to develop human capital. These assessments provide information on school performance: they cover learning achievements (in mathematics, French, science, etc.), the level of schooling of pupils (including those with SEN), their progress and identify inequalities linked to the type of disability, social background or gender (Champeaux et al. 2019). In the cases of the United Kingdom and Poland, they assess the success rates of SEN learners compared to the overall school population and identify inequalities in this respect (Ebersold et al. 2010); they also describe, as in PISA, the obstacles to learning induced by teachers’ practices (OECD 2007).
Thus correlated with a dedicated institutional framework, the consecration of the imperative of accessibility contributes to the advent of a post-disciplinary school that reconfigures the symbolic order governing pedagogical activity, as well as the relations between the stakeholders involved. It contrasts the durability of the institution, historically anchored in political, economic and social struggles, with the ephemeral nature of learning organizations, aiming at making themselves accessible for all learners and making quality assurance a source of organizational and pedagogical dynamism, and a guarantee of performance and equity. It contrasts the school as a space for order and standardization with the school as a micro-society, defining itself as a space for personal and social development, supported by a management ideal claiming an ethical dimension, and making quality assurance a vector of social justice. It substitutes the figure of the pupil, who should be raised through a normative conception of pedagogy, with that of the learner, who should be actively involved in the processes and learning by differentiating practices (Ebersold 2017b).
I.3. An imperative subjected to orchestration by institutions
The second part of the book links the reinvention of the school to the advent of a collective imagination underpinning the implementation of the accessibility imperative to its orchestration by schools to combat institutional discrimination. Indeed, accessibility cannot be decreed. Its realization is a consequence of the way in which schools legitimize, on a daily basis, an institutional normativity to their school members, whose dynamics of change are based on taking into account the heterogeneity of conditions and situations. The way in which school policies make sense of accessibility is essential in this respect: it makes explicit the higher common good pursued by all stakeholders and constructs the symbolic and practical framework that gives anthropological, organizational and functional legitimacy to what constitutes accessibility. It forges the space of possibilities within which the configurations are crystallized that allow ways of being and acting, supporting the accessibilization of learning and social environments to be established and stabilized (Ebersold 2008).
The ways in which school policies orchestrate accessibility condition the conceptions of excellence and teaching promoted by organizational contexts. They support stakeholders’ distancing with the traditional components of the school form and the reconfiguration of the constituent components of the pedagogical nucleus of school environments. According to Mainardi (Chapter 4), such a reconfiguration invites teachers to prevent the emergence of difficulties among learners by means of didactic strategies that distance them from a normative conception of pedagogy that gives priority to top-down transmission in favor of a transformational perspective centered on real universal access to planned learning. These strategies, as suggested in particular by Feuilladieu, Gombert and Benoit (Chapter 5), require the combination of routines and innovations made possible by the generic and specific activation of study aids. This reconfiguration redefines the teacher-learner relationship: it requires teachers to recognize the expertise of students and to solicit their adherence to the pedagogical objectives pursued by paying close attention to their school experience, ensuring that the forms of pedagogical mediation are adapted to individual characteristics, that each student is involved in regular pedagogical activities and that friendly relations are established between all the learners in the class. The reconfiguration of the pedagogical nucleus is also the result of collaborative practices mobilizing diversified professional figures around the construction of paths to academic success, the improvement of teaching practices and the increase in the sense of self-efficacy among staff. It is based, in particular, on formative steering instruments or strategies, such as individualized teaching plans, allowing for planning learning and its sharing over time (especially during transition periods) in a personalized manner and to support cooperation among the relevant stakeholders.
The ways in which accessibility is orchestrated also govern the forms of agreement required to embed accessibility as a principle ruling the social games among schools’ stakeholders. Weber (Chapter 6) shows that the mobilization of digital technologies cannot be summed up in their technical or pedagogical dimensions. These technologies do not support the accessibilization of school environments per se: their use by school actors, even if it is progressing, remains very fragmented (OECD 2019) and recourse to them does not necessarily increase school performance (Amadieu and Tricot 2014). The creation of software accessible to certain groups of students with special educational needs sometimes struggles to go beyond the experimental stage or to establish itself as a teaching resource used by the majority of teachers (Muratet et al. 2013); the fact that the tools comply with standards specifying universal accessibility does not mean that they are appropriate for the uses that certain categories of learners with special educational needs may have of them (Edyburn 2015). As a result, the use of digital technologies presupposes school policies that seek to legitimize it among members of the education community. This legitimization undertaking presupposes a comprehensive strategy targeting all school staff and mobilizing all the actors likely to be concerned within a territory. It also calls for the use of digital technologies to be part of an inclusive ethos that invites the school’s staff to see accessibility as a resource beneficial to all the players concerned. It is also based on the various measures to provide teachers with the skills and knowledge required to use digital tools in a classroom context.
Modes of orchestrating accessibility also establish the formalized space for possibilities that collectively qualify what makes for accessibility and translates its principles into a collective competence. This space of possibilities derives, in particular, from the forms of cooperation legitimized in organizational contexts. According to Mainardi (Chapter 4), cooperation between teachers and administrators contributes to the organizational legitimization of the principles that specify the inclusive school: it encourages school actors to see the diversity of cognitive profiles as a resource that benefits everyone and to strive to reduce the obstacles to learning for all pupils in order to prevent academic failure; the joint mobilization of special and mainstream teachers in the context of co-teaching encourages teachers to focus on a universal pedagogical stance oriented towards the classroom without neglecting the requirements imposed by certain pupils. Synergies between teachers and professionals from specialist provision condition the legitimacy of the mechanisms created to facilitate the transition of pupils enrolled in special settings to the mainstream environment. All these elements suggest that collaborative practices are part of the symbolic and practical environment required to enable stakeholders to pay attention to the collective and individual components involved in the accessibilization of learning environnements and to mobilize, in an appropriate way, the continuum of generic and specific supports that need to be adapted to the diversity of contexts and profiles.
The creation of a symbolic and practical framework making accessibility a resource that benefits all those involved in the school is all the more important since the accessibility imperative, as shown by Plaisance (Chapter 7), has established a new professionalism for teachers. This new professionalism rejects the figure of the teacher-instructor in favor of that of the resource teacher who is a source of change and innovation. It requires teachers to take the unknown and unpredictable inherent in the uncertainty that underpins the need to take into consideration the individual needs and the specificity of the contexts to allow access to planned learning