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File number :
CS-ISC-11e

Bibliographic reference :
Crahay, M. (2000). L'école peut-elle être juste et efficace? De l'égalité des chances à l'égalité des acquis. Bruxelles: De Boeck Université.

Abstract :

New Challenges for Schools
Massification of education has created new challenges for schools, one of which is to be both fair and effective. In his book, Crahay synthesizes the results of research projects conducted on educational systems and pedagogical practices in order to isolate the characteristics of a system likely to meet both requirements.

Description of Book Chapters
The first chapter clarifies the concepts of equality of opportunity, equality of treatment and equality of knowledge. Then, the author tackles the major issue that pertains to how family background influences educational paths. In chapter 3, Crahay enquires into how schools can reduce inequalities of achievement (e.g. differentiated systems vs. mainstream system). In chapter 4, the author shows that, although the principle of equality of treatment is acknowledged, students are not necessarily offered the same learning opportunities. The author provides further information on this issue in chapter 5 by reviewing studies conducted on teaching time management. In chapter 6, Crahay presents a series of meta-analyses conducted on various management approaches of student heterogeneity (individual vs. group teaching, homogeneous vs. heterogeneous group composition). Chapters 7 and 8 present respectively studies on mastery learning and on the role of co-operation in learning.

For Equality of Knowledge
This impressive literature review illustrates the importance of equality of knowledge in schools over that of equality of opportunity, which seems to lean more towards the reproduction of social elitism. To achieve equality of knowledge with regard to basic skills, it is necessary to work on both the educational system and pedagogical practices. To this end, the importance of certain negative discrimination factors must first be reduced: 1) freedom of parents to choose schools, 2) special education, 3) ability grouping, 4) grade repetition and 5) steering students into various streams in early high school. Then, guiding strategies should be implemented to enable teachers to adapt their teaching (teaching time management, program compliance). Learning conditions should also be reviewed. As such, the author proposes adopting a modular organization of schools without age groups and integrated into an interactive process (group teaching, tutoring, reciprocal teaching).

Crahay stresses the need to rethink schools based on their growing diversity (cultural revolution) and concludes that the reviewed studies have revealed that the most egalitarian pedagogies are also the most effective.



Key Words :
Education Massification, School Competition, Social Origin, Guiding Strategy, Learning Modalities, Educational Systems, Pedagogical Practices, School Environment, Literature Review, Meta-analysis