Author Description

<p>If daily teaching practices are based on knowledge and standards, it seems necessary to analyze the following paths: their nature as redefined by teachers themselves, the gaps which exist between learned knowledge and institutional norms, the way in which they are constituted and sustained in relation to values and to perceptions of what is possible and what can facilitate the practice of the teaching profession. The papers in this issue present such analyses from different methodological approaches, at different levels of schooling, in the education systems of several French-speaking countries. They focus in particular on general public representations and the constraints they imply, on the part played by middle managers in the transmission and adaptation of standards, and on the plurality of standards and their evolution. They also deal with the mobilization of the notion of standards in training situations and their existing transformations in such situations.</p>