Résumé
Included in a comprehensive approach of the professional identity of teachers in vocational schools, this article deals more particularly with the kind of relations these teachers build with their pupils. The study is based on questionnaires followed by semi-directive interviews of five groups of teachers in a teachers’ training college. (IUFM) The results highlight the teachers’ ethics as regards education including a specific attention to the relation to learning and knowledge which the pupils have built, notably during their previous experience of school. Having to deal with a tension between the curiculum and how receptive the pupils are to learning, the vocational school teachers insist on how important the relation they have with their pupils is in their work. Concerned both by the necessity to prepare the pupils for the world of work and their desire to help them learn step by step, they endeavour to act consistently and undertake their mission of education and vocational/technical training.