Chapter 6: La Main À La PÂTe: Implementing a Plan for Science Education Reform in France

Learning by Doing (La main à la pâte [Lamap]) is an inquiry-based science teaching program launched in 1996 by Georges Charpak, winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1992. The program was supported by the French Academy of Sciences (Académie des sciences), which has managed it since then with the help of the National Institute for Pedagogical Research (Institut National de Recherche Pédagogique), and the Ecole Normale Supérieure, an elite institution of higher education originally founded to train high school teachers, but now an institution that also trains researchers, professors, high-level civil servants, as well as business and political leaders. In 2000, the French Ministry of Education decided to implement an ambitious “national plan of renewal of science teaching” at the primary level, inspired by La main à la pâte. Since then, Lamap also has been engaged in the elaboration of new national standards and best practices for science education in France. This chapter describes how La main à la pâte moved from vision to national program and considers the prospects of that vision for the future. The Lamap story is an example of how a single program was able to contribute to the transformation of science education in a highly centralized educational system. We describe both the Lamap program and the impact it has had on French science education, and then we discuss the reasons it was able to achieve national recognition and so significantly affect national policy and practice. But, first, we provide some background information on the French educational system, particularly at the elementary school level, which may not be familiar to most readers.