Recherche

Didactics and Epistemology of Social Sciences

The research team on Didactics and Epistemology of Social Sciences is led by Prof. François Audigier.

Research Fields

Members of the research team in social sciences in didactics and epistemology, a team that is integrating teachers’ trainers and researchers from other institution, work on :

  • conceptions of generalist teachers (primary and elementary level) and specialist teachers (secondary level) have of social sciences school subjects - history, geography - and citizenship, of their teachings, of pupils’ learnings;
  • teachings practices in classrooms
  • the way pupils construct their conceptions of ‘living in society’, conceive and receive social sciences teachings, by considering not only the aims of these disciplines, but also the learned content and teachings practices
  • links that are to be developed between different social sciences school subjects whose common aim is citizenship training
  • how these disciplines contribute to general domain of education (the so-called “education to”) that are more and more present in curricula.

From september 2007 on, a research on the place of these disciplines in education to sustainable development will be implemented. The research will focus on class debates situations. In collaboration with teacher trainers and researchers from HEP Lausanne and Wallis, from the Fribourg University, from IFMES and the Service de l’environnement de l’enseignement primaire dans le canton de Genève, the research will be sponsored by the Swiss National Science Foundation.

According to their specific competencies each member of the research team is leading researches on:

  • didactic of history, in particular on relations between memory and history as well as on historical thinking learning;
  • education to citizenship from a theoretical point of view and on the practices of participation;
  • on the actual changes of curricula, a complementary field of study to then preceding ones.

Lastly, a main interest of the team is also teacher training in and by didactics. Some of theses researches are subject to international collaborations.