Vous avez dit «profs de gym »?: Retour sur la question de la domination sociale et culturelle des enseignants en EPS/Revisiting the Question of Social and Cultural Domination of PE Teachers

According to a survey based on a sample of 1 500 teachers working in the North-Pas-de-Calais, PE teachers are as well endowed as their secondary school colleagues considering their social origins and their academic profiles, even if common stereotypes might suggest the contrary. The survey enables us to complete and systematize the converging observations of a series of socio-historical studies carried out in the last thirty years in other regions in France, especially about newly recruited teachers. The comparative device presented here questions the ordinary designation of the profession of a PE teacher, which often prevails even in the most "scientific statements". Associated with an analysis of the social reproduction of the group, our comparative device induces a reflection on what constitutes the specificity of PE teachers' position within the French education system. In other words, we tend to analyze the singular (paradoxical?) equation that impels a well-born and smart young "sportsman" to invest a rather depreciated school discipline and to establish his professional legitimacy on equivocal resources based on the enhancement of the educational relationship established with his pupils.