The industrial project method in French industry and in French schools

The introduction of technology education courses for all French pupils in middle schools was strongly linked to a project called IPM. It is based pm the idea of an industrial project method (IPM) whereby an enterprise puts a new industrial project onto the market. The main idea in IPM is to provide a teaching method by which teachers organize classroom time. The link between the two was so evident that it became the fundamental reference for technology education in France. However, the same evidence hides some real difficulties in formalizing the knowledge and concepts to be brought to bear in a technology education class. The aim of this paper is to present two surveys of the practical implementation of IPM. The first looks at how companies proceed when they decide to put a new product onto the market. The second analyses how teachers organize their teaching using this procedure. Based on the outcomes of the surveys, we will present some references for technology education and discuss its impact on school organization.