L’enseignement en classes de langues au Cameroun : entre autorité épistémique et autorité didactique

Abstract

In classroom, teachers are expected to help their students acquire the knowledge and build the skills they need for their intellectual development and professional integration. As such, they have statutory authority to take responsability for the education and training of these students. This authority is devolved to him by the educational training school and by the state. Consequently, teachers are responsible for the quality of the teaching they provide ; more precisely, it’s up to them to validate the knowledge they produce, which they are supposed to have and which gives them epistemic authority. The teachers’ academic knowledge can only be useful for his didactic action if he succeeds in having it learned through didactic situations designed for this purpose : it is this skills that gives him didactic authority. The aim of this paper is to study the ways in which language teachers use the two forms of authority (epistemic and didactic), and the consequences of doing so. Drawing on lessons in French and national languages and cultures, this qualitative reflection analyzes how the temporarily loss of one of these authorities can hinder learning activities. This work concludes that these two forms of authority need to be combined and taken into account in teacher training, so as to prepare teachers to mobilize them simultaneously in classroomsituations for the benefit of language learners.