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oles of those involved. The reconstructions the authors of these situations make of these
stakes, of these positions and of these roles have consequences on effective actions. As
a matter of fact, these representations can be considered as knowledge networks. In that
case, S.I.A. can contribute to the recognition of such networks. This time, implicative rules
of the type “if A then B” can be interpreted as follows : factor A is predominant compared to
B in the representation’s making.
The example that we are presenting here is the study of representations of some school
disciplines organisation for high school students. The notion of school discipline is a complex
one, even though it can be more or less naturalized within the school system institution.
What’s “French” for example or “Physique-Chimie” (Physics-Chemistry) ? Can we describe a
school discipline by the organization of knowledge which makes it specific or should we deal
with it according to teaching and learning techniques that constitutes it ? If these theoretical
issues are far from being solved, the few studies done with students confirm the interest
taken in them.
In fact, it seems that a large number of students have trouble identifying the different
disciplines : for example, some of them cannot identify the terms of a French exercise from
the terms of a History exercise. It also seems that the identification criterions are very often
material in primary schools (from 7 to 11) pupils who best identify the different disciplines say
they do so by using material clues, such as a notebook’s colour. However, the point of these
issues is that the identified difficulties have consequences on how well pupils do in school.
Identifying discipline’s boundaries and being able to recognize some of its functioning is a
factor of success.
We are presenting here a study about these different issues that deal with high school
students scientific disciplines representations. A questionnaire has been given to four
scientific junior classes (Première S in French), the students are 17 years old, and scientific
senior classes (Terminale S in French), those are 18 years old. The questionnaire’s aim is to
ask students at the end of their high school years how they perceive the different scientific
fields they are being taught.
The different questions they were asked are pertinent to the following intensive disciplines :
mathematics, analysis and statistics identification. The first questions are about the
identification of the school level where the students think the teaching of Maths (analysis,
statistics) started. Students can usually say in a coherent way when Mathematics and
statistics started to be taught (in kindergarten and elementary school for Maths, in Junior
high school for statistics), students have much more trouble locating when they were first
taught analysis ; they usually elude the question. Then they are asked how useful they
think the preceding disciplines are. Here again the answers are pretty clear cut : they see
cognitive use to Mathematics, but more rarely any use in real life (future jobs, etc…). As
for Statistics as a school discipline, it is quite the opposite, pupils see it as a useful outside
school, in the real world. The following item asks students to show how Mathematics is used
in other disciplines. All answer that Maths are used in Physics but very few of them point
out to different school disciplines in which analysis could be useful. The last question about
the usefulness of these three fields of knowledge is the following : the student is asked if he
remembers or not his teacher talking about how useful these disciplines can be. The four
last questions concentrate more particularly on school work habits : how they identify a class
(Maths, Analysis, Statistics), how they organize themselves (do they use separated class
files or not), how do they identify an exercise (of the same disciplines). Lastly on how much
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