Four axes are suggested for development and analysis:

Axis 1: the designation, the sort and the classification of the new educational problematics

School and its agents face difficulties which are more and more fragmented, this trend reinforces the idea that the educational institution is in a permanent crisis. This institution is perceived weaker and not able to sustain a democratic project which guarantees equality and equity. The heterogeneity of the pupils and the degree of their social proximity with school may contribute to the development of new provisions and programs which could be out of the traditional school environment. Some questions, usually affiliated to specific categories of pupils, are designated and treated as social problems which disturb school. What questions could be apprehended as new educational problematics? How their emergence could be understood? Which connection could be established between these issues and the school system in which they take place? Which links could we make with the designation of some specific public? These subjects may lead to the questioning of the social construction of these questions, how they gain this preponderance in the public debate and what are their effects on the evolution of the educational areas.

Axis 2: Policies about these new educational problematics: to fight and/or to prevent

We will question the definition, the characteristics and the effects measured of the politics about the new educational issues. Their configurations are different according to the school system and to the echelon at which they intervene. The set-up of national policies, of programs deployed from the local to the international scale, express the actors’ commitment to resolve these difficulties. Which areas and echelons are mobilized? How are these policies or these interventions nationally and locally applied? For example, among other subthemes of research, we are interested in those that focus on these problematics through the educational priority policies, the compensatory education policies, the development of educational programs linked with school or with some specific supervision of pupils, or in research that focuses on the programs’ effects on the educational areas.

Axis 3: Evaluation and judgment on the educational programs and specific provisions

The rankings and quantified indicators become progressively more frequent and gain importance in the educational debate. This progressive diffusion, linked with the democratization of education, became massive and contributes to the hierarchization of the pupils and the schools, and contributes to measure some “educational performances” and compare them between countries. They are also driven to assess the efficiency and the impact of programs, management and treatment of the new educational problematics. This axis will offer the opportunity to question these evaluations and their presumed “objectivity”, the use of statistical surveys (like those about the school climate), but also the evaluation’s dynamic and the alternative judgments to these wide national and international surveys. It is about the judgment of educational actors, parents and pupils on school. The evaluation is understood with a wide meaning, as a practice which consists of “appreciating the sequence of the conduct, under the mutual supervision, and with his proper reason for taking action”, and is inherent to the human action (Cottereau, 2012; Lamont, 2012). We may discuss about the instruments of the evaluation and the different methods, the concrete use of the quantitative evaluation and the effects of these instruments on the practices. This axis will be devoted to a critical reflection on the methodology to get more insight on the act of the evaluation.

Axis 4: Acting in school and inside the territories  

We will seek to understand what are the important evolutions and the transformations in the programs, the management and the treatment of the new educational issues. Specifically, we will be attentive to the local specificity and to the effects on the professional practices. We may question the division of the educational work inside these programs and these new educational managements, the evolution or the continuity of the school form precisely on these questions. What are the effects of the social, sexual and spatial segregation inside school, in particular concerning pupils’ school path? How do pupils and their family perceive this spatialization of the social problem and what are the consequences of the logic of competition between the educational areas? Who are the actors mobilized and with which legitimacy they organize their actions? What actions, programs or supports they promote or favour? We will question the construction of the margins, of the different ways of innovation and experiment dedicated to the management of the new educational problematics. How these interventions deal with the sharing of education with parents and how does it support cooperation between professional and parents? Do the “educational alliances” (Gilles, Potvin and Tièche Christinat (eds), 2012) have a dedicated space between all the actors mobilized and how? We may question the manner of evolution of the educational spaces and we will explore the effect of the promotion of some new modes of collaboration on education, as we observe the development of some logic of externalization from school to manage these new educational issues.