Uchronia in schools: national perspectives and practices in France.

France

Ministère de l’Éducation Nationale et de la Jeunesse / Académie de Strasbourg / Institut Français de l’Éducation (IFÉ – École Normale Supérieure de Lyon)

Les Apprimeurs

March 2026

The French education system is a centralized public system administered by the Ministry of National Education and structured into several progressive stages designed to ensure equal access to education across the country. The system begins with école maternelle (pre-school), which typically serves children aged three to six and focuses on early cognitive, linguistic, and social development. This stage is followed by école élémentaire (primary school), where pupils acquire fundamental competencies such as literacy, numeracy, and early civic awareness.

After primary education, students enter collège, the lower secondary level, which provides a common core curriculum emphasizing academic disciplines including French, mathematics, sciences, history-geography, and civic education. The final stage of secondary schooling is lycée, where students pursue either general, technological, or vocational tracks. The lycée culminates in the baccalauréat, a national examination that determines access to higher education.

In addition to classroom instruction, French schools include institutional structures aimed at supporting critical thinking and independent learning. Among these are the Centres de Documentation et d’Information (CDI), which function as research and media literacy spaces within secondary schools. These centers encourage students to develop autonomous research skills, evaluate sources critically, and engage with informational resources in a reflective manner (Ministère de l’Éducation Nationale et de la Jeunesse, 2025).

Overall, the French educational model is characterized by a strong emphasis on republican values such as equality, secularism (laïcité), and citizenship. However, the system also faces challenges related to pedagogical innovation, student engagement, and the integration of transversal competencies such as social and emotional skills.

In recent decades, educational research has increasingly highlighted the importance of non-cognitive competencies, often referred to as social, emotional, or psychosocial skills. These competencies include collaboration, empathy, communication, emotional regulation, and perspective-taking. Such abilities are essential not only for academic success but also for democratic participation and social cohesion.

Despite their recognized importance, these skills have historically been less explicitly integrated into traditional French curricula, which have long prioritized disciplinary knowledge and formal academic achievement. According to Terriot and Vignoli (2020), psychosocial competencies are gradually gaining recognition within educational policy debates but remain unevenly implemented across schools and teaching practices.

Another major challenge concerns inclusive education. French schools increasingly seek to accommodate students with diverse learning needs, including students with disabilities, linguistic differences, or socio-economic disadvantages. Research by Simon (2024) indicates that teachers often support inclusive principles but face practical challenges in implementing inclusive pedagogies, such as limited training or insufficient resources.

Critical thinking is also emerging as a central educational priority in France and across Europe. In a digital environment characterized by widespread access to information, students must develop the capacity to analyze sources, evaluate arguments, and recognize bias. These competencies are closely related to social skills because they involve dialogue, cooperative reasoning, and respectful debate.

In response to these challenges, the French Ministry of Education has developed several strategies aimed at promoting transversal competencies within schools. The CNESCO (Conseil national d’évaluation du système scolaire) has published recommendations emphasizing the development of collaborative learning environments and socio-emotional competencies.

European initiatives such as Erasmus+ educational programs have also contributed to this effort by supporting pedagogical innovation and international collaboration. These initiatives encourage teachers to experiment with new instructional approaches, including project-based learning, storytelling, and interdisciplinary activities that foster both cognitive and social development.

Social skills can be broadly defined as the set of interpersonal and emotional competencies that enable individuals to interact effectively with others. In the context of education, these competencies include abilities such as cooperation, empathy, communication, conflict resolution, and emotional self-regulation.

Benabbes and Abu Taleb (2024) emphasize that social skills play a critical role in language learning and classroom interaction. Through collaborative activities, students develop the capacity to express their ideas clearly, listen to others, and engage in constructive dialogue.

Within the French educational context, social skills are also closely linked to civic education and the promotion of democratic values. Students are encouraged to develop a sense of responsibility, respect for diversity, and commitment to collective decision-making.

Although social skills are not always taught as a distinct subject, they are integrated into educational practices through various pedagogical approaches. These include cooperative learning, group projects, debates, and creative activities that encourage interaction among students.

One particularly promising approach is storytelling-based pedagogy. Narrative activities allow students to explore emotions, perspectives, and moral dilemmas within a structured learning environment. Programs such as Storias demonstrate how storytelling can be used to improve both literacy and social engagement by encouraging students to interpret narratives collectively and discuss characters’ motivations and actions (EPALE, 2024).

Similarly, drama-based pedagogies emphasize embodied learning and collaborative performance. The CELAVIE project, studied by Eschenauer et al. (2023), illustrates how theatrical activities can strengthen communication skills and socio-emotional awareness. Through role-playing and improvisation exercises, students practice expressing emotions, understanding different viewpoints, and collaborating creatively.

Despite the growing interest in social and emotional learning, several structural challenges remain. One limitation is the lack of systematic curricular integration. Social skills are often developed through individual teacher initiatives rather than through a coherent national framework.

Another challenge concerns class size and time constraints. Large classes and heavy curricular demands can limit opportunities for interactive pedagogies that require discussion, collaboration, and reflection.

These challenges highlight the need for professional development programs that equip teachers with the tools and methodologies necessary to integrate social skills into everyday classroom practice.

Narrative-based learning has long been recognized as a powerful pedagogical tool. Stories allow learners to organize information in meaningful ways and to explore complex ideas through characters, events, and moral conflicts.

In educational contexts, storytelling can support language acquisition, emotional development, and critical reflection. Benabbes and Abu Taleb (2024) show that narrative activities in language classrooms encourage student participation and foster collaborative communication.

Storytelling approaches may also incorporate digital technologies, such as robot-assisted storytelling, which introduces interactive elements that capture students’ attention and encourage collective engagement.

Several educational initiatives in France illustrate how narrative pedagogies can support both cognitive and social development.

The Storias storytelling workshops represent one example of inclusive narrative pedagogy. In these workshops, teachers use structured storytelling activities to develop reading comprehension and collaborative interpretation among students (EPALE, 2024).

The CELAVIE drama-based project demonstrates how performative learning can improve communication skills and emotional awareness. Students participate in theatrical exercises that require them to adopt different perspectives and interact dynamically with peers (Eschenauer et al., 2023).

Another innovative initiative is the Chroniques Alternatives project, which invites students to create alternative historical narratives using generative artificial intelligence tools. By imagining how historical events might have unfolded differently, students explore causal reasoning, historical context, and creative interpretation (Académie de Nice CARDIE, 2024).

A further example is the role-play activity designed to teach secularism and republican values, developed by the Académie de Strasbourg. Through simulation and debate, students examine the principles of laïcité and discuss how these principles apply to contemporary social situations (Académie de Strasbourg, n.d.).

The concept of uchronia, or alternative history, offers significant educational potential. By encouraging students to imagine hypothetical historical scenarios, uchronia stimulates counterfactual reasoning, a cognitive process that helps learners understand cause-and-effect relationships in history.

This type of reasoning encourages students to analyze historical events more critically and to reflect on the role of individual decisions, social structures, and political contexts. In doing so, students develop both analytical thinking and historical empathy.

Research on storytelling and narrative learning highlights the strong relationship between narrative engagement and social skill development. Benabbes and Abu Taleb (2024) demonstrate that storytelling activities enhance communication abilities and encourage collaborative participation in language classrooms.

Similarly, Eschenauer et al. (2023) show that drama-based learning can improve students’ socio-emotional competencies, including empathy and self-expression.

The Chroniques Alternatives initiative illustrates how digital storytelling and AI tools can stimulate creative historical inquiry and collaborative problem-solving (Académie de Nice CARDIE, 2024).

Narrative immersion allows students to explore complex social situations in a safe and structured environment. By identifying with characters and analyzing narrative conflicts, learners practice perspective-taking and ethical reasoning.

Terriot and Vignoli (2020) argue that such activities contribute to the development of psychosocial competencies by encouraging students to reflect on emotions, relationships, and social norms.

Narrative and collaborative pedagogies can contribute significantly to inclusive education. By emphasizing interaction and creativity, these approaches allow students with diverse backgrounds and abilities to participate actively in learning activities.

For example, storytelling workshops enable students with different language abilities to express themselves through oral narration, visual representation, or collaborative discussion.

Narrative learning can be particularly beneficial for students who experience difficulties with traditional academic assessments. By allowing multiple forms of expression, such approaches reduce barriers to participation and encourage students to contribute their perspectives.

Multimodal pedagogies — combining visual, auditory, and performative elements — can enhance accessibility for students with diverse learning preferences. Drama, storytelling, and digital media allow learners to engage with content through multiple sensory channels.

The analysis presented in this study suggests that narrative-based pedagogies offer powerful tools for promoting social skills and critical thinking within educational contexts.

Opportunities

Encouraging collaborative learning
Developing critical thinking and empathy
Promoting creative engagement with historical topics

Risks

Unequal access to digital technologies
Need for teacher training in innovative pedagogies
Risk of superficial engagement if narrative activities are not well structured

Educational programs should integrate narrative learning across disciplines, particularly in history and civic education. Teacher training programs should also emphasize storytelling techniques, role-play facilitation, and the responsible use of digital tools such as generative AI.