manner, and their materiality, often blinding, can prove problematic. Conversely, among the immaterial objects, whose extent is considerable and whose didactic nature is secondary, we find “the digital”. A true social world, “the digital” pre-dates any didactic project. Nevertheless, when it meets didactics, the digital usually establishes itself as a promoter of autonomy. In this book, Hervé Daguet shows how digital educational devices call upon devolution processes in which the responsibility transferred to learners is contrasted. He then questions the very status of the digital in relation to the activity of devolution, for which it remains a delicate question: who leads it, the digital object or the devolving subject?
The objects to be devolved are produced and used by subjects who necessarily put themselves in play to be devolved. As Laurence Leroyer, for example, shows that in the learning materials constructed by teachers, it is positions that are shown. Her analysis associates four dimensions of the media – epistemological, didactic, technical and relational – with four associated teaching postures – epistemologist, didactician, technician and coach. Behind the objects manipulated by the teachers, even in their material sobriety, their modest extent and their assumed didacticity, there are always subjects that are manipulated. In order to devolve, they manipulate objects, but surely also their professionality, or even their existence, as soon as they teach something to which they are an attached minimum. Once again, Guy Brousseau had perceived this from the outset: whoever envisages “making people accept” must also “accept the consequences of this transfer”. The tension inherent in the activity of devolution, this staging of the devolving subject through erasure, can well be described from a strictly didactic point of view. It has been described very precisely, in the form of the paradox of devolution: “the more the teacher […] reveals what he or she wants, the more precisely he or she tells the student what he or she must do, the more he or she risks losing his or her chances of obtaining and objectively observing the learning he or she must actually aim for” (Brousseau 1986, p. 315). However, when experienced by a subject, the tug is not just a logical construction or figure of speech. Rather, it refers to division, even a split, if not tearing. In the didactic field, Gérard Sensevy and Serge Quilio have already underlined the structure of this phenomenon in terms of didactic reticence:
The teacher is therefore constantly under pressure (temptation) to tell the student directly what he or she should know, knowing that the declarative will often fail in the real appropriation of knowledge by the students. The teacher is thus forced to remain silent where he or she would have the (false) possibility to speak, and he or she is thus forced to hold some of the things he or she wants to teach, and to engage the students in relationships with the environment that will allow them to overcome this silence (Sensevy and Quilio 2002, p. 50).
The devolving subject advances in temptation, that of someone who knows that they will fail if they continue to advance, that they advance in the double constraint that leads them to find roundabout ways to break their silence.
This temptation of the devolving subject has been studied in many didactic works of clinical sensitivity, in order to understand what could subjectively constrain the activity of devolution. Marie-France Carnus has described it in its most concise formulation as the desire to “have something to do with” the student’s learning (Carnus 2001). Other authors have shown that several structural dynamics were at play behind this formula: the desire to ensure a symbolic position as a teacher, a supposedly knowledgeable subject (Buznic-Bourgeacq 2013), an impulse to keep control in the face of a fearful relationship with contingency (Carnus and Alvarez 2019), or the impossibility of bearing the approximation of the adaptive, sometimes clumsy activity of the student confronted with the responsibility of new learning (Buznic-Bourgeacq et al. 2008; Touboul et al. 2012). In this book, Pablo Buznic-Bourgeacq focuses on this latter perspective to show how one of the objects of devolution always belongs to the devolving subject: his or her own trial linked to the personal encounter with the activity he or she teaches and the passion that sustains it. He or she then questions his or her perimeter or domain to consider the possibility of an activity of devolution attached to sublimate the pull, transferring the responsibilities to the student, while maintaining the passion of the teacher. In a similar perspective, in the last chapter, Vanessa Desvages-Vasselin leaves the teaching world to analyze the devolution of an object of devolution still attached to the devolving subject: play. Starting from a fine didactic analysis of the game of thèque, she shows how the devolving activity of a subject who is a facilitator is constrained by his or her already being a player and his or her subjective positioning in the division of educational work.
The objective of this book is to revisit the concept of devolution in a variety of fields of knowledge and educational fields through a consideration of its subjects and objects. It is about questioning a major process for thinking about education today based on the subjects that drive it and the objects that enable it. From this perspective, the challenge is to propose the heuristic specific
