Theater at school in France: a promising teaching component to support learning skills?

What is the place of theatre in the French school system, as a tool to contribute to the learning and well-being of students? This article aims to answer this question by drawing on a study conducted in Quebec (Dubois & Tremblay, 2015) which aimed to establish the place of theatre in teaching practices. Taking up their methodology of analysis applied to the French case, the first contribution of this article lies in the discrepancy observed between the ministerial recommendations and the training offered to teachers preparing them for the use of theatre in schools. Based on this observation, the second part of the article is devoted to the presentation of the results of work in favour of this mobilization of theatre in a school context. The practices of using theatre in schools are considered in all their diversity, with work that benefits students, both cognitively and motivationally. With the results already available, the practice of theatre in schools is advanced as a promising line of research in the service of better student development.