Sciences, Society, Historicity, Education, Practices - S2HEP

Research topics

Areas of research

The S2HEP laboratory (Sciences, Society, Historicity, Education, Practices) comprises a research group (EA 4148) whose supervisors are the Claude Bernard Lyon 1 university (UCBL) and the Ecole Normale supérieure de Lyon (ENSL), with strong commitment from the Institut Français de l’Education [French institute of education - IFE]. This contract gives official status to partnerships on teaching projects for mathematics and sciences, started when the Institut National pour le Recherche Pédagogique [National institute for teaching research - INRP] existed. A chair - currently occupied by N. Lechopier - attached to UCBL was obtained when the contract was concluded. The chair is funded jointly UCBL and ENSL.
The laboratory operates thanks to a management team comprising staff from both sites (a director, P. Lautesse, and two deputy directors, C. Bruguière for Lyon 1-ESPE, and K. Bécu-Robinault, for ENSL-IFE), a laboratory board and a scientific board. When this bulletin was published, S2HEP had 80 members, of whom almost half were PhD students. This special aspect adds to the dynamism of the team, since around ten doctorates are granted each year.
Another particularity of our laboratory is the researchers' areas of expertise: history of science, philosophy of science, the didactics of mathematics and experimental science, epistemology of science, anthropology and health etc.


The laboratory's scientific project has been broken down in three fields of research, which bring together various area of expertise:

• Area 1: knowledge and systems for teaching, training and mediation in the sciences (run by Jana Trgalova and Eric Triquet);
• Area 2: historicity and the construction of scientific knowledge (run by Jonathan Simon);
• Area 3: transformation of health and the body (run by Jérôme Goffette).

The researchers in these 3 areas from ENSL-IFE and UCBL are forming ever closer ties within the S2HEP laboratory. The Maison des Mathématiques [Mathematics centre] also forms a place for collaboration between researchers in the didactics of mathematics from both our establishments. Over the last year, subjects that are bringing together the entire laboratory are emerging, like narrations (teaching tools, research methods, traces of activity etc.). The scientific originality of the laboratory has resulted in a large number of publications in international journals, chapters in papers, as well as reference works (more than 250 publications since 1st January 2011, the date on which S2HEP was created).