L'Organisation du Temps des Enseignants en Grande-Bretagne et en France

Abstract

The aim of this thesis is to present a sociological and cross-national approach to the analysis of time and to examine its implications for the interpretation of time structures. The study is based on a comparison of the time organisation of men and women in the same profession, teaching, in two neighbouring European countries, Britain and France. This study focuses on the time organisation of teachers in secondary schools. This is the level of education which is most easily comparable between France and Britain, since it involves pupils of the same 11-16 age group in both countries. The distinction often made between work time and non-work time seems, in view of the multiplicity of activities covered by each term, to be an oversimplification. The two areas are even more difficult to distinguish in cases where work does not cease on returning home at end of the day. Teaching is a profession where this applies, even if, as in Britain, the formal work-time schedule includes preparation and marking to be done at school during the day. The theoretical approach to the concept of time used as a starting point for this study is the notion of the plurality and multiplicity of social times developed by philosophers and sociologists. Differences in social times are bound up with the multiple socio-demographic characteristics of each individual. This is one of the applications of the theory of relativity, confirmed by recent time-budget surveys. The intention here is to show that this plurality of social times may also be related to the socially and culturally determined perceptions people have of their time. Time is not only a quantity measured by the clock, but can also have a subjective social dimension. This social time is experienced by individuals in different ways according to their socio-demographic characteristics (sex, marital status, family circumstances, etc.) and the circumstances of the moment (leisure or work time). This is why we have chosen to examine one profession (teaching) in order to discover what factors might influence perceptions of social time for people doing the same job in two different countries. The theoretical framework is elucidated by an empirical study which presents the results firstly of a survey conducted in a secondary school in Birmingham (1991-92) and secondly of a comparison between this survey and an enquiry carried out in Aix-en-Provence in France in 1990 (Ferrero, 1990). Chapter 1 thus aims to clarify definitions of the concept of time by setting out H. Bergson’s theory of social time that sociologists such as E. Durkheim and G. Gurvitch were subsequently to take up. According to Bergson (1889), time in itself cannot be measured because it is perceived differently in each individual’s own consciousness. Mathematics and physics can only partially describe time in terms of movement and duration: time is a phenomenon and not simply a measuring instrument. Two people placed in a different context can express two different perceptions of the same time, as measured by the clock, depending on their activities and their referential systems. Time is thus a symbolic representation. The teachers in our study belong to different social groups, which gives rise to a variety of time representations. Their profession itself is a social group, as are their sex, their school, their family situation and the national education system. As these various social times overlap, plurality of time becomes multiplicity (Gurvitch, 1950). G. Gurvitch’s typology of times reflects his division of society into different groups or levels, according to their size and societal role. All these social times are constructed on the basis of individuals’ habits and attitudes, which for the social psychologist W. Grossin are reflected in various ways in which time is organised, in accordance with the situations in which individuals spend time and with their own personalities...