Jean-Charles Chabanne

Jean-Charles Chabanne is a Professor of Educational sciences at the French Institute of Education, Ecole Normale supérieure de Lyon, Université de Lyon.

His academic background is French language and literature with a initial focus on literary and linguistic approaches to humour. He went on to research how language, literature and writing is taught, how language interacts with other disciplines, and how language serves as a form of knowledge, as a tool for thinking and learning, and as a working tool for teachers and mediators.

He has directed the LIRDEF research lab (Interdisciplinary Laboratory in Teaching, Education and Training) in Montpellier, and currently leads the scientific programme Alféa (Arts, Language, Training, Teaching, Learning). This multidisciplinary programme is dedicated to issues that emerge from professional practices in Art Education. Within that programme, J.C. Chabanne investigates the form, place and function of language (verbal and others) within learning contexts involving art education or aesthetic experience. His work is situated in the shared space between art education and the fields of language arts and literature.

A key research focus involves the issues around initial and continuous art education education for non-specialist teachers, in collaborative research programmes. These CR programmes are part of the LéA network (a network of collaborative research teams associated with the ENS-IFE). M. Chabanne is the project leader of two Art Education projects: Musécole and Graine de Culture that bring together teachers, educational advisers, teachers'educators, cultural professionals and researchers to analyze and assess Art Education between museum and classroom.

In these research efforts, the field known as ACE (art and cultural education) in the French national curriculum is approached as a shared subject of all the sciences of art (educational sciences, social sciences, art theory and aesthetics, siences of museum, etc.). Another focus is the reconsideration of the wider curriculum’s educational objectives and hierarchies: the aim is to extend art and cultural education from its current often peripheral role and highlight its specific contribution to ‘core skills’, while avoiding reducing it solely to basic skill acquisition.

In fact, art and cultural education involves the development of a number of demanding skills (calling upon multiple literacies – verbal, visual, cultural) and broader competences (like "21st Century skills"), but this is only possible if the specific needs of education in and through the arts are prioritised. These needs require an open and exploratory approach so that the student can not only learn, but also understand, develop and make use of the experience in learning situations created by art education professionals, whether these are teachers or external partners (from museums or other cultural institutions, visiting artists, performers, and so on).

 Contact : jean-charles.chabanne[at]ens-lyon.fr