This thesis explores how schools with a religious affiliation recruit religion in school culture and the formal curriculum (both curriculum content and pedagogic method) and how this relates to the pedagogic identities they project. An overarching concern of the thesis is to understand how the character of the affiliated religion relates to the privileging of particular forms of solidarity and identity. This explorative, multiple case study is located in four independent schools in South Africa, each with an official affiliation to a particular religious community. The sample comprises a co-educational charismatic Protestant school, a liberal Catholic school, a traditional-Orthodox Jewish school and a conservative Muslim school. The study foregrounds Bernstein’s (1990, 2000) suggestion that a sociologically important characteristic of religions is the way they constitute the relation between the 'inner’ self and the 'outer’ social world. The thesis looks to Bernstein’s (1975, 2000) theory that the ideology inherent in pedagogic discourse constitutes particular instantiations of power and control (related to Bernstein’s concepts of classification and framing respectively) that structure a school’s curriculum and pedagogic methods. The analysis of school culture utilises Bernstein’s (1975) theory of ritual and identity is explored in relation to Bernstein’s (2000) taxonomy of pedagogic identities. Furthermore, Durkheim’s (1915, 1960) concept of mechanical and organic solidarity and his theory of the sacred and the profane provide the primary conceptualizations of social order. The qualitative analysis of interview data (obtained from students, teachers, principals and religious leaders), policy documentation and direct observation shows significant differences between the schools relating to the recruitment of the affiliated religion in curriculum, pedagogy and ritual. The analysis suggests that the schools affiliated to religions in which the inner and the outer are dislocated (the Protestant and Catholic school), recruit the affiliated religion in a way that predominantly privileges a moral order in which the student is weakly related to a collective and individualised values and relations are emphasised (organic solidarity). Conversely, the schools in the sample affiliated to religions in which the inner is not dislocated from the outer (the Jewish and Muslim school), recruit the affiliated religion in a way that privileges strong identification of the student to a collective (mechanical solidarity). However, the analysis suggests that the form of solidarity related to the recruitment of the affiliated religion at the schools is not always the only form of solidarity privileged. More specifically, the analysis shows that components of the instructional order 'unordered’ by the affiliated religion may result in a layering of different forms of solidarity within the same school. The analysis implies that the schools project different pedagogic identity modes enabled by particular instantiations of power and control related to the privileged form/s of social solidarity. The major finding of the thesis is that the character of the affiliated religion, in terms of its constitution of the inner and the outer, relates to the form of social solidarity privileged by the school’s recruitment of religion, which, in turn, enables the projection of particular pedagogic identities. This thesis makes a contribution to a growing body of literature that vi challenges the idea that 'religious schools’ are homogenous. It provides a theoretical methodology for exploring differences and similarities between 'religious schools’ across different religions and suggests a sociologically important source of variance in 'religious schools’ in general.

Cette recherche étudie les processus de médiation à l’œuvre dans l’appropriation des directives internationales dans un pays qui a été soumis à diverses influences exogènes au cours de son histoire, influences qui prennent leurs origines dans la colonisation et se poursuivent, sous d’autres formes, voire s’intensifient avec les politiques de mondialisation : celui du Gabon et de son école moyenne. L’analyse des politiques éducatives dans ce contexte conduit à questionner la pertinence d’une certaine « forme scolaire » imposée à une société dont les logiques d’éducation peuvent être antinomiques à celles importées. Comment les politiques nationales d’éducation au Gabon se construisent-elles dans un contexte dominé par le télescopage permanent entre nécessité de construction nationale, histoire coloniale et contraintes internationales ? En faisant le choix de porter l’analyse sur les processus de définition curriculaire notamment sur le curriculum formel d’histoire, la recherche opère un rapprochement épistémologique entre les outils analytiques de la sociologie du curriculum et de l’éducation comparée à partir de la mise en perspective des concepts d’externalisation et de mobilisation des ressources. L’approche méthodologique est double : documentaire et empirique ; elle repose sur une analyse diachronique des programmes et manuels scolaires d’histoire dans le premier cycle de l’enseignement secondaire général (collège) et d’une mise à l’épreuve du curriculum formel à partir des discours d’acteurs pédagogiques que sont les enseignants et les conseillers pédagogiques. Dans le contexte du Gabon, notre recherche met en évidence le financement de la construction de plusieurs infrastructures scolaires par les instances comme la BAD ou la Coopération Française et ses effets. La médiation des politiques internationales au Gabon révèle également la constante inadaptabilité d’un corps éducatif dont le système de pensée et les valeurs qui le sous-tendent sont exogènes à la culture locale. Les efforts d’appropriation du système dans un contexte aux prises à toutes sortes d’influences (interne et externe) s’avèrent particulièrement délicats. Questionnant ces phénomènes sous tension, la recherche montre que la position sur l’échiquier international détermine largement l’action ou l’inertie, de façon décisive. Ainsi, le Gabon n’étant pas en mesure de « naviguer à contre courant », a en quelque sorte, épousé l’agenda éducatif universel au détriment de la maturation de son propre projet de construction nationale. La recherche permet enfin de se rendre compte que le curriculum formel au collège est essentiellement « bipolaire », et ce depuis le début des années 70 et sans évolution réelle. Les deux pôles étant L’Afrique et l’Europe, les autres parties du monde ne faisant que de brèves apparitions. Il en est de même pour le traitement de la culture locale par les programmes et manuels. La recherche révèle aussi que le curriculum formel d’histoire est assez stable dans l’école moyenne et qu’il existe une certaine forme d’inertie curriculaire, que nous analysons à partir des données recueillies. / This research studies the processes of mediation implemented in the appropriation of the international directives in a country which was subjected to various exogenic influences during its history, influences which take their origins in colonization and continue, in different forms, even become intensified with the policies of globalization: that of Gabon and its junior high school. The analysis of educational policies in this context leads to question the relevance of a certain "form school" imposed on a society whose logics of education may be contradictory to those imported. How can the national policies of education in Gabon be built in a context dominated by the permanent telescoping between need for national construction, international colonial history and constraints? By choosing to focus the analysis on the processes of curricular definition and particularly on the formal curriculum of history, research brings together, epistemologically speaking, analytical tools of sociology curriculum and of comparative education starting from the putting in perspective the concepts of for the concepts of “outsourcing” and “resources mobilization”. The methodological approach is twofold: documentary and empirical. It is based on a diachronic analysis of school curricula and history textbooks in the first cycle of junior high school and a testing of the formal curriculum from the speeches of educational actors such as teachers and educational advisers. In the context of Gabon, our research highlights the financing of the construction of several school infrastructures by the authorities like the “BAD” or the “Coopération Française” and its effects. The mediation of the international policies in Gabon also reveals the constant inadaptability of an educational body whose system of thought and values which underlie it are exogenic with the local culture. The efforts of appropriation of the system in a context dealing with all kinds of influences (internal and external) are particularly tricky. Questioning these phenomena under tension, research shows that the position on the international chessboard largely determines the action or inertia, in a decisive way. Thus, as Gabon is not able to “go against the current”, it adopts, to some extent, the universal education agenda at the expense of his own maturation of nation-building project. Research finally makes it possible to realize that the formal curriculum in junior high school is “bipolar”, since the beginning of the Seventies and with no real evolution since then. The two poles are Africa and Europe, other parts of the world making only brief appearances. It is the same for the treatment of the local culture through school curricula and textbooks. Research also reveals that the formal curriculum of history is rather stable in junior high school and that there is some form of curricular inertia, we analyze from the data collected.