La socialisation professionnelle en début de carrière : le cas d'enseignants d'EPS

The thesis deals with the sociology of the beginning of career of the teachers in secondary school, from the case of the Physical and Sports Education, between the passing of the examination and the third year of actual professional appointment. The point here is to categorize the variables which report difficulties and those which on the contrary facilitate the first moments in the job. For that purpose, we investigated for four years with a structured sample consisting of fifty-five teachers appointed all over the academies (i.e. regional educational authorities) of Lille and Versailles. Signings of questionnaires, interviews (sixty- five), observations of the work “in progress” (ten times a week) were carried out. Five teachers were particularly « studied », even, establishing then a kind of “longitudinal follow-up”. Finally this work brings to light the tensions between the learning of the job by the official training authorities and that on the ground, between the necessities of respecting a professionnal culture and adapting to the actual teaching situations. But these proceed of diverse variables which express themselves in ambiguous manners. We suggest systematizing this complexity by showing how the teacher submits to the job in order to succeed in adapting. Will the current “masterization” of the teaching training programmes improve it ? And thus, the transmission of the knowledge and skills in Physical Education as well as the alterations which it implies at the level of the pupils ? We may wonder why the thesis does not give a definite answer to these questions. Now it is up to the reader to appreciate if it is either because of the heterogeneousness of the configurations of career debuts, thanks to the variety of the beginners’ profiles or the chosen teaching subject.