Right-Wing Populism and the Securitisation of Laïcité Narratives in French Education Policy

This article traces the influence of Front National (FN) on the transformation of mainstream French narratives of laïcité since 1989, with particular attention to education policy. It argues that the FN’s right-wing populist rhetoric, particularly the systematic securitisation of Islam as a threat to the ‘people’, facilitated the more widespread reframing of laïcité as a Republican defence mechanism, operating primarily through the school system. Laïcité was increasingly deployed in mainstream discourses and legislative measures to address two interrelated security concerns: the immediate safety of the school by the promotion of neutrality, and the overall wellbeing of the Republic via the prevention of radicalisation. Analysing this process in two specific periods (1989–2004 and 2005–2019), the article demonstrates that the FN’s populist agenda came to be in a symbiotic relationship with the centre-right and centre-left parties. While established parties gradually incorporated the FN’s securitisation narrative in their policymaking, the FN went through a process of ‘normalisation’ by claiming ownership of laïcité as a way to frame its anti-Islam stance in a more acceptable Republican discourse.

EFEKTIVITAS MODEL PEMBELAJARAN JIGSAW PADA KETERAMPILAN MENULIS BAHASA PERANCIS

This research aims to describe student’s writing ability before and after using Jigsaw model, the effectiveness of Jigsaw model in improving writing skills, and the opinion of students. This study applies descriptive quantitative method in form of pre-experimental design. Instruments that are used in the form of tests and questionnaires. The sample of this research is 32 characteristics writing skill of 6th semester French Education students. Based on the research result, the researcher can conclude that the students have been able to write the argumentative text nicely. The test result showed that the average test score after using the Jigsaw model is 8.9. It means, the average posttest score is higher than the average pretest score, up to 1.7%. Meanwhile, the results of the questionnaire show that students like writing but they find so much difficulty in making a writing or a text, and most students give a positive impression for the Jigsaw model.

Colonial Education and Women’s Political Behavior in Ghana and Senegal

During Africa’s anti-colonial movements, women in French colonies were less politically active than women in British colonies. Hern examines how differences in British and French education policies in the Gold Coast and Senegal between the 1920s and the 1950s shaped women’s opportunities for participating in nationalist activity and becoming involved in early-independence politics. Compared to girls’ education in Senegal, girls’ education in the Gold Coast was more widespread, came from a variety of providers, and was less focused on domesticity. Women in the Gold Coast were thus more likely to be mobilized as political agents during the nationalist movement and integrated into Ghana’s new independent government.

A French Educational Meritocracy in Independent Morocco?

Since independence in 1956, Morocco has actively promoted Arabic and Arab culture through successive waves of “Arabization” policies in its educational system. Yet, French educational diplomas continue to be crucial resources in Morocco, while national Moroccan degrees retain little social and economic currency. Relying on ethnographic fieldwork in Morocco carried out in 2018, this article looks at students from various socioeconomic backgrounds, asks how the grip of French education seventy years after Moroccan independence is experienced on the ground, and provides historical context to account for this situation. It argues that Morocco is an extreme but representative example of how former French colonies—and countries in the Global South—have created new forms of dependence due to their attempts to expand access to education on limited budgets.

National testing in education in France: Statisation, rationalisation and politicisation

In this paper, we analyse the trajectory of the French testing policy in education since 1973. Regarding its statistical tradition and its ability to produce its own evaluation tool, France may be regarded as an interesting case to interrogate the capacity of national educational systems to meet international standards of testing. Anchored in a perspective of sociology of public action, we show that the development of testing in France is the outcome of specific policy configurations that themselves depend on various types of factors. Using materials drawn from four qualitative research studies on testing and evaluation, we argue that this policy trajectory can be interpreted as a statisation process in which state administrations and political leaders both increased their power on society and imposed their categories and own interests to policy actors. This statisation led to a rationalisation and a politicisation of testing. Testing development did not lead in France to a deep transformation of governance patterns: it rather merged into traditional modes of regulation of education and confirmed them to some extent. Testing is thus an interesting way to study the propensity of the French education system to redefine global problems according to domestic stakes.

Identification of contribution and lacks of the ecodesign education to the achievement of sustainability issues by analyzing the French education system

The sustainability concept is becoming ingrained in the international engineering community. The next generation of engineers has to be trained to appreciate economic, environmental, and societal impacts of its decisions, with an international perspective and at a local and global scale. The aim of this paper is to contribute to identifying the strengths and limits of current sustainability education practices to will be able to improve future decision-makers' and product designers' training. The first step of our research concerns the identification of knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values associated with sustainability and ecodesign to highlight what kind of engineers' competencies for sustainability have to be trained. Based on this identification, we examine the French education system from secondary school to university to study sustainability and ecodesign integration in different technological French curricula and practices. The objective is to estimate the effective place of sustainable development and ecodesign in the technological training courses. We analyze programs and complete our approach by observing teachers in their classrooms or by conducting interviews. Even if concepts, knowledge and skills related to ecodesign appear in many different programs, our study emphasizes that there is not a continuum between pre-secondary school, high school, and university. As a consequence, teachers have difficulties to understand the aims and the coherence of the program, and students are not really comfortable with the issues of sustainability and ecodesign. We propose to improve programs and practices by developing multidisciplinary curricula covering most of the sustainable issues and integrating best practices of international universities.