Abstract EN:

Created in 1947 through the impetus given by a few educators from the private sector practising since the early forties, the history of the A. N. E. J. I (literally the national association of educators for maladjusted children) allows us to take interest in the professionalization process of special educators. This research comes within a perspective of social history, willing to approach how this new profession sets up in the community scene of the minors' rehabilitation which was in full expansion at the turning point of World War II. To some extent, the research focuses on the A. N. E. J. I association as a public actor, then looked at it from the angle of its relations with the administrative associations and the State, of its stands concerning issues as training, technique, knowledge, its outset in the wage-earning class, or as deontology and more generally what concerns the profession's regulation and the collective defence of interests. Thus this approach regarding the A. N. E. J. I association permits, in the one hand, to distinguish its different phases of reinforcement and of fallback position ; and on the other hand, to evaluate its weight within the special educators' profession. It also considers its practices from the educator-counsellor of the early stages to the educator-social worker of the sixties, as well as the representations of the profession and its professional identity for instance through the problem of gender concerning the evolutions of a group's structure in constant progress