Experiential knowledge

at the heart of peer support

The EXPAIRS program (launched in January 2018), supported by the label of the Maison des Sciences de l'Homme en Bretagne (MSHB), focuses on the contemporary French development of peer support.

The main objective of this research is to produce knowledge on the diversity of practices and contexts of peer support, as well as to identify and explain the different issues between experiential and professional knowledge, or between peers, professionals in the sectors of activity concerned (health, mental health, disability) and institutional actors.

Introduction to the EXPAIRS program

Our societies are facing a growing number of citizens who are losing their independence and autonomy, whether in situations related to disability, illness or even ageing. The emergence of this public problem reveals a significant cultural deficit in terms of the transmission of "autonomy within dependency" (Bardeau, 1986).

However, people have accumulated knowledge from their experience of disability, chronic illness or mental health disorders that can be mobilized to respond to this major societal challenge. Thus, in France, peer support activities have developed and structured informally since the end of the First World War, mainly between physically/sensory disabled peers. In the field of mental health, during the 2010's, the first salaried peer helpers were introduced into multidisciplinary teams by militant psychiatrists, as part of the "One Home First" experiment or the work-study training of peer health mediators promoted by the WHO Collaborating Centre in Lille.

Peer coaching has generated an abundant scientific literature in the Anglo-Saxon field regarding its efficiency and contribution to professional services (Rogers, 2000; Patterson, Bushnick, Burdsall, Wright, 2005; Salzer, Palmer, Kaplan, Brusilovskiy, Ten Have, Hampshire, Metz, Coyne, 2010; Jalovcic, Pentland, 2010; Laval, Mantovani, Moreau, Rhenter, 2015, etc.). The main aim is to measure the effects produced and to demonstrate their effectiveness.

It must be noted that the forms and modalities of peer support, as well as the experiential knowledge produced, have not been really investigated. The conditions and issues of interactions between experiential peer knowledge holders and professionals with social work or health-related degrees are currently poorly understood (Gardien, 2016), despite major difficulties in integrating peers in some professional fields (Demailly et al., 2014).

Therefore, the EXPAIRS program aims to try to make progress on a number of grey areas in order to better understand peer interactions, their specificities and, more broadly, the contexts in which peer support is produced.

The EXPAIRS program team

Eve Gardien, Scientific Manager, Senior Lecturer in Sociology, ESO (UMR CNRS 6590), University of Rennes 2

Christian Laval, Sociologist, Associate Researcher at the ESO laboratory (UMR CNRS 6590)

Stéphane Héas, HDR Senior lecturer in STAPS, VIPS2 Host Team, University of Rennes 2

Christine Lamberts, CNRS Engineer, ESO (UMR CNRS 6590), University of Nantes

Stéphane Loret, CNRS Engineer, ESO (UMR CNRS 6590), University of Nantes

EXPAIRS program activities

An exploratory survey is currently ongoing in France. The objectives are to improve the contexts of knowledge and types of peer support practice, to establish solid partnership relations with ethnographic fields, to draft the identification of experiential knowledge in use, and to test in the field an innovative methodology for collecting experiential knowledge.

A scientific seminar bringing together all the members of the PROJECT team is held approximately every two months, i.e. 13 meetings over two years. These seminars are an opportunity for diverse disciplines to work concretely together through the joint construction of exploratory survey tools, analytical grids, as well as reflection on the methodological and theoretical framework of the project, etc.

A study day and a conference will be open to a wide audience of scientists, as well as to students, doctoral candidates, people directly concerned and professionals from the related sectors of activity. With the help of researchers from outside the team, they will provide an opportunity to exchange, reflect and debate on objects and methodologies of interest to ongoing research

Disciplinary keywords: Sociology; STAPS; Psychology; Public health

Thematic keywords: Disability; mental health; chronic illness; peer; experiential knowledge; experience; support; body

Project duration: January 1, 2018 to December 31, 2019

EXPAIRs program