The book begins with an introductory text by Joël Lebeaume that contextualizes and problematizes the theme of the book by summarizing the inaugural presentation of the conference. This is followed by an Introduction to the Subject (contributed by Sylvain Fabre) that demonstrates, for one type of object and one particular disciplinary context (the plastic arts), how pupil activity can result in the creation of an artistic object from an everyday object (a chair).
The two volumes consist of five parts, drawing together research texts and professional testimonies. Part 1 of Volume 1 examines the links between objects and language. Part 2 of Volume 1 is devoted to the place of objects in early learning in nursery school. Then, Part 1 of Volume 2 explores one specific area of teaching–learning content – space and time. Part 2 of Volume 2 investigates records of activity with objects. The two volumes conclude with Part 3 of Volume 2, comprising three chapters that offer, transversally, contrasting points of view on objects, as well as perspectives for future work.
Part 1 of Volume 1 – Objects and Language(s)
This first part focuses on the relationships between objects in the broad sense and language(s): the learning, for young pupils, of foreign languages or the production of written work in French but also, for 12th grade students, the approach to the role of a “geometric object” in physics. Chapters mentioned in this part are concerned with clarifying, analyzing and investigating the mediation of a variety of objects and its contribution according to the learning objectives.
Progressing to writing short texts is a difficult step for the first grade pupils in a Zone d’éducation prioritaire (ZEP) 4. The objects chosen to tell a story materialize the elements and characters of the plot, thus becoming “catalysts” for writing. “The objects, through their materiality and the actions they stimulate, give a real character to situations that the child struggles to represent to him/herself because it calls for such a high level of abstraction” (written by Bruno Hubert in Chapter 2).
Chapters 1, 3 and 4 of Volume 1 examine foreign languages: second languages (Chapters 1 and 4) and additional languages (Chapter 3), respectively.
Chapter 1 (Élise Ouvrard) investigates the contribution of work carried out around children’s English-language picture books and their handling in Modern Foreign Languages (MFLs) sessions in elementary cycle 3, and considers what their instrumentation may involve. It compares approaches of beginners and experts in order to analyze the entries into reading enabled by these approaches, and underlines what is gained through material contact with these picture books: an affective environment and an emotive learning experience. It is an invitation to training so that the introduction of these books can become a real entry into foreign language literacy.
The Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) experience (Zebra Gabillon and Rodica Ailincai in Chapter 3) lies at the intersection of the socio-cultural and the (socio-)interactionist perspectives. The two perspectives allow us to consider the role of mediation in language development, together with the role of linguistic and communicational aspects in the learning process. The joint contribution of the two teacher–researchers is innovative and offers the particularity of reporting on research on the CLIL process implemented in English, at elementary level, in French Polynesia. Chapter 4 (Émilie Magnat and Karima Olechny) offers a reflective study of objects for language in kindergarten and the process which probationary teachers pass through with regard to the use of these objects, with a view to raising English language awareness. The choice of learning objects used (sequential images from a children’s story, a felt mitten, wooden characters) and the preferred approaches underline the importance of training so that objects and processes become instruments for linguistic development.
Finally, in Chapter 5 (Laurent Moutet), the term “language” refers not to French or to another national language, but to a different semiotic system: graphic language. This graphic language, which makes it possible to visualize a mathematical relationship between the quantities of the system being studied, plays a very important role in scientific and technological education, particularly for the content and the school level being considered here (special relativity in a 12th grade science major). The graphic that is constructed with the pupils and then used (Minkowski diagram) takes on the status of a “graphic object” that enables the pupils to reason on concepts that are often counterintuitive. This chapter thus illustrates the fundamental role played by graphic representations in conceptualization.
Part 2 of Volume 1 – Objects and Early Learning
There is one segment of education that cannot manage without objects for learning and to learn about: it is kindergarten, in which the ubiquity of objects of all kinds could be described as an invariant of this first school. In fact, as early as 1886, Pauline Kergomard, founder of this institution devoted to early learning, wrote:
In order to keep occupied, the child must have material objects at his or her disposal. The child who is barely walking pushes a chair in front of him/her for support; an older child turns his/her chair into an improvised horse; then there are the toys, real ones, from the rattle with bells on for the babe-in-arms, to the game of dominoes with which the eldest is learning to count to 12 […]. And it actually is an educational resource, since each of the objects of which it is composed is used for the physical and intellectual development of the child who has it within his/her reach5.
While it is incontestable that objects are plentiful in kindergarten and that they are used in early learning, their role often receives little attention or analysis from educators and researchers. The second part of this work, devoted to objects and early learning, sets out to shed some light on very diverse objects.
Certain objects, such as mascots, have become commonplace in kindergarten; they are supposed to help bring parents and teachers closer together in a collaborative vision of the parent–teacher relationship; it is precisely this supposed rapprochement that is investigated here in terms of social inequalities by Marie-Noëlle Dabestani (Chapter 6). Based on a survey of teachers in mainland France, this author shows a recurrent use of a notebook linked to a mascot and highlights an accentuated, attenuated or neutralized scansion between two spaces of socialization: the family and the school. Thus, the socializing practices of parents and teachers can either be coordinated and reinforced between the two spaces or, conversely, remain separate, the same object being understood differently by each of the stakeholders.
Posters, which are also objects positioned at the interface of materiality and symbolism, are widely used in kindergarten classrooms, generally with no consideration being given to their role in pupil learning and the difficulties they can pose from a didactic point of view. In Chapter