Profs-Chercheurs, a citizen science project with/for educators.

Educators–teachers, teacher trainers, school directors, and so on–are always testing new practices to address the challenges they face. However, this contextualised, practice-based evidence is rarely shared with others. How about creating a program and the necessary infrastructure to help educators reflect on their practices and share their efforts on a public database? Inspired by this idea, Dr Ignacio Atal conceived the Profs-Chercheurs program (‘Teachers-Researchers’ in English) as a citizen science project developed to engage a large number of educators in a collective research enterprise about their educational practices. This innovative project led to the production and open publication of contextualized practice-based evidence from different educators. The implementation suggests that the program produces meaningful practice-based evidence, is robust, adaptable, engaging, and scalable.

Associated publications:

• Atal, I, Jeune, N., Gabard, C., Dessus, P., Pagnotta, M. (2025) Citizen science for educational sciences: engaging educators in the production of structured practice-based evidence at a large scale. Teacher Development, 1–22. doi: 10.1080/13664530.2025.2523359. Link to the publication.
• Pagnotta, M., Le Jeune, P., De Nicola, M., & Atal, I. (2022). The impact of the ‘Teachers as Researchers’ program on educators’ sense of efficacy, practice, and collaboration at work: Results from implementation in France 2020-21 [Preprint]. Link to EdArXiv.