Étude et mise à l’étude des mathématiques en classes préparatoires économiques et commerciales : point de vue des étudiants, point de vue des professeurs

摘要

This study pertains to students’ personal work in mathematics in French business school preparatory classes. Our aim was to explore the links that exist between the institutional and the personal organization of study in order to determine how these institutions explicitly shore up their students. This study’s first concern was to examine the evolution of the different aspects of students’ personal work throughout the first year of preparatory classes. We then focused on the factors which contribute to this evolution. In that respect, we considered the institutional functioning, starting at a macro level of the global business school preparatory classes’ institution, and then reaching a more local level of a teacher’s class, looking for ways through which the institution determines and transforms the working habits of its students. On the first hand, we examined the institutional organization of study and the teaching devices implemented by the teachers and compared those of two tracks; on the other hand, we studied social relationships which are established among students and those built between teachers and students. Finally, we tried to identify work modalities that are specific to students who achieve good results and to understand what favors them, both at the institutional and interpersonal levels. Several instruments were combined through a mixed methods design to collect data in order to better answer our research questions. The main ones were pre/post student questionnaires and interviews with teachers and students.