POLO Claire

I work at the crossroads of Educational Sciences and Linguistics. I study the discourse of actors engaged in activities aiming at cognitive advancement, mostly through dialogue analysis. More specifically, I am interested in argumentative practices, both as tools to acquire new knowledge (arguing to learn approach), and as targetted social skills (learning to argue approach). Part of my work also focuses on designing and studying appropriate environments to foster collaborative learning and group reasoning. I study learning and reasoning as complex processes involving cognitive, social and emotional dimensions. As a result, I pay attention to any logico-discursive construct that is used to reason, in authentic situations (different forms of knowledge, affects, norms and values). I ground my work on a non-mentalist, non-individualist view on cognition inspired by the 4E approaches (embodied, embedded, enactive, extended cognition). 
 

Interests

I use a large set of methods, and adapt my methodology to my research questions. Still, three main methodological principles guide my work:
1. empirical approach: my research is based on authentic data, extensive field work and video analysis;
2. bottom-up approach: I try to let analytical categories emerge from data analysis, and then work on integrating deep case studies into theoretical hypotheses and propositions;
3. taking into account the central role of language in cognition: I do not try to separate thinking from the linguistic expression of thinking, which I study as a multimodal performance (speech, gesture, use of objects, writing, pictures, graphs, etc). 

My work meets several international research communities:

> in education research:
- design-based research and instructional design - didactics of socially acute questions and socio-scientific issues  - dialogic teaching - Communities of Philosophical Inquiry (CPI) - collaborative learning (within the learning sciences) - socio-cognitive pscyhology of education
> in linguistics:
- argumentation studies - discourse analysis - interactional linguistics and conversation analysis - multimodal communication and gesture studies - linguistics applied to professional practices

Publications
& communications

• Scientific Publications

  One Monograph Book in French, translated into Spanish, adapted into English ;21 Papers in Scientific Journals ;7 Book Chapters ;5 Papers in International Conference Proceedings ;3 Book Reviews
• Communications

Scientific Activity

Learned Societies and Networks

D.phi Network (hosted by the University of Laval, Québec, Canada)

Member of this informal francophone international research group for the development and the study of philosophical dialogues philosophiques at school and in the society.
https://www.collectifdphi.fse.ulaval.ca/

International Society of the Learning Sciences (ISLS)
Member since 2013, organizing committe of CSCL 2019 conference hold in Lyon, member of the Publications Committee from 2019 to 2022.

European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction (EARLI)
Member since 2015 and jure coordinator of the Special Interest Group 26  Argumentation, Dialogue and Reasoning from 2018 to 2023.
 

Regional Research Structure on Education Lyon-Saint Etienne (SFR RELYS)

Member of two strands since 2018 :

1 - Learning and teaching with digital technologies

4 - Learning and teaching about socially accute issues

Editorial Responsibilities

Frontiers in Education, Psychology of Education
Member of the Editorial board since July 2026

International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (ijCSCL) 
Member of the Editorial board since January 2020, Associate Editor since 2025

European Journal of Psychology of Education (EJPE)
Member of the Editorial board since September 2021