Abdoulaye Faye

Patricia Mothes

How Do Teachers React to organizational Reform in Education? The Case of the French 2016 School Reform

de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d'enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés.

Introduction

This contribution investigates the process of organizational change in education by offering a view on the way people cope with a prescriptive reform. As a matter of fact, French secondary schools undertook significant changes, in 2016, meant to rebuild the school system. The reform concerned school management, reassessment of teaching and learning programs, reinforcement of collaborative work between teachers, pedagogical refoundation, classroom organization, assessment system, etc. The overall check-up sought to improve learning conditions to guarantee greater chances for success to French students 1 . As a matter of fact, in February 2015, about the changes in terms of teaching and 1 The 2016 PISA test, French students were ranked 26 th in the domain of Sciences. Meanwhile, the high rates of school drops and the persistence of educational inequalities are major and recurrent subjects of concern for French scientists and politicians. learnings, Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, the then Minister of National Education, stated: "From the 2016 school start onwards, to better assimilate intangible knowledge, students will receive practical interdisciplinary teachings. Theses teachings are meant to enable students to understand the meaning of what they learn by cross-breeding, contextualizing and using the knowledge into concrete collective projects". The context was set for schools to indulge in what is viewed as a ground-breaking reform in French schooling.

For this study, we devoted attention on the Practical Interdisciplinary Classes (P.I.T.-C.) as they illustrate the pedagogical novelties of the reform. We've interrogated teachers of two different secondary schools to better understand their perspectives on those P.I.T-C. As a matter of fact, while many educational research consider closely conceptual tools to guide the management of change in school organizations, efforts should be made to reveal the agents' experience in their workplaces and what it demands, for them, to engage into radical professional transformations. Therefore, it seems to us that questioning the teachers' conceptions on the way they run PIT-C is a revealing approach to help comprehend the practical issues they had to face and, at the same time, a means to seize levers for teacher education for remodelling their practices.

We will start by first underlining features of French schooling to pinpoint what is at stakes with the introduction of the Pit-C. The topic of interdisciplinary in education will be discussed in this first part and we will also insist on the necessity to investigate the teachers' point of views in the prospect of change.

The second part of our work will resume the conceptual tools we adopted while the third part presents the data treatment. We end up analysing the teachers' opinions on Pit-C by highlighting their views on the topic of interdisciplinarity and by showing their responses on the prospect of changing their practices.

Changing learning methods in the conservative French context

As the 2016 Secondary School reform puts it, the introduction of interdisciplinary teaching and learning approach through the PIT-C is a milestone in French schooling. Traditionally, classes have been profoundly inspired and organized based on separate school disciplines: History, French, Maths, Physics etc.

Although the interdisciplinary perspective gained prominence in the French curriculum since the 1990's 2 , its application in French secondary schools is linked to the will to develop, across the European community, a common skills base that will be beneficial for all students. The European Parliament, dating from the Lisbon Declaration (2000), while acknowledging the need for Europe to develop a knowledge economy, urges member countries to adjust their school systems to the demands of the labour market in terms of knowledge and labour force 3 . In this regard, two major changes can be noted:

• The development of competence-based approaches

• The development of "education to".

While the development of competence-based approaches was popularized by the OECD (1997) which encourages an education thought to enable students to confront the "new challenges in life" and contribute to a "changing society", the "education-to" approach is actively promoted by the European Council to encourage governments put forward school systems that will help students face an "increasingly complex world" (Edgar [START_REF] Morin | Introduction à la pensée complexe[END_REF][START_REF] Morin | Introduction à la pensée complexe[END_REF]. The aim of this approach is mainly to help children further their understanding of complex issues related, for instance, to environment, sustainable growth, numerical economy, arts, etc.

Among other important points, the debate that fuelled from the project of the reform underscores topical issues like the seemingly movement from pedagogical to political and/or economic agenda in the making of school systems. This approach of the debate embraces a macro perspective on the reform. Meanwhile, the literary review on the topic of interdisciplinarity in education shows that many studies insisted on the necessity to have the learners access to knowledge from a constructivist perspective which (D'enfert, [START_REF] Enfert | Réformer les disciplines : les savoirs scolaires à l'épreuve de la modernité, 1945-1985[END_REF]Lenoir 2013a).

We addressed the issue from a narrower and yet decisive point of view by interrogating the making of the reform in the daily activities of secondary school teachers. In fact, given that the topic of interdisciplinarity calls into question the teachers' professional practices [START_REF] Reverdy | L'utilisation de l'interdisciplinarité dans le secondaire[END_REF][START_REF] Lebeaume | Itinéraires de découverte au collège : des pratiques d'enseignement coordonnées face à des « frontières de verre[END_REF], Baillat & Niclot, 2003), it is interesting to go beyond the official instructions and injunctions to see the way these teachers, who, possibly, disagree with the reform, would manage to deal with. While we do not discuss the pertinence of such a reform in French schooling, we aim at rendering actors' voices so as to better understand what is at stake for them when they are called out to change their working habits. As a matter of fact, the ambition of this reform and its rather sudden implementation in the secondary school system, can only make one ponder over the place individuals are given in the process of change.

Therefore, we will underscore the teachers' perceptions, both as subjects and/or groups, on Pit-C and we will highlight their strategies to face them. By focusing on the way this reform impacts on the individual level, we wish to want to show the dilemma in which they are put while confronted to a major organizational reform. More specifically we want to highlight the way working in that specific setting questions the teachers' professional attitudes. Before we present our work, we will make a brief point on school related interdisciplinarity.

School interdisciplinarity: from theory to adaptation in education

Reference to interdisciplinarity is commonplace in the field of research. Its prominence in education has grown over the last three decades and urged some specifications on its conception and declination. First, let's note that, in relation to education, it is more usual to come across the term "pedagogical interdisciplinarity". For Lenoir and Sauvé (1998) this expression is rather ambiguous; it only points toward issues related to the immediate environment of the classroom. These authors prefer the locution "school interdisciplinarity" which seems to be a less restrictive term as it encompasses both curricular and didactic dimensions that are needed to signify the transformations that an interdisciplinary approach implies into school practices. However, a concise and consensual definition of the concept is difficult given the variety of epistemological stands on the issue (Darbellay, 2011). Consequently, in the scientific domain, many research insist on the distinctions in the taxonomy of practices related to the combination of different disciplines (multidisciplinarity, transdisciplinarity, interdisciplinarity, pluridisciplinarity, etc.) while, in practice, teams and individuals seem to be more concerned about the effectiveness of their intervention when they are to coalesce their disciplines rather than worrying about the type of integrative process in which they engage (Knight, Lattuca, Kimball & Reason, 2012;[START_REF] Miller | Varities of interdisciplinary Approaches in the Social Sciences: An Overview[END_REF]. Lenoir and Sauvé suggest that the major differences between school interdisciplinarity and its application in the scientific domain dwell on their significances and their purposes. [START_REF] Lenoir | Interdisciplinarity in Francophone Education: The Weal and Woe of a Research Itinerary[END_REF] indicates that the two approaches differ in terms of "goals, aims, application methods, and system of reference" (p.126). In fact, Scientific interdisciplinarity is mainly based on scientific disciplines and aims at producing new scientific knowledge to respond to "social preoccupations", whereas school interdisciplinarity is based on school disciplines 4 which are used in "an educational perspective" (Lenoir & Sauvé,ibid,p. 111).

Besides, when it refers to the scientific domain, three basic categories of interdisciplinarity are mostly identified in the varieties of combination between different disciplines [START_REF] Klein | Une taxonomie de l'interdisciplinarité[END_REF]Lenoir & Sauvé, 1998). The first category is called "relational approach" and enables to envisage interdisciplinarity from the relationships, links that two or more disciplines have in common and which can be used to build bridges between them. The features they share together are used to facilitate dialogue, methods exchange and production of knowledge. There is also what is referred as the "ampliative approach" which develops out of different disciplines by borrowing their tools and methods in order to respond to new topics that "traditional" theoretical perspective cannot answer properly. Basically, this category enables the foundation for a new discipline out of established ones. The "restructuring approach" is the third category which shows more concern about the nature of the knowledge itself. Indeed, in this approach, what is called for is a new conception of knowledge that questions the boundaries of existing disciplines.

According to Lenoir and Sauvé (1998) the "relational approach" and the "restructuring approach" validly represent the two poles of a theoretical spectrum of an epistemology of interdisciplinarity. They also suggest that in the domain of education, the "relational approach" is more commonly found than the two others. Moreover, research has also revealed barriers of interdisciplinary in school context. While Lenoir & Sauvé (ibid.) call upon the necessity to think over curricular and didactic aspects that need to guide the practices in the classrooms, Reverdy (2015) suggests that the major impediments are related to the teachers' representations and their relationships with their colleagues. She also puts forward their sluggish adherence to interdisciplinary teaching and the difficulty to engage in teamwork as well as the lack of training as the most impeding barriers for making interdisciplinary classes.

The Conceptual Tools of our study: Rendering individuals' opinions

As we seek to investigate actors' point of view, we will use a qualitative approach to study the question. Brigitte Albero's concept of "contrivance" (2010) and the clinical didactics approach [START_REF] Terrisse | Didactique clinique de l'éducation physique et sportive (EPS). Quels enjeux de savoirs[END_REF] will be then mobilized.

First, the concept of contrivance emerged in relation with the changing learning environments. Brigitte Albéro suggests that the term must not be understood only as the set of tools and instruments that are mobilized in a specific context. In fact, the term has also to do with the complexity of the environment wherein those tools are developed; and the complexity of the environment include dimensions such as man-to-machine or man-to-man interactions and the relations people develop between men and objects, the goals that they seek to achieve, etc. Hence, Albéro reports that when actors are urge to evolve in some compelling environments, they seek to adapt to the constraints of the context (be they material or abstract constraints) by complying with the official norms, but also they rely on their beliefs, principles and personal experience to devise means to cope with those constraints.

In this perspective, Albéro stresses out the need for Humanities and Social Sciences to shed light on the epistemic evolution of training environments where more and more technical tools are used to mediate the learning and teaching process. By referring to this concept in this contribution, we seek to go beyond the prescriptions and apprehend the way and how people adjust to the array of tools, methods, ideologies, etc. designed for their practices. In this regard, Albéro's proposal of a three-dimensional tool to help examine the appropriation of any "contrivance" apparatus ( 2010) is interesting for us. These three dimensions correspond subsequently to (a) the philosophical values, principles and thoughts that shape a given project; (b) the practical means set to enable the realization of the project, and (c) the way individuals experience the project, with all their human properties. Each of these levels, is reflected, in diverse ways, in the practices people display in their relationship with their work environment.

Secondly, we resort to the clinical didactics approach [START_REF] Terrisse | Didactique clinique de l'éducation physique et sportive (EPS). Quels enjeux de savoirs[END_REF] which is built on Freud's hypothesis of the unconscious mind. The idea behind this term is that in his/her entrance into the domain of language, the Subject is regarded as singular, disposed and divided. According to Freud's theory of the five impossible in life, the act of knowing is perceived as impossible and contingent. People's relation to knowledge is therefore based on the tensions they experience in context, when they are confronted to that knowledge. So much so that, for instance, to account for a teacher's relation with a specific type of knowledge, one can only seize it in context, when this teacher is facing with the students and has to base his/her practice upon the sum of his/her personal and professional experience.

Therefore, with the clinical didactics approach, we will examine the interviewees' discourse to apprehend the types of relationships that bear significance in their views; thereby we will try and grasp the significance and structure of their behaviours in context. For instance, a concept such as the "déjàlà" which is developed in this approach will help us foreground the teacher's didactic choices concerning the teaching, through an interdisciplinary approach, of a specific subject.

Methodology of the Research The Work Field

Our research was conducted in two "collège" 5 .

-"College" A is a private establishment welcoming around 160 students and which delivers an alternative pedagogical education mainly based on students' free expression and personal investment in the learning process. The collège encourages learning through project-based methods. In this "college", two teachers were invited to participate in the research, both being involved in three PIT classes.

-"College" B is a public establishment and hosts around 680 students. It has been chosen by The Ministry of Education as one of the pilot establishments in the reform. This means that they could experiment with PIT classes one year ahead other public colleges. In this regard, one of the teacher 6 received special training before head of the implementation of reform and was entrusted to relay basic information about the reform to her colleagues.

The following table presents the teachers who took part in the research and their disciplines.

In relation to the collection of data, this consisted of one formal interview of 45-60 min in length for each teacher. These interviews were mostly conducted in a vacant classroom within the college. There were no specific selection criteria of the teachers. Voluntary participation was requested from teachers who had implemented PIT-C classes; however, since the Principals' authorisation was requested prior to our arrival at the establishment, it was they who would direct our request to the teaching staff. The interview guide was made up of around ten questions and it was constructed to inform about the teachers' personal perspectives regarding PIT classes and how they were conducted in the school. Some other questions addressed their choices of working in a specific PIT theme and the issues they faced, as well as their final points of view and experiences of the PIT classes they carried out.

Data Management

For the data management, we adopted a qualitative approach inspired by Laurence Bardin's "analysis of content" (1991). More specifically, we instrumented what she refers to as a "floating reading" of our data corpus. The "floating reading" is a pre-analysis phase based on a non-formal reading meant to identify recurrent items or views which one can grasp within one's first contact with the corpus. We then confront that first material with our assumptions in the prospect of delineating topical issues of our analysis. This method is mostly used to help clarify or detail emerging hypotheses prior to the field work. It can also allow, however, a listing of relevant topics or categories for the analysis, as it was the case for us. Hence, hearing the teachers evoke topical aspects of the reform helped us to identify recurrent topics such as relationships in teamwork, personal conceptions on interdisciplinarity, the role of the institution in the implementation of the reform, etc. We consider these three entries as relevant topics which can help pinpoint the dynamics at work in the process of appropriating the reform. We use the term "relation to…" to signify such dynamics and we then try to define a symbolic position, each one in regard with the interest of the teacher about PIT classes .

The Results

Considering teachers' point of view on Pit-Classes

A Positive Reception of the Pit-C in the Schools

The implementation of the Pit-C seems to have satisfied teachers' long-awaited wishes. In fact, the majority of those interviewed were in favour of this and demonstrated a real interest in having an interdisciplinarity approach at school. Their interest is motivated by reasons such as:

• Effects on children's learning. Teachers consider that the implementation of PIT classes can help children to build meaning into the lessons which are mostly perceived as "too theoretical". They also suspect that an interdisciplinary approach in the learning process may help children be more active, creative and efficient. Teachers also concur, saying that PIT classes help create links between school disciplines and it can be of interest to children because the intention behind such classes is "the opportunity of having [children] understand by doing it themselves" (Mariane)

• Positive impact on teamwork. Interdisciplinarity enables teachers to work together and to make links between their disciplines which are traditionally disjointed. In fact, they seize the opportunity of PIT classes to devote more attention to their colleagues' practices in their classrooms. For instance, Amélie confesses: "I love decompartmentalising classes; I love seeing my colleagues working." From her perspective, Pit-C is a means to learn more about what other teachers, mainly of other disciplines, do in their classes.

• Development of professional attitude. The PIT classes are perceived by teachers as an occasion to change and develop innovative ways of doing classes "so that [students] may apprehend the knowledge in a less magisterial form of teaching" (Marianne). So much so that they will no longer be able to be in a position of being the one who detains the knowledge but, rather, the role of the teacher will be more likely to help the learners increase the knowledge which they are supposed to learn.

The Pit-C: Compelling Stress in the Making

Though positive arguments were developed with reference to the Pit-C, their application in the two "collège" revealed to be stressful for the teachers. In this regard, they pointed:

• Lack of training when they had to carry out lessons with their colleagues and within the classrooms. Marie testifies: "we were experimenting [them] but we had no training […] we were somewhat alone, dropped in there… some things did work well, and some others that did not. We did not make it to the final task, for instance". However, as we suggested, since the "collège" where Marie works is a pilot "collège", one teacher had benefited from a three-hour session on the PIT classes organized by the rectorate. The teacher was to share that training experience with the rest of her colleagues. With reference to "collège" B, where there was no training session, the teaching staff had to devise means to appropriate the PIT classes and that process of appropriation took the form of meetings where they collectively read official instructions and thought over methods to carry them out. When they are asked about how they felt about such a procedure, they tend to stress about the free rein they were offered to conduct the PIT classes.

Even though the process which led to the application of PIT classes in the two "collège" underwent different logics, the teaching staff of both institutions insisted on the distressed feeling of having to adjust to strong injunctions and the willingness to change the manner of conducting classes. Such a situation impacted on their feeling of selfefficiency. Yet, in both "collège", they managed, each at a specific level, to craft methods to change the practices.

• The issue of time and timetable organisation for the PIT-C proved also to be difficult for both "collège". The main problem lying in the way was the integration of hours for such classes in the regular timetables because any of the traditional disciplines would "give away" slots for PIT activities. In both "collège", teachers would join their colleagues with whom they would intervene in the same PIT-C if, and only if, they were not having classes at the same time. Such organisational difficulties demonstrate that schools and their staff were structurally unprepared to undergo the reform. According to the teachers' testimonies in both "collège", the Principals were willing to implement the reform, however would not propose plans to face the key issues such as timetabling. Besides, teachers had another problem because, they not only had to find slots for PIT-C in the hours allotted for their disciplines, but they also had to find time when they were not having class to prepare PIT projects with their colleagues.

• The necessity of constant preparation and collaboration proved also to be a major constraint, specifically regarding the time that it would take. Amelie reveals: "the time for preparation, because it requires a great deal of time and it requires dialogue with colleagues, as well. So, as for me, it does not bother me to give away some of my hours to do such things [PIT classes] but after a while one realises that it is very time-consuming". Hence, as the difficulties build up, their willingness to implement the PIT classes tends to be reduced. Juliette points out: "Well, at first, it is beautiful and everything… but in the long run, we lose the link… the fact is we do not have time which is set for dialogues on purpose". Not to mention the extra hurdle to surmount in order to engage in collaborative work between colleagues, each having a different personality: "making people engage in teamwork is complicated when they are unaccustomed. Each one of us has his/her own personality. We have people who are, more or less, on good terms, hence frictions." (Charles).

The schools' response to the Reform Project.

As we mentioned earlier, our analysis tried to put the teachers' perspectives on the reform in relation to topical dimensions we identified such as interdisciplinarity, the place and role of the institution and the teamwork dynamics. Thereby, we intended to better understand the way each college manage to implement the reform. The following table summarizes such relations: This tool was used to organize units of sense in the corpus and it helped get into the subjects' truth. By organising and classifying units of sense, we can create categories as it's shown in the table. Hence, an extra-order is created through the corpus and helps us reveal internal structure.

Each topic has been expressed following a four _ level spectrum, and each teacher's discourse has been placed into the spectrum. Here is a graphical representation of the result and its analysis.

.

College A

The teaches of this establishment expressed a huge interest into working out of the routine of their disciplines. Their favourable attitude regarding the interdisciplinary approach is explained by the perception that such classes can help build meaning in students' learning. Marianne summed it up perfectly when she says, "it makes sense [into the learnings] […] it really makes sense into the learnings, that is the positive thing in it". We also perceive this interest in Amelie's natural inclination to sharing her practices with her colleagues "I love to decompartmentalise, I love decompartmentalizing the courses". These teachers' views on the PIT-C are in accordance with the philosophy of the reform in terms of giving to the learners epistemological tools to confront the complexity of the world [START_REF] Morin | Introduction à la pensée complexe[END_REF]. These views also cohere with the prospect of building bridges between school disciplines, and, most of all, the opportunity of discovering other professional practices is forcefully asserted. Interestingly, such a positive attitude towards the PIT-C is matched by very few hindrances expressed about their implementation. This positive attitude has probably to do with the teachers' individual inclination toward an interdisciplinary approach. Nonetheless, is it possible that the absence of hierarchical pressure, from the headmaster or the rectorate, facilitates their investment in PIT-C projects. As a matter of fact, in this organization, there seems to be a relation between the weight of the hierarchy and the capacity of the teachers to execute the institutional recommendations. In fact, the teachers insisted on the implication of the pedagogical staff in the process of appropriating official instructions: weekly meetings were held to help everyone comprehend the issues and even some teachers were entrusted with the management of the PIT-C. Thus, it might be suggested that even though sticking to the prescriptions is important, when teachers are given room to devise by themselves methods to carry through the project and cope with the changes, they are more liable to feel at ease with it because the feeling of constraint the instructions bring about (Albéro, 2010) is alleviated -or even replaced -by some form of consent and autonomy.

Yet, in this "collège", as the interviewees showed, the application of the reform is obstructed by organizational and interpersonal reasons. For instance, Marianne declares that the issue of time and the timetables is what could possibly hinder her involvement into the project: "I think it will never be simple to work in team because it takes more time to work in team than to be alone". Dealing with the timetables appears to be a burden for the teachers and many are preoccupied by the need to cover all the subjects of their discipline within a specific learning cycle. Hence, when they are asked to implement interdisciplinary classes, they fear to be in shortage of time for their own disciplines. Thus, their willingness to engage in teamwork is cooled down. But it is important to note that, for reasons of practicality, teaching staffs hardly want to change some professional habits. Indeed, when the extent of the changes is considerable, like the question of the timetables, they tend to focus and address immediate empirical preoccupations (Lenoir and Gagné, 1998) rather than engaging in considerable change processes. Furthermore, it is not explicitly mentioned, inter-individual relationships and the discipline-based teaching tradition impact on the willingness to engage in teamwork. For instance, Amelie confesses that her relationship with Franck 7 , the Technology teacher, is the main reason she wants to work with him in the PIT-C on Art and Propaganda: "we wanted to do something together". Similarly, her friendship with Alexa, a French teacher, exhorts her to join the PIT project on journalism that Alexa was to initiate. But at the same time, she declares herself uncapable of working with other colleagues with whom she is has no close relation. And she ends up saying: "I think it's our affinities that create complementary in the work".

We should also mention that in the specific context of this college, the teachers have the habit of working together. Most of them, besides of their classes, are involved in the functioning of the "collège". In fact, the teaching staff hold regular meetings (twice a week) to discuss about the pedagogical project, the hindrances to the proper functioning of the establishment, the dialogue with the parents, etc. It seems logical that they declare to face less impediments to engage in collaborative work and break out of the school discipline barriers. As a matter of fact, the "collège"'s habits of co-working and their project-turned pedagogy seem to make it easy for them to apply the reform. Amelie states it plainly: "we don't have problems to work together, we do that during all the year". Likewise, the small size of the "collège" might also explain the reason why teaching staffs feel more comfortable to devote themselves to the making of the new learning and teaching agendas. Not to mention that they used to share their 7

The technology teacher with whom she is in close professional relationship.

practices long before they were confronted the reform which urges them to engage in that work configuration.

Although, in some regards, the absence of pressure from the hierarchy facilitates the teachers' involvement into the process of change, is also depicted as dilemma in their relation to the institution. For instance, as far as the relation with the headmaster is concerned, paradoxical positions are can be noted. While at first teachers seemed happy to be given free rein in the application of the reform, Amelie seems to regret the "absence" of the headmaster during the process: "it was really what caused us problems, that is he trusted us so much so… that much trust… we felt a little bit like… he did not endorse the role of watchman" (Amelie). What might be perceived as reproaches toward the headmaster is the recurrent issue of the implication of the hierarchy in the pedagogical work of teaching staffs. Generally, teachers value their pedagogical autonomy, however, in the specific context of the reform, they seem to await a guiding presence to properly put into practice the institutional requirements. Moreover, the lack of information and training from the State, impacted the execution of the reform in the schools. In this establishment, since the headmaster had no instructions to guide his teams, he acted as usual, giving them free rein to do whatever they deem correct. But given the scale of the reform, the teachers did not always feel comfortable with facing the issue. Hence, they complain over the lack of leadership.

College B

Contrasting views on PIT-C are noticed in this "collège". To start with, there is Sylvie's case which differs from the other interviewees. First, she likes working in an interdisciplinary approach and always volunteers into teamwork. As a matter of fact, she declares to have been interested into questions in relation with interdisciplinary learning and teaching approaches long before the reform, and she states that she finds it easy to bridge links with other disciplines: "I am totally in when it comes to interdisciplinary work, for a long time, and it is true that I am motivated for this work, so I thought: "it will be a chance to work on this, and this, and this." With such eagerness, working in PIT-C is not really perceived as a tough challenge for her and she even does her best to enrol other teachers into the PIT projects "so I went to see Maths colleagues (…) it was a real pleasure. (…) it's the fact of working differently, it is a matter of having the pupil too bring you more than what you usually bring to them. Indeed, it's the feedback that I get [from the pupils]".

Sylvie's enthusiasm is quite different from her colleagues' one as far as developing an interdisciplinary approach is encourage. Talking about the making of PIT-C, she does not mention hindrances she came across. But her point of view is coherent with her position in the college: she is one of the teachers that were chosen to go through a brief training about the making of PIT-C and she was in charge of "training" the rest of her colleagues. When Sylvie recalls that experience she asserts "I have been part of the reform" which is particularly significant as she endorses the role of a key figure in the establishment in the making of the PIT classes.

Alongside Sylvie, the Principal proved to be very interested in the reform and was eager to give us the opportunity to see what have been done in his establishment. However, the rest of the teachers' position betray a mild reception of the reform. In fact, when asked about the reform, contrary to Sylvie, they tend to insist on problems they had to face. Firstly, many of the teachers confessed they had problem engaging in teamwork because they prefer to concentrate on their disciplines. Meanwhile they emphasize a lot on organizational difficulties. These barriers mainly concern the difficulty to cope with the schedule, inter-individual miscomprehensions or even the incapacity to see the links between different disciplines. [START_REF] Lebeaume | Itinéraires de découverte au collège : des pratiques d'enseignement coordonnées face à des « frontières de verre[END_REF] suggests that, most of the time, the teachers are expert in their disciplines and the tradition of working only with colleagues of the same disciplines deter the capacity to exchange professional practices with other disciplines. Charles and his colleagues seem to be facing such a challenge; in addition, they focus on the difficulty to get along with their colleagues. When he refers to that situation, the Natural science teacher states: "with others maths colleagues, we decided to withdraw from the PIT class, but it was not because of the project in itself or because of the kids… so that's it, the relationships to other, hmm, we had tensions between teachers, to tell you the truth… from one team to another, everyone did stay unyieldingly on their position, but, let's say everyone had their disciplinary constraint (…)". Such a stance confirms that inter-personal relationships in the teaching staff has a decisive impact in developing interdisciplinary practices in the schools [START_REF] Reverdy | L'utilisation de l'interdisciplinarité dans le secondaire[END_REF].

The contrasted opinions of the teachers appear also when analysing relation to teamwork. For instance, Marie declares: "I know that in Mathematics, every time we do things together, it would seem to us logical that the three Maths teachers would to the same things with the other teachers (…)". In this "collège", the Maths teaching staff functions as a team, they inform one another on the points of the curriculum on which they work and try to keep the same pace for all class levels all along the year. Such team spirit, whilst helping the teachers be in accordance with the official curriculum, makes it for them difficult to try and test new working set-ups like the Pit-C. Hence, their colleagues perceive they are not willing to adhere to the new project. Marie's words testify such obstructions in the making of the Pit-C. In reality, the Maths teachers' attitude is critical issue in the establishment beyond the question of the PIT-C: "I understand, she[ the other colleague who intervenes in the PIT project] said it would be difficult to make common cause in front of the Maths block (…) because we manage to…, we are many of us on that level because it's a discipline in which we are many, and, moreover, actually, we are used to working together, we talk with a same voice so… three persons to talk with a same voice, so I understand that she alone against all the others…!". The use of the term "block" is symptomatic. The Maths staff has gained such prominence in the pedagogical team that nobody seems to be able to stand up against its position. As a matter of fact, they seek to reinforce their positions in all the projects they take part into, which is not really in conformity with the precepts of the reform. Hence, no matter what the dispositions put forward in the reform, these teachers are liable to stick to their habits thereby suggesting that the reference for the practices (Albéro, 2010) is not derived from official prescriptions but is based on the social and professional influences resulting from the daily interactions in the school.

In the same vein, concerning the difficulty to realize PIT classes, Charles declares: "Besides, the Maths teachers have another problem: they face an intense pressure about the completion of the curriculum [in Mathematics]. So to adjust to the rhythm of the rest of teachers and treat the right lesson at the right moment when… that was really complicated." Charles considers that, contrary to other disciplines where there is not that much pressure about the completion of the curriculum in a specific cycle, Mathematics are a specific discipline in which teachers are obliged to cover the whole program. In that context, they cannot afford to lose time for such projects as the PIT-C when they are not planned into the timetables. Then, as shown with the the three Maths teachers, they only see to cover the specific elements of the maths curriculum rather than involving into PIT projects. This suggests that when school interdisciplinarity does not take into account the necessary curricular and didactic reforms (Gagné & Lenoir, 1998), the teachers are liable to stick to their habits and they will find it difficult to cooperate with their colleagues.

Paradoxically, whilst many teachers do not overtly express complains about the enforcement of the reform in the establishment, they do bemoan the lack of training. As a matter of fact, in their relation to the institution, it seems that the more they yield to hierarchical choices, the more they are likely to find it difficult to engage in the reform.

To sum up, in this college, compare to the other, the teachers do not really feel enthusiastic about the prospect of doing Pit-C and engaging in an interdisciplinary approach. The relationships between people seem complex and demonstrate a conflictual past. In addition to this, they did not benefit from a real training on putting PIT-C in practise. In this context, the teachers' singularities tend to take over and resistance to change is the more common feeling.

Conclusion

In conclusion, our analysis has tried to highlight how individuals and teams cope with the reform. When put in relation with the three dimensions that are interdisciplinarity, teamwork and the institution, the points of view differ from one teacher to another. The impression is the teachers are in favour of modelling their practices in accordance with political and scientific demands and the need for institutional support is firmly asserted. However, the institutional injunction is not sufficient to engage them into changing their practices. Persistent working habits, inter-individual antagonisms and lack of support from hierarchy make it difficult for these French teachers to adjust to the reform, thereby paving the way to resistance to change within the schools. Moreover, our study reveals that the following crucial elements are topical issues to be considered whilst examining a reform contrivance within professional environments:

• Agents' conception of change, including their professional experience and the need they feel to change their practices. • Group habits in terms of professional experience.

• Role of hierarchy in the process of changing school practices We suspect, however, that cultural and social specificities, as well as teacher training traditions are also important to consider in making educational systems cohere in a wider context, as in Europe.

Moreover, the difficulty to have access to the process of making PIT projects between the teachers and the activities of the learners in the classrooms caused methodological limitations in this study. It was impossible to draw comparison between the interviewees' statements and observations of the facts. Besides, given the variety of approaches about interdisciplinarity, it would have been beneficial for this study to compare the teachers' achievements, in terms of combination of different disciplines (from the initiation of the tasks to their assessment), with some conceptual definitions of the term interdisciplinarity. In fact, as this study has shown, most of the teachers approve the reform project, yet, its implementation causes a lot of stress which could have been curtailed by, on the one hand, specific training sessions on the topic

In 1995, the curricular reform already included the study of themes that would cover three of four different domains. A similar movement were noticed with the introduction in 2006 of the « common base of skills and culture » for students which seek to help them master key skills that are built from different school disciplines.

Official Journal of the EuropeanUnion, 2006, p.3.

The specificity of school disciplines resides on the fact that, although they derive partly from scientific knowledge through the process of "didactic transposition"(Chevallard, 1985) they are also culturally and socially founded. Therefore, they bear a significant part of beliefs and ideologies.

What is meant by " le collège" in France, is the compulsory school welcoming student from 11 to 16 yearsold. As we have no equivalent word in English, we'll keep French word all along this paper.


Elisabeth Luquin
email: rakolu@free.fr

"To be in Relation; Ancestors" or the Polysemy of the Minangyan (Hanunoo) Term 'āpu 1

This article deals with the polysemy of the term 'āpu used by the Mangyan Patag of the Philippines, Minangyan language speakers. The anthropologists of the region usually translate the term 'āpu by "owner", "master", and sometimes "spirit possessor", "leader". They also define it as "ascending kin )" and stress the notions of property and ownership. And yet, the problematic term 'āpu signifies more than a simple ownership relation. I will show in this article that in how far these glosses are not entirely satisfying. Rather than "master" or "owner", translations which seem to impoverish the polysemic senses, I will argue -giving some concrete examples -that the polysemy of the term 'āpu appears to imply more fundamental meanings. It turns out that we need to take into account that 'āpu means "relation; ancestor" which organize the relations between the living and the dead.

1 This article is part of the 10th International Conference on Austronesian Linguistics held in Palawan in 2006, and I would like to thank the participants for their interesting comments. I also thank INALCO (Paris) for its financial support. For her careful reading and her constructive remarks I am grateful to Almut Schneider.

Introduction

The Mangyan Patag (also known as Hanunoo Mangyan 2 ) live in the south-east of Mindoro.

Their territory stretches from the coasts up to the first mountain range where, due to the successive colonization, they settled. The Mangyan Patag cultivate mainly dry rice, corn, plantains and root crops and raise pigs and chickens. The residential unit is the hamlet grouping together a kin group centered on Ego and referring to common ancestors. Most of the time, a kin group gathers a nuclear family, the first cousins and their parents. By contrast, the extended kin group is scattered among several hamlets and includes the second degree cousins until the fourth degree cousins. Hamlets are localized around permanent sources and caves where the exhumed bones of the dead are hidden.

The Mangyan Patag cosmos is inhabited by human beings -living and dead -, ancestors ('āpu) and malevolent spirits (labāng), the latter being dead human beings who have not been dealt with properly during the funerary ritual. After the death of a person, its "life principle" (karādwa') inhabit the "place of the dead" during a long funerary treatment which will entail the karādwa' to become an ancestor after three generations 3 . The Mangyan say that the malevolent spirits (labāng) are humans' enemies because they eat their flesh and blood so that their "life principle" becomes one of the malevolent spirits. The benevolent dāniw ancestors ('āpu dāniw) help to protect the humans against the labāng's ill intentions. The role of the ritual specialist consists in maintaining the socio-cosmic relations that constitute the system which is based on the 'āpu relation.

The purpose of this paper is to understand and analyze the polysemy of the Mangyan term 'āpu. The special interest of 'āpu is that it participates in several distinct semantic fields: kinship, ritual, as well as physical and social relationships. But its polysemy implies only a range of distinct senses and I hope to show that two senses of 'āpu are primary while the others are their extensions.

In their works on the Mangyan Patag, H. [START_REF] Conklin | Hanunoo-English Vocabulary[END_REF], R. [START_REF] Kasberg | Gubatnun Ethnomedecine: Religion, Illness, and Healing among the Western Hanunoo[END_REF], E. [START_REF] Iturralde | The Religion of the Mangyans of Mindoro: An Anthropological Approach to Mission Work[END_REF]A. Postma (1992) usually translate the term 'āpu by "owner" which is the most frequent translation. Other ways of translating the term are "master", and sometimes "spirit possessor" or "leader". Furthermore they define it as "ascending kin ". Although M. Miyamoto (1988, p. 222) also renders 'āpu by "owner", he nevertheless includes the sense of "spirit", closer to the gloss "ancestors", which is more faithful to the Minangyan sense. The translations "master" and "owner" are not entirely satisfying because they don't take sufficiently into account the polysemy. Let us take a detailed look on this Minangyan term.

The 'āpu relation

The Mangyan employ the term 'āpu on a daily basis. 'Apu can be used both as a noun and as a verb. As a noun it is built with a possessive phrase such as "of someone" or "of something", as for example of an animal or of a natural element. In those occurrences, 'āpu is used with the possessive pronoun kay meaning "his, her, its" as in the expression kay 'āpu. It is also applied with the subject marker ti, the connective pag and the locative marker sa. It is important to notice that 'āpu is never employed with the proper noun marker si; in other words 'āpu is never grammatically personified. Furthermore, this term seems to be constituted with the Austronesian root word pu which means "base, origin"4 ; but this hypothesis still has to be inquired into.

In the following section I will explain the different glosses of 'āpu in the context in which they are used.

1.

The first gloss defines the "belonging relation". This relation is expressed in a nominal use: an animal, a plant or an object exists in reference, in relation to somebody.

Example 1a. To the question "Whose coconut tree is it?" Kantapo pag pu'un niyog?, one can answer "Emilio is in a belonging relation / 'āpu" si Emilio kay 'āpu.

Example 1b. To the question "Who is in its belonging relation/'āpu?" Siuno kay 'āpu?

speaking of a pig passing by, the answer will be "to Mother" kay 'inang.

Example 1c. Someone is "in a belonging relation/'āpu to his field" 'āpu tanman.

Example 1d. An informant said that "wild animals do not have a belonging relation/'āpu to human" 'Unman may 'āpu tawo 'pag mga talon hayop. This means that they are not related to a human being like the animals that are fed and have an owner 'āpu. "To feed, to raise" -be it animals, human beings or ancestors -is linked to a relation, particularly to the 'āpu relation;

whereas not to giving food indicates an absence of relation.

2.

Another nominal use of āpu occurs in the relation between a person and a ritual action.

For example, the person accomplishing a ritual "to offer to the sea ancestors" is the 'āpu of this ritual at the moment of the performance". If this person is accomplishing the ritual, then he is the 'āpu of this ritual.

3.

The relation of the container and the contents constituting a whole is a further occurrence of āpu. Here, something is part of something or a human being (nominal use);

Example 3a. Speaking of the lost pot of a particular lid one says: Naan kay 'āpu? or "Where is the 'āpu of this lid?" signifying "where is the cooking pot?"

Example 3b. When one sees blood on the ground, one asks "Who is related to this blood?" siuno kay 'āpu? In this case the blood is associated with the 'āpu in the sense of "being wrapped up in" that is to say "a contents in a container".

Example 3c. A pregnant woman is the 'āpu of her baby yet to be born. The Mangyan say that the food she is eating makes the fetus grow. Here again it seems more appropriate to talk in terms of a relation than in terms of "ownership".

Example 3d. A human being is composed of a body, breath and several "life principles" karādwa'5 When the life principle on the left side of the body leaves, the person becomes sick. When the life principle on the right side leaves, the person dies. In case of death, one says that "her/ his 'āpu is now dead" namatay yi kay 'āpu. Thus, the 'āpu of the karādwa' is the living person together with the breath and the body. Here, 'āpu does not mean "owner or possessor" but designates the relation constituting both, a person and its life principle.

When one gets sick, the ritual specialist, assisted by his dāniw ancestors, finds this life principle taken by a malevolent spirit or an angry ancestor. The dāniw ancestors then talk to the life principle karādwa' of the sick, thus bringing it back to "his or her 'āpu". This is the meaning of the expression "the life principle came back to the sick, to its 'āpu" Binmalik ti karādwa' sa magka-sakit, sa kay 'āpu. The body is the 'āpu of a person. Therefore a human being is composed of the 'āpu-karādwa' relation. Another, similar expression is even clearer:

"Don't go away, you, the life principle, come back to your 'āpu!" Danga magka-nalyo kawo pag karādwa', 'uli di' sa kanmo 'āpu!

4.

In a verbal use, 'āpu signifies a personal relationship between two beings: a human and a specific benevolent ancestor. These dāniw ancestors ('āpu' dāniw) help the ritual specialist to see invisible beings such as malevolent spirits, the life principles and ancestors.

In discourses of ritual specialists different verbal forms express this relationship between the living and the dāniw ancestors. For instance, when a dāniw ancestor manifested itself to an apprentice of a ritual specialist, one uses the verb mag-'āpu which is composed of the active form prefix mag-and the root word 'āpu. In the same way, the potential form maka-'āpu means "is able to be in relation" (naka-'āpu being the past form). Another verbal form is pina'āpu "to provoke to be in relation" as in the expression "I made them being in relation with you" pina-'apu niko sa kanmo. The root word is 'āpu prefixed with pa-the beneficiary form, while the infix in is the objective form emphasizing the complement: an object or a person. The infinitive form of this verbal form is pa-'āpū'un. This construction clearly shows that 'āpu signifies "relation" or rather, signifies "to enter into a relationship". 'Apu is here used with prefixes to express this action.

The meaning "relation" for 'āpu is valid for all relationships between a human being and all types of ancestors, but the relation is different for the ones associated with the natural elements of the cosmos to which I now turn.

5.

The other meaning of 'āpu is "ancestor of the cosmos". These ancestors are the dead who received a complete funerary treatment, and who have gone through the different spaces where this transformation gradually operates. They are the "underworld ancestors" 'āpu Parawān, the "sea ancestor(s)" 'āpu dagat, the "water ancestor(s)" 'āpu danum, the "earth ancestor(s)" 'āpu dāga', the "earthquake ancestor" 'āpu linog, and the "thunder ancestor"

'āpu linti'. In past times, the Mangyan Patag regularly made offerings to these ancestors during rituals. These ancestors of the cosmos have the authority over certain places identified by permanent sources and the "water ancestors", and by the foundations of houses with the ancestor of the stanchion ('āpu sulay).

Moreover, human beings are the "'owner' of the house" ('āpu balay). But instead of saying "owner" we would better say "part of the house" or "in relation with the house". It is a question of a relation constituting human beings, their houses and the ancestors around, rather than a question of ownership as defined in western categories.

When 'āpu' is combined with natural elements of the cosmos, it means designates the ancestors who keep watch on the good order of Mangyan society, as for example: respect of marriage rules, elder/ younger relationships and so forth.

6.

The ancestors 'āpu were once humans and this very same term also designates far away relatives of the generations G+/ -4, in other words the great-great grandparents and the great-great grandchildren. This temporal distance is to be seen in the context of the transformation of the status of a recently dead into an ancestor taking place through the funerary rituals.

7.

A specific meaning of 'āpu is the relation between spouses, a relationship which has also been emphasized by Harold Conklin. I sometimes heard the expression "her/ his 'āpu" kay 'āpu; signifying that a person is the 'āpu of his/ her spouse. This is linked to the notion of a couple or a pair, which expresses the significant idea of completeness for the Mangyan Patag6 . Moreover, as I mentioned previously, the numerous prohibitions on being greedy with food show that giving food to each other is primordial for the Mangyan couple.

Concerning grammatical occurrence, 'āpu is very often used with the "existential form". A person being in relation with particular ancestors7 is referred to as "having ancestors" May 'āpu. In conversations, it is common to use this expression which means "to have, or there is an ancestor". May, diminutive of may imaw, has two major meanings: "there is" or "to have".

It is what we call the "existential utterance". In our languages, it also means "to be" as in the example "He is sick" May sakit siya, literally, "He has a sickness". In the expression may 'āpu the literal translation "have/ there is ancestor" would not make any sense, which is why I translated it by "to be in relation with some ancestors". This morphosyntactical form indicates that 'āpu expresses a relation, and it is impossible to count the ancestors here because they are not quantifiable. Many glosses corroborate this sense such as "the sharpening stone has

[some] 'āpu" (may 'āpu ti 'asahan) and not "has a 'āpu".

Moreover if the Mangyan Patag say that a certain tree "has an ancestor", they indicate, that its leaves can be used for medical treatment and will have a curing effect on the human being. In exchange of this efficiency the "tree ancestor" receives beads offerings. If the tree has no ancestor, there will be no effect and no offerings.

Three words are derivatives of the base word 'āpu.

The first, 'Apwan is a self-reciprocal address term used by ritual specialists and their benevolent ancestors (dāniw). The suffix -an is added to the base word 'āpu. The literal writing is 'āpu'an, but from the point of view of conventional phonetics it is written 'apwan to indicate that there is no stop in between the root word 'āpu and the suffix -an. This term can be translated, from the locative point of view, as "the one in relation towards".

This usage of this self-reciprocal address term confirms the strong relationship between the ritual specialist and the dāniw ancestors. In their discourses, the ritual specialists refer to one of their "colleague" and his dāniw ancestors in the singular. They do not mark any distinction between the person of the ritual specialist and the dāniw ancestors. The expression 'āpu dāniw designates the dāniw ancestors as well as the ritual specialist himself.

The second derivative word is 'āpu-'āpu'an. The reduplication of the base word 'āpu implies a big number, and the adjunction of the suffix -an indicates that the stress is put on the sense of the base word. 'Apu-'āpu'an means "all the ancestors". The third word ka-'āpu'āpu'an -a derivative of the base word 'āpu -is synonymous of 'āpu-'āpu'an. The affix combination ka-_-an forms a collective noun.

Conclusion

The meanings of 'āpu analyzed above have in common the expression of an asymmetrical relationship of several forms: the relation of belonging, the contents/ container relation, the relation between two categories of beings -humans and ancestors -and finally the relation between two persons. I use the word "asymmetrical8 " because one of the elements of the relation has a higher position than the other: the pot has a higher status than the lid, the mother a higher status than the fetus, the ancestor a higher status than the living, and so on.

This asymmetrical relation expresses a particular completeness that is proper to the Mangyan Patag society.

I have defined the notion of 'āpu in relational terms, and not in terms of "owner" or "master". However, the definition "master" is nearer to the asymmetrical relation since in my view a master necessarily requires a servant and vice-versa; the two terms of the relation having a different status. Surprisingly no authors seemed to have bothered about this reciprocal relationship. In other words the servant was always missing.

When an animal, a person (spouse, fetus) or a plant belong/ is in relation to someone, it means that the latter feeds or takes care of the former. When 'āpu designate an ancestor of the cosmos, the person feeds them as well. We have here two different levels: 'āpu as a relation and 'āpu as "ancestors". The ancestors 'āpu precede the person but the person itself will become an ancestor one day. This succession of generations establishes the direction of the temporal cycle, from the living person to its final form after death: the ancestor.

The term 'āpu cannot be used by itself. It refers to the idea of constituting a relation of two terms, who define one another. This "word pair" -'āpu + word -forms an asymmetrical relation, that is to say the two terms do not have the same position. To constitute a unity 'apu is always arranged with something or with an entity. On his own 'āpu does not mean anything. One is nothing by oneself, in other words, it is necessary to be in relation if one wants "to be". A Mangyan is a relational being9 .

The The notion 'āpu marks precisely the relation between beings, between beings and things, and, at the same time, qualifies them as being in relation.The polysemous term 'āpu has above all two meanings: "to be in relation" and "the ancestors"; the omnipresent ancestors of the cosmos who found the authority of the society.

  meaning the Mangyan Patag give to the term 'āpu, which I extricated in this article, can be illustrated by what J.M. Tjibaou wrote in 1996 concerning the notion of the person in the Kanak societies of New Caledonia. "I am always somebody in reference to", "So I am always dual. I am never an individual. I can not be an individual. The body is not a principle of individuation. The body is always in relation. The body is the blood, and the blood is the mother. And the owners of this part of mine are my maternal uncles" 10 .

The base pu (puu) "base, origin", occuring in various Austronesian languages, comes from Proto Austronesian *puqun "base, origin", like the Minangyan word itself. Thus, pu may be separate from PAN *apu "grandparent". However in Minangyan 'apu means "the relative at G+/-4 and G+/-5".The term for grand-mother is 'ido and laki for grand-father, while the great grand-parents are 'umput.

In fact, the literal translation would be "several twos" and for reasons of convenience I render it as "life principle" (see Luquin, 2005, chapter III).

In French and English we humorously say "she/ he is my better half".

For example, the sapul ancestors favor fishing and hunting, and keep watch over the rice fields. The tihul ancestors find the stolen objects or animals; on the contrary the yayag ancestors steal for the human being in relation with them.

See the definition in LouisDumont (1986: 280, at the entry word "opposition").

This manifests itself in the fact that to stay single is highly unusual. And also, for example, concerning the benevolent dāniw ancestors, they have to be two in one stone to be favorable to the human beings, and to form a pair in their relation to the ritual specialist.

In La présence kanak, pp. 106-107.

. "Abundance of ancestors, abundance of rice": socio-cosmic relations of the Mangyan Patag, Mindoro Island, Philippines, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris. Miyamoto, Masaru. 1988. The Hanunoo-Mangyan: Society, Religion and Law among a Mountain People of Mindoro Island, Philippines, Senri Ethnological Studies, n°. 22, National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka, Japan Postma, Antoon. 1992. The Pandaniwan and his Daniw Power: the Healer Shaman in Mangyan Society, in Filipino Religious Experience and Non-biblical Revelation, edited by Leonardo N. Mercado, SVD, Divine Word Publications, Manila. Tjibaou, Jean-Marie. 1996. La présence kanak, Odile Jacob, Paris. The preceding document was presented at the Tenth International Conference on Austronesian Linguistics (10ICAL). To properly reference this work, please use the following format: <LastName>, <FirstName>. 2006. <PaperTitle>. Paper presented at Tenth International Conference on Austronesian Linguistics. 1720 January 2006. Puerto Princesa City, Palawan, Philippines. http://www.sil.org/asia/philippines/ical/papers.html For other papers that were presented at 10ICAL, please visit http://www.sil.org/asia/philippines/ical/papers.html.