I discover and I do. They show me and I do. How to make priority education students succeed?

Abstract

Recent evaluations of the French education system point to its difficulty in making students from socially disadvantaged backgrounds achieve at school. The aim of this paper is to describe the principles underlying socioconstructivist and explicit teaching in order to understand to what extent their application in the classroom allows priority education students’ school achievement. Mirroring these two types of teaching involves comparing the principles of explicit teaching (Northern American approach) and the so-called «teaching more explicitly» orientation (French approach). This comparison is necessary to help REP and REP+ teachers to understand and to integrate the professional actions expected to increase students’ academic achievement. The practical purpose of this article is to support teachers in choosing their pedagogical strategies according to the needs of their students.