We are pleased to present the book “Le rapport à l’écrit, habitus culturel et diversité,” newly published by the Université du Québec press under the direction of Carole Fleuret and Isabelle Montésinos-Gelet. The book is the work of a team of eleven researchers, and it grew out of a lively and captivating colloquium held in Montreal in 2010. Intended for specialists and the general public alike, its main goal is to give credibility back to the human and cultural dimensions of schooling; it gleefully shatters the simplistic and alienating notion of homogeneity so highly valued in our education policies. But before we get to the heart of the matter, we would like to direct your attention to the person who started this project. Passionate about and actively involved in the Faculty and her research unit (Languages, Environments and Learning Development), Carole Fleuret is an assistant professor at the University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Education. She has a bachelor’s degree in special education, a master’s in French teaching and a doctorate in French teaching from the University of Montreal. Her research focuses on writing acquisition; more specifically, it focuses on spelling development and on the study of the socio-cognitive and cultural components at play in first and second language writing acquisition. She is interested in multiethnic and multilingual environments. She gives training courses on invented spelling and on literature for children and youth. In light of this short biography, we can better understand her unquenchable thirst for uncovering and explaining-by conducting fieldwork and collecting empirical data-the many different interactions that occur between primary and secondary socialization, and the critical role that different types of teaching can play in the acquisition of linguistic norms. Indeed, we are being pushed by globalization and rising migration to rethink our idea of society and take into account the heterogeneous texture of our social fabric. Because schools are the main stage for this diversity, it is imperative that we curb our unfortunate tendency to turn education into a commodity. We cannot continue to view it as one-dimensional, socially speaking. We must strive to understand “[the set of complex processes by which we are at once acted on and acting on],” as Pierre Bourdieu would say. This book has the great privilege of opening up new and little explored avenues in the field of teaching. It re-examines and questions the relevance of our current educational standards, and it allows us to adjust our interpretive and institutional perspective.
« L’ensemble complexe de processus par lequel nous sommes à la fois agit et en train d’agir » -Pierre Bourdieu
Mrs Carole Fleuret