Pedagogy has a fantastic history : that of the question that gave birth to it and stayed with it for 2,500 years : how can man's creation be promoted and improved by his own means ?

Through her research in pedagogy and education sciences, the author attempts to discover the substance of today's pedagogy : its status, its specific field, the originality of its research and its relationship to the issue of educational purposives. She claims that pedagogical research should now be recognized as a discipline that contributes to education sciences, so that these contributions can better support the production of knowledge springing from educational research. She supports this thesis by referring to the definitions currently given to pedagogy in the world of educational research.

Here, pedagogy is defined as a slow elaboration of an educational action theory that can be regarded as a science of the means of reaching an educational goal, which, rather than dictating the means, requires inventiveness and creation.