Abstract
The present research is part of a clinical approach with a psychoanalytic orientation of educational situations in order to think about the group in the classroom and its capacity to allow singularity. The aim is to discuss the possible operativeness of a “phoric function” concept (Delion, 2011, 2018) in the field of education, from the point of view of group teaching situations as well as the teacher’s posture.The first part of this work analyzes the pratitioner’s movement to question his relationship to his subject-object of research. From his own practical experience, the author takes up the links he maintains with institutional pedagogy and psychotherapy and evokes specifically the relationships between pedagogy and psychoanalysis. Secondly, the different analysis (institutional, the history of the class and the references to the group in the educational field) allow to consider the resistances and obstacles to take into account the singularity in a group context.. Thirdly, based on non-directive interviews with teachers from schools who have chosen to practice in multigrade classes, the author seeks to highlight the teacher’s psychical dynamics and the possible effects of such a group arrangement to the dealing of singularity in the classroom. In mutligrade classes, teachers are put under tension in their status and their roles, both in relation to and in their singular relationship to a social imaginary of the teaching function that is metaphorized into « teaching» or « holding the class ». The last part resume the speeches of all seven teachers met for this work. The analysis of the corpus makes it possible to formulate hypotheses on group effects relating to phoric, semaphoric and metaphorical functions.