The teaching of prospective geography : towards the construction of a new school geography ? ; L'enseignement de la géographie prospective : vers la constuction d'une nouvelle géographie scolaire ?

Abstract

Prospective geography is one of the tools of geographers. It is a "Method of exploration of the future that aims at anticipating, to more or less distant horizons, the desirable or undesirable evolutions of a space with a political definition" (Levy & Lussault, 2003, p. 749)Used by European institutions such as Europe 2000 or French institutions such as DATAR, urban planners make it a tool for dialogue in order to enlighten policy makers who have to choose the most advantageous opportunity for the territory they administer. . Prospective geography is therefore a set of practices, concepts, scientific knowledge and social practices. It does not rely on stabilized knowledge as presented in classical school geography, but on possible futures, multiple and not immediately verifiable.However, since 2010, implementing it into high school curriculum, the school institution has shown their will to bring forward prospective in the teaching of geography, will confirmed with the new college Syllabus of 2016.This introduction of prospective geography into the curriculum may change the very nature of the geography taught and the role of the teacher who can no longer be sole holder of the knowledge. In fact, the pupils' imagination, just as their vernacular knowledge, acquired through a sensitive experience, intellectually constructed but in a no-distanced way, strongly contextualized (Colligon, nd) and thus intransmissible to a large community, are put to use to take part in the development of the image of a possible future territory, desirable or not.Through analyzing a corpus of syllabus and interviews with teachers and preparations of a lesson, it is a question to understand how this innovation promoted by the institution is perceived by different actors (Bernstein, 2007) What goals does each possible actor of this innovation allot to school prospective geography? Are these goals breaking with or related to the aims of school classical geography ? Could this innovation serve as a catalyst for a paradigm shift (Bruter, ...