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Agnès Florin
Born	1949 Tulle, France
Nationality	French
Alma mater	Clermont Auvergne University Paris Nanterre University
Awards	Ordre des Palmes académiques (2005) Legion of Honour (2009)
Scientific career
Institutions	University of Poitiers University of Nantes
Thesis	Pratiques du langage à l'école maternelle : les conversations maîtresse-élèves (1989)

Agnès Florin (born 1949) is a French psychologist and professor emerita in child psychology at University of Nantes. She is known for her work in language development and early childhood education.

Biography

Florin studied psychology at Blaise Pascal University and Paris Nanterre University. She was a researcher and professor at University of Poitiers, where she defended her state thesis, "Pratiques du langage à l'école maternelle : les conversations maîtresse-élèves" ("Language practices in kindergarten: teacher-student conversations"), in 1989.

She became a professor of child psychology and of education at University of Nantes in 1990, where she created the doctoral training program in psychology and the psychology laboratory, which she directed until 2004. Between 2002 and 2012, she was advisor to the president of the University of Nantes for research in humanities and social sciences, and director of the doctoral school Nantes Atlantique. She has been a member of the Centre de recherche en éducation de Nantes (Nantes Centre for Education Research; CREN EA2661) since 2011 and a professor emerita since 2012. She proceeded by direct observation in about 15 classes, from January to June, during the language session and during workshops, working on a corpus made up of sound recordings and notes, from the perspective of studying the link between explicit language teaching and students' progress. This work highlights the "contradictory demands" faced by the observed teachers, between accentuating the "informative richness" of their discourse at the expense of student participation, or even privileging everyone speaking by partially "sacrificing" the "conceptual richness" of the statements. According to these conclusions, the strategies adopted by teachers are fundamental: in order for the greatest number of children to express themselves, it is their responsibility to ensure they address themes that are both "mobilizing" and "adapted to the level of development" of their students. The research highlights many types of interactions in the classroom: conversational sessions which evoke strong participation from students, workshops where spoken exchanges are reduced, and finally informative sessions where the teacher has a virtual monopoly on speaking. This research also makes it possible to both distinguish several categories of students, according to their modality of accessing speech, and to propose hypotheses for understanding this differential access to speech, taking into account integration into the class group or adaptation to offered activities in addition to the usual socio-familial criteria. Florin suggests avenues for reflection to "favour active participation" of children, from "their need to communicate" and searching for expression, by creating "conversational and reflective situations about language", and by diversifying "the objectives, themes, and functions of language."

Florin is also interested in multilingual education in overseas French regions, especially in schools in Guyana, New Caledonia, and French Polynesia. She believes that dual-language teaching in these regions promotes mastery of French, since it causes "reflection work on language," so that "devaluation of native languages would maintain a 'semi-linguism'."

Her more recent research is concerned with the quality of life of children and their self-evaluation in different life contexts. She has had scientific responsibility for the theme of "quality of life at school" for the Conseil national d'évaluation du système scolaire (National Council for Evaluation of the Education System) with Philippe Guimard since 2014.

She is interested in the enthusiasm for university studies in psychology despite the difficulty of this course. In a column in Le Monde in July 2018 cosigned by Roger Lécuyer and Benoît Schneider, she proposed reintroducing teaching psychology in high school, for example "training on the psychological factors which determine behaviour and social life," considering that a "constructed education" would permit high school students to benefit from "minimal training on the factors which determine their behaviour in the principal domains of their activity [...] on the conditions of their life in groups, their development, and that of those close to them."

Florin has been a member of the scientific council of the Conférence des ministres de l'éducation de la francophonie (Conference of Ministers of Education of the Francophonie) since 2011, and president of the Association francophone de psychologie et psychopathologie de l'enfant et de l'adolescent (Francophone Association of Psychology and Psychopathology of Children and Adolescents) since 2014.