SURVEY (5/5) “Distance learning” 🕵️
How do you plan when everything is at a standstill? How did this year affect the academic and professional projects of students? Focus on schools, their teachers and students, to understand orientation in times of crisis
To understand what orientation is, I start by going to specialists and meeting Annick Soubai, director of the Information and Orientation Center (CIO) for higher education in Sorbonne. Annick Soubai defines orientation as “making a decision and taking a given direction”. I also meet Jacques Pouyaud, doctor in psychology and lecturer at the University of Bordeaux, for whom orientation is “an activity of self-construction in interaction with one's environment, which necessarily involves surpassing oneself”. Orientation is therefore intrinsically linked to the movement, as Annick Soubai poetically recalls at the conclusion of our interview: “etymologically, orientation comes from the Latin terms “oriens” (orient) and “oriri” (to get up). The East is turned towards the rising sun so when we orient ourselves, we turn to the rising sun and to the future.”
Isn't it ironic to talk about a movement when the world of higher education has been in lockdown and immobile for a year now? And yet, when I reread the outlines of the 30 interviews conducted over the past few weeks - 11 educational managers, 8 students, 6 professors, 5 researchers - the theme of transformation emerged as the common thread running through my entire investigation. If immersing myself in the small world of higher education showed me one thing, it was that the immobility imposed set everyone in motion. Depending on government decisions, schools have been fighting for months to ensure educational continuity. Teachers are reinventing their formats and content, and doing everything they can to prevent their students from dropping out. The latter, upset, are assailed by existential questions: who am I? Where am I going? What am I looking for in my training?
These questions, which have been going through each of us for a year, are redefining our relationship with the world. However, it is precisely this transition movement that I sought to identify throughout my investigation, and to crystallize in this article.
“When you orient yourself, you look to the rising sun and to the future” 🔅
I think so we are
The thin sample of higher education actors I met with suggests to me that this period of crisis has closely linked our individual transitions to a collective transition. I think that the philosophical thoughts that have fallen on us as individuals have also caught us off guard as a society. Since the first lockdown, the subject of building the “next world” has invaded social networks, media and conversations.
I mentioned this hypothesis to Jacques Pouyaud, who is interested in the process of self-construction and identity transformations during psychosocial transitions. For him, COVID-19 is a very particular case study, since it has prompted everyone to transform their habits, change their daily lives and question themselves. According to him, the reflection can indeed be transposed to the societal level: “we can imagine that the process of individual reconstruction also happens at the collective level. Perhaps this unprecedented crisis experienced collectively will push societies to reorganize themselves by building a new collective identity and a new relationship with the world.” COVID would therefore be the trigger for a new collective orientation, intertwined in fact with individual orientation since both draw their thoughts from the same crisis.
“Perhaps this unprecedented crisis will push societies to reorganize themselves by building a new collective identity and a new relationship with the world” 🌐
In Praise of Uncertainty
The suspended year, as if out of time, that we have just gone through, was in fact conducive to asking questions. But let's not forget that orientation is primarily defined by “making a decision”, and therefore finding answers. Did the students find these answers? How do they manage to project themselves into their professional lives in an environment as unstable and uncertain as ours has been for a year? Second assumption on my part: the ambient uncertainty must have necessarily disrupted the student orientation process.
To my surprise, the students interviewed proved me wrong. According to them, the context did not have a particular influence on their student and professional choices. The health crisis has at most reinforced pre-existing trends, for example by confirming a vocation or a center of interest. To explain this phenomenon, Nahema Bettayeb, doctor in psychology and National Education Psychologist, tells me that the construction of choices is based on complex processes that go beyond the question of orientation, and involves the development of the person's identity in context. To get to the bottom of it, I ask her what she is observing on the ground. For scientific rigor, Nahema Bettayeb reminds me that we do not yet have the necessary perspective to draw conclusions, and that no numerical study has yet come out on any increase in the use of guidance services in universities. However, she confirms to me that she has not noticed any particular over-solicitation or change in concerns since the start of the crisis: “it is very difficult to assess an increase in demand in the current context”, she tells me.
I must therefore forget my prejudice: the pervasive uncertainty did not at first glance change the orientation decisions of students. Annick Soubai helps me to see things more clearly: “Uncertainty is at the heart of the orientation process”, she explains. It is an essential and positive component, since it raises questions. And if it does not shake students more than that today, it is because it has been part of the landscape for several years. The period of the 30 Glorious Years, marked by sustained economic growth, the advent of the myth of linear progress, and therefore a very strong confidence in the future, is far behind us. If until the 1960s it was reasonable “to consider linear career paths”, today “the future is completely unclear” continues Annick Soubai. I can only agree. Subsequently, Jacques Pouyaud completed his remarks: “the temporal perspective in which we can project ourselves has been greatly reduced. While guidance support models used to be centered around long-term, rectilinear professional projects, it is now very difficult to predict what will happen tomorrow. Increasing instability has forced us to internalize the norm of uncertainty and to reorganize the world around medium-term projects.” The picture is getting darker. Should uncertainty always be praised?
“Uncertainty is at the heart of the orientation process” 🧭
To be oriented or to orient yourself?
At the end of these conversations, I therefore ask myself a new question (the last one, I promise). In an increasingly unstable and changing world, are students subject to constant uncertainty? How can we help them with orientation when we are all sailing by sight?
On this question, I defer to Jacques Pouyaud, who studied the different paradigms of guidance support. His analysis is fascinating. In this context of reduced temporal perspectives and the normalization of uncertainty, orientation has been redefined as supporting adjustment in the world. In doing so, it adopted the terms in vogue in the business world: it now advocates “adaptability”, “mobility” and “agility”. “The whole discourse of orientation is based today on the injunction of the individual to adapt to his environment”, laments Jacques Pouyaud.
But wouldn't the unprecedented context we are experiencing today be just the perfect opportunity to rethink orientation support? With this idea, Jacques Pouyaud comes to life: “the individual and collective transitions we are going through require new identity resources! The work of the guidance counsellor should be thought of in terms of building and developing such resources to help individuals transform, not adapt to, the environment around them.” I am convinced: for their academic and professional future, students must be oriented, and not oriented.
