Introduction

As part of the initial teacher training programme offered at the École Normale Supérieure of Bouzaréah (ENSB), the Approches des textes 2 module plays a pivotal role in developing second-year students’ literary text analysis skills. These students are enrolled in two pathways: PEM (Middle School Teacher) and PES (Secondary School Teacher).

However, qualitative interviews conducted with in-service French teachers—graduates of the ENSB—have highlighted shortcomings in the module, particularly regarding the teaching of literary texts. The teachers report that the knowledge acquired remains largely theoretical and difficult to transpose into practical teaching contexts within the Algerian school system.

One teacher (PES5) notably remarked:

“In reality, this module did not help me in the field! We were not taught how to teach a literary text in this module. We only worked on literary materials, but no one taught us how to teach them.” (translated by the author)

This statement reflects a gap between the module’s academic objectives and the practical expectations of teachers in real teaching situations. From a professional didactics perspective, this perception reveals a disconnect between the knowledge taught in the Approches des textes 2 module and the development of actionable competencies required for teaching literary texts.

In response to these findings, a didactic approach was designed and experimentally implemented with a group of second-year PEM and PES students in the French department at ENSB. This approach pursued two complementary objectives:

• Firstly, to strengthen students’ literary analysis skills through a close reading of an excerpt from What the Day Owes the Night by Yasmina Khadra.

• Secondly, to guide students in transferring these analytical skills into a simulated teaching context aimed at designing reading comprehension activities appropriate for middle and secondary school pupils.

The pedagogical operation thus aimed to bridge epistemic knowledge and pragmatic knowledge (Pastré, 2011), fostering in students a reflective stance capable of integrating disciplinary knowledge with pedagogical choices adapted to the realities of teaching French as a foreign language in Algeria.

In this light, the research sought to answer the following question:

To what extent can a training programme that combines literary analysis with didactic reflection foster the development of professional competencies in teaching literary texts at the middle and secondary levels?

More specifically, the study examined the students’ capacity to transform epistemic knowledge (Pastré, 2005) into operational resources applicable in classroom settings, through the qualitative evaluation of the written productions completed during the experimental sessions.

1. Observations and Limitations of the Module: Perspectives from Practising Teachers

A qualitative study was conducted with French language teachers at the middle (PEM) and secondary (PES) levels who had completed their training at the ENSB. The principal aim of this inquiry was to explore the extent to which the Approches des textes 2 module contributes to developing the professional competencies necessary for teaching literary texts within the Algerian school system. Specifically, the study sought to assess the module’s capacity to foster didactic competencies related to teaching and pedagogical exploration of literary texts.

Interviews were carried out with four teachers with between four and eight years of teaching experience. The conversations were recorded, transcribed, and supplemented by note-taking. A content analysis was performed to identify the module’s contributions to professionalisation processes. The key question guiding the interviews was:

“In what ways did the Approches des textes 2 module help you teach literary texts in your classes?”

All four teachers stated that the module did not significantly contribute to developing their professional skills. One secondary school teacher (PES5) declared:

“In reality, this module did not help me in the field! We were not taught how to teach a literary text in this module. We only worked on literary materials, but no one taught us how to teach them.” (translated by the author)

This observation highlights a mismatch between the training objectives of the module and the practical needs of teachers in real teaching scenarios. From the perspective of professional didactics, it underscores a disconnection between the theoretical knowledge taught and the professional competencies needed to teach literary texts effectively.

Another teacher (PES6) expressed similar dissatisfaction:

“I find it regrettable that this module did not help us develop the necessary skills to teach literary texts at the lycée! When I had to work on a comprehension activity based on an excerpt from a short story, I froze—I didn’t know how to guide my students towards meaning.” (translated by the author)

This testimony reveals a significant deficiency in the module’s capacity to prepare students for the demands of secondary education, suggesting that the training provided failed to help the teacher build the necessary operative schemes(Vergnaud, 1990) to manage authentic teaching situations (Pastré, 2011). In other words, the process of didactic transposition (Chevallard, 1991) from academic to practical knowledge was insufficient, impeding the transformation of scholarly knowledge into teachable content.

Similarly, a middle school teacher (PEM6) remarked:

“This module was not intended to develop our professional skills. I wish it had, for example by teaching us how to prepare a reading sheet for a tale or for recreational reading ! That’s what we should have learned in this module.”
(translated by the author)

This statement points to the absence of a professionalising orientation in the module. The teacher regrets the lack of practical training that would connect theoretical content to the concrete demands of teaching. The explicit desire to be trained in designing pedagogical tools reflects a need for operational resources suitable for classroom use. The training did not facilitate the appropriation of professional gestures, such as lesson planning or pedagogical mediation, nor did it adequately address the process of didactic transposition (Chevallard, 1991).

A fourth teacher (PEM8) echoed this perspective:

“I would say no ! I don’t think this module really contributed to the development of my professional skills. However, I do think it would be worthwhile to rethink it so that the learning outcomes can be reused in the teaching of literary texts. That would better link the training to our actual classroom practices.”
(translated by the author)

This comment underscores the necessity of practical training that integrates theoretical knowledge with the effective practice of teaching literary texts. Such training should aim to build schemes of action (Pastré, 2011)—that is, the capacity to mobilise and sequence mental operations to manage didactic situations. The need for a transfer from learning strategies to teaching strategies is evident, as is the importance of concrete, transferable methods.

The comparative analysis of these testimonies reveals a shared perception that the Approches des textes 2 module is insufficiently professionalising and disconnected from classroom realities. The gap between academic training and practical teaching challenges the development of professional competencies. A recurrent theme in the interviews is the deficiency in didactic transposition: the teachers lament that the knowledge acquired was not translated into professional gestures applicable in teaching literary texts at both middle and secondary school levels.

This situation highlights a discontinuity between professional training and practice, which hampers the mobilisation of relevant resources in teaching contexts. The teachers’ expectations reflect a desire to shift from declarative knowledge to actionable skills through contextualised reflective learning. This perspective aligns with a professionalisation approach rooted in contextualised training, aimed at fostering a pragmatic and operational knowledge base adaptable to the realities of the teaching profession.

2. Designing a Professionalising Training Programme : An Experimental Approach

In light of the findings from the interviews, which highlighted a significant deficit in didactic transposition, limited transferability of learning, and a lack of development of professional teaching practices, we sought to rethink the Approches des textes 2 module. Our aim was to help French language teacher trainees develop effective and operational competencies for teaching literary texts in middle and secondary schools.

This article reports on one of three experimental sessions conducted with second-year PEM and PES students in the French department at ENSB. The primary objective of the experimental approach was to create an articulation between theoretical knowledge and pedagogical practice within a professionalisation framework. The training was structured around concrete didactic situations designed to progressively build competencies that can be mobilised in real teaching contexts.

The session was structured in two complementary phases :

• The first phase focused on a guided literary analysis of an excerpt from What the Day Owes the Night by Yasmina Khadra, with the aim of identifying its didactic potential.

• The second phase invited students to reflect on the transposition of the literary text into a teaching scenario for written comprehension aimed at middle and secondary school students.

This dual approach sought to cultivate both the students’ capacity for literary analysis and their ability to develop a reflective posture, which is essential for appropriating professional teaching practices related to literary texts. In this perspective, students were encouraged to develop a professional habitus, understood as the disposition to act appropriately across a range of teaching situations involving literary texts (Perrenoud, 2012, p. 73).

The experimental session was thus embedded in a logic where the student mobilises strategies derived from activity analysis to adapt and transfer relevant pedagogical responses to problematic situations. This transposition was based on the construction of dual knowledge—epistemic and pragmatic—linked to the progressive acquisition of a professional posture shaped by a reflective process, confrontation with the constraints of the profession, and the assumption of didactic responsibility.

2.1 From Professional Reflexivity to Didactic Transposition : Training and Professionalisation Issues

According to Le Boterf (2007), professionalisation emerges from a dynamic interaction between the trainee, their training journey, and their professional experiences. Professionalisation is thus an evolving trajectory guided by an educational approach that goes beyond theoretical instruction to include a diversity of formative situations, such as professional simulations, practice analysis, and reflective writing (Wittorski, 2008, p. 24).

Blanchard (2002, p. 2), echoing Perrenoud (2001), argues that training teachers through reflective practice entails applying pedagogical principles grounded in critical analysis of teaching actions and recognising the necessity of conceptualising professionalisation through didactic transposition. This process is built on the analysis of real teaching practices, the structuring of a competency framework, and the organisation of training around authentic situations, often resolved through problem-based learning.

In this perspective, initial teacher training should enable future teachers to articulate theoretical knowledge with practical experiences. Perrenoud (2001) introduces key concepts such as reflection-in-action, delayed reflexivity, and epistemology of practice, demonstrating that the development of professional competencies relies on the ability to adjust one’s actions in real-time according to the linguistic needs of learners. Reflexivity thus becomes a central objective in initial teacher education.

This implies that student teachers must engage in a detailed analysis of teaching practices that tightly link disciplinary knowledge with experience to develop the autonomy necessary for navigating didactic situations (Brousseau, 1998). The development of this reflective posture does not solely depend on the accumulation of knowledge but requires the gradual construction of a professional habitus (Perrenoud, 1996). This habitus facilitates the functional integration of both scholarly and practical knowledge in solving complex situations, provided that training schemes are decompartmentalised and firmly rooted in field practices.

2.2 Context of the Experimentation

The experimental session took place in April during the 2022–2023 academic year, involving a group of approximately ten second-year students enrolled in the PEM and PES tracks within the French department at ENSB. The session lasted a total of three hours and was designed according to an alternating structure that combined literary analysis with didactic reflection.

The first phase was dedicated to the literary reading of an excerpt from Yasmina Khadra’s novel What the Day Owes the Night. The objective was to explore the thematic, stylistic, and cultural dimensions of the text. The second phase aimed to evaluate the relevance of this excerpt in the context of teaching reading comprehension at the middle and secondary school levels.

This two-part structure allowed students to both deepen their understanding of the literary work and to engage in a pedagogical reflection on how to transform a literary analysis into a teachable resource. It also served to introduce them to the practical requirements of designing reading comprehension activities tailored to the diverse levels of their prospective students.

2.2.1 Literary Reading Phase

The session was structured around a three-part reading process : pre-reading, reading, and post-reading, with the aim of establishing a guided progression in literary analysis. The central tool used in this activity was an analytical grid derived from the work of Dufays, Gemenne, and Ledure (2015, p. 325). This grid synthesises key research questions in literary studies and serves as a framework for guiding students’ literary reading.

The design of the literary reading process was based on the back-and-forth model (Dufays, Gemenne, & Ledure, 2015, p. 95), which alternates between two postures : that of participation, involving emotional immersion in the text, and that of distancing, which promotes analytical detachment. This reading dynamic also draws on the three stages of learning : anchoring, de-anchoring, and re-anchoring, corresponding respectively to contextualisation, decontextualisation, and recontextualisation.

For the reading of the narrative text—the novel in this case—the For Reading Narrative Texts section of the grid is subdivided into several analytical categories : text structure, plot, space, time, narration, writing style, themes, context, reception, among others. Each category is explored through targeted questions that prompt students to characterise the roles of protagonists, identify the initial crisis, obstacles, and resolution of the plot, interpret the description of the represented space and its symbolic function, and analyse the relationship between story time and narrative time.

Other categories focus on the narrator’s point of view, language register, stylistic devices, themes, and the values conveyed, without neglecting the author’s biographical context. Finally, the grid includes a section that encourages students to reflect on themselves as readers, as well as to consider the pedagogical value of the text in the context of teaching reading comprehension at the middle and secondary school levels.

By engaging this metacognitive dimension, students were invited to interrogate the reading strategies they deploy when interpreting a literary text. In this sense, they began to develop meta-textual reflection (Langlade & Fourtanier, 2007), contributing to the construction of a reflective reader model (Le Breton & Aubert, 2024).

Nevertheless, as illustrated by the literary analysis sheet, we did not apply the entire analytical apparatus rigidly. Instead, we selected the categories most conducive to achieving the pedagogical objectives we had predefined.

During the pre-reading phase, the majority of students were able to identify the literary genre and the socio-cultural context of the work. They activated recognition and categorisation strategies informed by prior readings and familiarity with the film adaptation of the novel.

Entering the reading phase revealed a certain apprehension among students, who admitted they were not accustomed to this type of analytical approach. However, as the interactions progressed and the instructions were reformulated and clarified, a notable improvement was observed both in comprehension and in the capacity to interpret textual elements.

To address some difficulties in adopting the proposed methodology, my role as an instructor evolved : initially marked by counter-scaffolding (Bucheton & Soulé, 2009), it gradually shifted towards an interactive scaffolding posture, promoting the co-construction of interpretations and greater autonomy in reading.

This pedagogical adjustment supported student engagement in a reflective and contextualised process, which is essential for developing a professional habitus and transferable teaching practices.

2.2.2 Phase of Reflective Feedback

The final stage of the session, dedicated to recontextualisation, played a pivotal role in the professionalisation process initiated throughout the activity. This phase aimed to guide students towards a reflective reassessment of their literary analysis, while also mobilising their interpretative competencies from a didactic perspective.

Students were required to produce an argumentative written piece in which they assessed the relevance of the analytical approach they had undertaken—specifically the excerpt from What the Day Owes the Night—as a potential teaching resource for reading comprehension activities aimed at middle and secondary school pupils. The task was designed to demonstrate how and why the selected excerpts could facilitate the acquisition of French, particularly in developing pupils’ receptive skills.

This assignment fostered a cognitive back-and-forth between reception and production, consolidating the development of operative schemes (Vergnaud, 1990) intrinsic to literary analysis, while simultaneously initiating a process of didactic transposition (Chevallard, 1991). Students were thus prompted to transfer their interpretative knowledge towards a pedagogical reflection on the educational use of literary texts.

Through this exercise, students demonstrated how the chosen analytical method could serve as a foundation for designing learning situations adapted to the realities of the classroom. The literary text consequently became a mediating spacebetween scholarly knowledge and teachable content (Chevallard, 1991). Reflective writing helped structure a professional posture grounded in the capacity to analyse and reconfigure literary content according to pedagogical objectives. This process of transforming knowledge is fully aligned with the logic of professional development.

To support the students in this reflective endeavour, the following instruction was provided :

“Based on the literary analysis conducted during this session, explain how this excerpt and the corresponding analytical approach could be used in a reading comprehension session for middle or secondary school pupils. Your response should address pedagogical, cultural, literary, and didactic selection criteria.”

This writing prompt falls within the framework of a formative task as defined by Perrenoud (1998), as it reveals the student’s ability to integrate theoretical knowledge derived from literary analysis and didactics, particularly the didactics of writing. These elements were combined with explicit text selection criteria, namely : readability, accessibility, language level, thematic relevance, cultural value, and didactic potential.

The targeted selection and mobilisation of epistemic knowledge (Pastré, 2011) demonstrated a tangible ability to grapple with the complexity of the task, which necessitated both a literary interpretation and a projection into a concrete teaching situation. In this regard, the student adopted a reflective posture emblematic of an emerging professional practice : pedagogical choices were justified while considering the constraints of the educational context.

The capacity to articulate textual analysis and didactic transposition (Chevallard, 1991) signified the gradual construction of professional operative schemes (Vergnaud, 1990). Referring to Perrenoud’s criteria (1998), this task was meaningful insofar as its purpose was understood within a professional training logic. It required the mobilisation of targeted knowledge, embraced multidimensional complexity, and promoted the integration of theoretical dimensions with initial training practices. This conferred the task with a formative value conducive to the development and consolidation of professional competencies among students undergoing teacher training.

3. Analysis of Results : Between Knowledge Transfer and Reflective Posture

The evaluation of the students’ written productions, based on a criteria-referenced grid aligned with the writing prompt, revealed a heterogeneous mastery of writing competencies. This observation highlights a shortfall in the construction of operative schemes (Vergnaud, 1990) related to argumentative writing, as well as the organisation and planning of ideas.

To ensure a formative and criteria-referenced evaluation of the written work, we employed an analytical grid. This tool was developed from the task objectives and linked to argumentative competence, the mobilisation of knowledge from literary analysis, and the pedagogical relevance of didactic transposition. The grid made it possible to identify operational indicators related to textual coherence, linguistic skills, pedagogical choices, and the ability to justify those choices.

Evaluation Grid for Written Productions

Criteria	Indicators
Compliance with the prompt	• Use of the text to design a reading comprehension session for middle and secondary school levels.
Coherence of the argumentative text	• Structuring the reflection around the pedagogical relevance of the text (introduction, development, conclusion).  • Logical and illustrated arguments.
Linguistic competencies	• Correct syntax.  • Accurate spelling and verb conjugation.  • Appropriate punctuation.
Sociocultural competencies	• Reference to the sociocultural codes of Algerian society as depicted in the text.
Coherence and cohesion	• Logical sequencing of ideas without contradiction.
Knowledge transfer	• Reuse of vocabulary, syntactic structures, and stylistic devices (e.g. comparison, irony).  • Use of notions covered during the literary analysis: themes, communicative aims.
Pedagogical relevance	• Justification of text selection based on: language level (A/B/C), its suitability for the learners’ level, teaching strategies, intended learning objectives, and proposed activities.

This synthesis enables an objective assessment of the students’ difficulties while also identifying avenues for progress. It highlights a tendency towards descriptive restitution rather than organised argumentation, as well as an intuitive rather than structured approach to didactic transposition. Nonetheless, it also reveals tangible efforts in using the literary text for pedagogical purposes and in mobilising the knowledge gained through analysis.

The transfer of strategies from reading to writing, observable in a significant portion of the texts, reflects an emerging learning dynamic. The students incorporated lexical and discursive elements from the source text, particularly representations of Algerian women, indicating an initial appropriation of the material. The following examples illustrate this (translations by the author) :

S1/12 : “I find the theme interesting and I can work on it with them : comparing Algerian society in the 1930s to today’s society.”
S1/7 : “I would ask them to compare the mindset in colonised Algeria with independent Algeria, and how the role of women evolved in society.”
S1/8 : “I can work on the portrait of the characters, for example asking them to describe the mother’s physical portrait from the text.”
S1/7 : “I would give them an exercise comparing the portraits of the mother and the father. They can observe each character’s traits.”
S1/9 : “The theme of the land is very interesting to explore with young people, it’s educational.”

According to Giguère, Giasson, and Simard (2002, p. 24), this form of transfer corresponds to the fourth stage of learning, characterised by the reuse of language forms (vocabulary and syntactic structures) recognised in the source text or its interpretation. Even though this type of transfer is more reproductive than autonomous, it still constitutes a legitimate partial reappropriation of available resources.

Students’ capacity to perceive the literary text as a didactic resource demonstrates the emergence of a process of transforming epistemic knowledge into pragmatic knowledge (Pastré, 2011). Assessing the text’s relevance in an actual teaching scenario (Brousseau, 1998) suggests that students are beginning to move beyond mere consumption of knowledge towards a reflective practice where they analyse their relationship with knowledge and attempt to model it within an educational context.

On the cognitive level, the students aimed to develop comprehension skills and vocabulary acquisition, as evidenced by :

S1/6 : “I rely on the notions of values to better understand the circumstances and social movements of that time.”
S1/9 : “I propose focusing on language points such as vocabulary.”
S1/1 : “I decide to work on vocabulary. I ask the students to find the lexical field of the land : harvest, wheat field, plough, plain... There are many relative clauses in the text. So I ask them to identify and find the antecedent.”
S1/2 : “The text is rich in vocabulary about poverty (clochardisation, slum), cooking (cauldron, broth, flavours), and the human body (nose, lips, arms, knees, eyes)... I ask them to form these from the text and then to add their own words.”
S1/7 : “I create a questionnaire with comprehension questions like : who is speaking in the text ? Who does ’I’ refer to ? What do you think of the family relationship between the characters ? Why did they live like that back then ? My goal is to help the students understand the text’s meaning.”
S1/7 : “In secondary school, students can use the text to write a paragraph explaining the causes of poverty and misery at that time.”

On the affective level, students engaged with varying degrees of reception, valorisation, and adoption :

S1/4 : “I emphasise the value of the father in the family... I also discuss the father’s role in the lives of his children.”
S1/9 : “I must focus on the moral conveyed by the text.”
S1/7 : “I will focus on the values conveyed by the text when it portrays the father as the nucleus of the family and the role of Algerian women in society at that time.”
S1/1 : “The objective would be to preserve Algerian culture because it marks the strength of the country’s heritage.”

Planning learning activities reflects the implementation of metacognitive strategies aimed at structuring and regulating the teaching-learning process. This suggests an emerging capacity to conceive teaching in terms of objectives, means, and assessment—a key component of professionalisation in initial teacher training.

However, the construction of operative schemes (Vergnaud, 1990) related to argumentative writing and effective didactic design remains a cognitively complex activity requiring guidance, repetition, and consolidation. This underscores the necessity in teacher education of deploying mechanisms that combine :

• the development of technical skills (writing mastery),

• disciplinary expertise (literary text analysis, mastery of written French),

• and the construction of a reflective posture.

To ensure a rigorous and objective evaluation of the written productions, we applied a criteria-referenced evaluation grid aligned with the reflective task assigned to the students. This grid, designed from observable indicators linked to scriptural competence, argumentative coherence, and didactic relevance, facilitates a nuanced analysis of achievements and limitations. It serves as both a diagnostic and formative tool, consistent with the requirements of reflective writing and the pedagogical objectives of the module.

The analysis of the productions using this grid highlighted significant variability in performance. While most students demonstrated a partial integration of disciplinary knowledge from literary analysis, its transformation into operational pedagogical resources remained uneven. This variability can partly be attributed to the complexity of reflective argumentative writing, which requires not only linguistic mastery but also didactic conceptualisation and professional projection.

The most frequently mastered competencies pertained to lexical and thematic transfer (vocabulary reuse, basic activity structuring). The main weaknesses were observed in the explicit formulation of pedagogical objectives, in the structuring of the argumentative discourse, and in the coherent justification of didactic choices.

In terms of professionalisation, these productions reflect a reflective posture in the making, expressing a genuine intention to teach based on literary analysis. However, this posture needs to be strengthened through more sustained pedagogical scaffolding, clearer guidance, and the explicit institutionalisation of professional knowledge related to didactic transposition (Chevallard, 1991), the stabilisation of operative schemes (Vergnaud, 1990), and the articulation between scholarly knowledge and contextualised practices (Pastré, 2011).

In summary, mobilising literary texts as a lever in initial teacher training proves to be a promising approach, provided it is accompanied by structured, reflective, and progressive support that transforms disciplinary knowledge into professional resources adapted to the realities of teaching.

Conclusion

The experimental session demonstrated that students progressively developed competencies in strategy transfer, the transposition of epistemic knowledge into practical knowledge (Pastré, 2011), and reflective practice. However, this process remains unevenly mastered. The transition from imitation to critical appropriation, from reproduction to autonomous elaboration, still requires consolidation.

This situation calls for the implementation of more robust training schemes capable of developing the underlying learning mechanisms. In this perspective, it would be beneficial to organise learning through tasks designed to equip students with metacognitive tools that encourage self-assessment and co-regulation. It is equally important to multiply micro-teaching situations, allowing students to effectively experience the process of didactic transposition (Chevallard, 1991).

These pedagogical orientations aim to foster a gradual progression towards expertise, enabling students not merely to apply knowledge but to construct, over time, a reflective and professional posture. This posture would allow them to adapt and regulate their teaching practices across diverse educational contexts.