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While reflexivity has been seen as an essential skill in the humanities for several decades, the engineering sector is starting to investigate about this skill, as an interesting way of professionalization. But the lack of shared culture of reflexivity, as well as students’ interest for exact sciences coupled with their difficulties in considering their own action as an objet to be thought, make it difficult to design pedagogical devices aiming at enhancing reflective abilities. In this paper, we want to draw a picture of agricultural engineering students’ reflective abilities by analysing written reflections they produced about their learning practices and process during a study course on economic and financial analysis. We found very different levels of reflexivity, similarly to what is described in the humanities. Some students do write rich reflections, while others have difficulties in involving themselves in projective activities and, more noticeably, in inquiry-based learning enabling them to question their own ways of thinking. We identify different levers to enhance reflexivity: expressing oneself using incarnated speech positions, reinforcing one’s curiosity towards oneself and towards others, and facing difficulties or unprecedented situations. This work can be read as a theoretical and practical proposal to give substance to the reflexivity concept and to provide input for pedagogical reflection.

This article is about an experiment in agricultural higher education. Faced with change and uncertainty in agriculture, agricultural advisors need to deal with new stakes. For example, the profiles of people who want to set up a farm are changing, which requires to consider new ways of helping them to achieve their goals. How to help students to move towards such changing professions ? We consider that supporting students’ reflexivity is a good way to help them become responsible professionals who act in a relevant way in their working situations. In this paper, we describe a three-week study course that we have been teaching since 2012. Students are asked to help people who want to set up a farm, and to practice their reflexivity about this experiment. We have incrementally designed this study course on the basis of learning through our experience, confronting knowledge about education and participating in practice analysis devices. We describe this study-course as an application of interactive social constructivism. Students’ representations are considered as the starting point of our teaching job, socio-cognitive conflicts are encouraged and students’ reflexivity is fostered by simulating professional situations. This study-course has real strengths, but also some weaknesses that require further research. Thus there are debates about which types of knowledge count, and some students do not manage to really practice reflexivity.