Abstract
Flexibility in the layout of school spaces is a current trend in educational practices. Students are allowed and encouraged to move around the classroom and choose different seating areas to work and learn. The principle of this article is to study a consequence of this flexibility: cooperation between students. We have followed and methodologically observed a class of 8 to 10 year old students in France accustomed to working in this way.We made video recordings during the school year and conducted self-confrontation interviews with several students. The analysis of this material allowed us to deduce that flexible organizations do lead students to cooperate, but that the freedoms allowed require several precautions: train students to cooperate in order to avoid misunderstandings, introduce a system for limiting freedoms in order to encourage self-regulation, and think about the different possible postures of teachers in order to link learning and teaching.