Les élèves face à l’histoire de l’immigration : entre jugements moraux et stéréotypes, quelle mise à distance du sens commun ?

• Main Author: Alexia Panagiotounakos
• Format: Article
• Language: fra
• Published: Université de Provence 2016-12-01
• Series: Questions Vives
• Subjects: immigration; stereotype; pupils; interactional data; didactic; history
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/questionsvives/2024
• ISSN: 1635-4079; 1775-433X

This article addresses the issue of immigration and examines conditions which are necessary to reflect critically on social representations of pupils aged between 12-16 in secondary schools in Geneva, Switzerland. Whereas individuals globally display a multicultural belonging, social groups tend to claim a monocultural identity. Moreover, the current political framework of Nation-States seemingly essentialize nationality and religion, source of stigmatisation and discrimination discourses related to these social groups. An epistemological study of history, transmitted within a scholastic context, provides intellectual tools to question and review past and present discourse involving foreigners in the Swiss context. A qualitative analysis of history learning practices of these secondary pupils through classroom interactional data reveals tensions between their social representations stemming from identity-related factors and a critical thinking emerging from their intellectually motivated learning practices of history. Finally, the results also draw our attention to unequivocal moral judgements expressed by these pupils which probably hinder the understanding of the past on immigration in Switzerland but also enables the pupils process of decentering of their selves.