Analysis of a cooperative engineering work: from epistemic work to the implementation of a teaching unit based on a children's novel in a secondary school English class

Résumé En

As part of our thesis, we examined the notion of authenticity (Beauné, Bento et Riquois, 2015a; Gruson, 2019; Sensevy, 2019) through a teaching unit of English learning based on a novel from children's literature, Kensuke's Kingdom by Michael Morpurgo, intended for 9th and 10th year students in France. This unit was designed as part of a cooperative engineering project (CDPE, 2024) by a group of two experienced English teachers, a PhD student and two researchers in didactics of language and culture. In this paper, we present some of the devices produced for this unit, from the design choices made to their implementation in the classroom. The devices concerned are the so-called emblematic extracts from the novel and the worksheet produced to analyze the framework narrative. We borrow concepts such as epistemic kinship and connoisseur of the practice from the Joint Action Theory in Didactics (Sensevy, 2011; CDPE, 2024) to provide an analytical reading of the impacts of the cooperative engineering work of these devices on students' practices.