This thesis examines educational coaching as an emerging educational practice. This form of coaching was imported from the corporate world and seems to echo the new agenda of the educational system: project development, career choices, autonomy, the quest for performance and self-fulfilment. The Law of 1989 required the education system to place the student at its centre, partly by integrating career education into middle and high schools. This in turn resulted in the spread of educational coaching. These injunctions are part of a wider discourse pertaining to the French concept of "cité-par-projet" (Boltanski & Chiappello, 1999) and the construction of the student as an individual. This research shows how the use of such coaching can be considered an educational strategy which is supported by a commitment to social reproduction, social advancement, or at least social stability. Educational coaching is also involved in the construction of the pupil as an individual who seeks to deal with situations which arise at school, to be autonomous, to become a fulfilled individual and, thereby, to feel successful in other terms, rather than merely in relation to academic achievement. Above all, such coaching is meant to build upon the family background, in order to enable pupils to have a better educational experience and to develop those skills necessary both at school and in the workplace. Different methods were used to carry out the fieldwork: semi-structured interviews, participant observation and the statistical analysis of coached pupils' records. To understand the broader context in which educational coaching emerges, schools were also visited; the impact of the new injunctions was studied, especially in relation to the academic and social characteristics of pupils.
