Conference Program

Since the 1980s, the demand for expertise in school policy has grown significantly (Poupeau, 2003), contributing to the shaping of sociological research questions in line with administrative evaluation requirements. In seeking to legitimize implemented measures through “ever faster evaluations,” the contemporary mode of policy-making described by Xavier Pons (2024) as “fast politics” has reinforced this trend. Through their control over funding and, to some extent, access to the field, institutional sponsors participate in constructing research topics in order to identify “good practices” (Pons, 2024). Research is thus expected to be useful, but "asking sociology to serve a purpose is always a way of asking it to serve power. Whereas its scientific function is to understand the social world, starting with the powers that be” (Bourdieu, 1980). Furthermore, legitimizing sociology as a tool for public action in education may simultaneously delegitimize it as an “autonomous” scientific practice – one in which problems are determined and addressed without outside interference " (Saint-Martin, 2023).

At the same time, in a context marked by increasing precariousness in social science research (Harari-Kermadec, Sargeac, and Noûs, 2020), laboratory teams cannot afford to stay away from the financial opportunities provided by evaluation contracts – as they fund PhD and post-doctoral researches, research engineers etc. In this presentation, we will reflect on a position we adopted over ten years of studying educational policy measures in France: we are both experts responding to the immediate questions of institutions and sociologists, basing our work on the production of knowledge specific to scientific research. We will draw in particular on our research experience on two programs (Barrère, 2013): Cordées de la réussite and Parcours d'excellence, which we investigated between 2008 and 2019. We will explain how this dual role led us to differentiate our modes of expression according to context: using simplified language and fewer scientific references during interactions with institutional actors and in evaluation reports; using the data collected for research purposes within our laboratory and in scientific publications. We also shared our research findings with other types of stakeholders - trade unions, elected officials, and community activists. In these contexts, our research contributed to revealing “the reality of asymmetries, inequalities, relationships of domination and exploitation, the exercise of power, and processes of stigmatization” (Lahire, 2016).