Teachers’ work with resources: Documentational geneses and professional geneses

Abstract

In this chapter we consider teachers’ ‘documentation work’: selecting resources, combining them, using them and revising, amongst others. We present a theoretical approach for the study of this work, conceptualising the articulation between documentation work and professional growth. This ‘documentational’ approach of didactics introduces a distinction between resources and documents: the teacher, drawing on resources, develops a document, in a process identified as ‘documentational genesis’. Studying ‘documentational geneses’ requires a specific methodology: the reflective investigation of teachers’ documentation work. We study data collected with this methodology, in particular in the case of a teacher introducing the notion of function. Teachers’ documentation work is central to their professional activity; accordingly teachers develop documentation systems, whose structure is strongly related to the structure of the professional activity. The documentation system conversely influences the professional activity, which evolves along ‘professional geneses’. Our study especially focuses on digital resources and on the repercussions of their use on teachers’ professional geneses.