Planning at the elementary level: Analysis of teachers’ life course

Abstract This study describes the planning activities of 12 in-service elementary school teachers in Quebec. Theureau’s (2006) course-of-action theory was used to document the teachers’ life course relating to their planning activities over an entire school year. Semi-directed interviews were conducted using authentic planning materials (agendas, workbooks, schedules, etc.) used by teachers in order to describe their activity as it unfolds over time. The results show that teachers for all school subjects concurrently, mainly differ according to the timeframe involved (short, medium, long-term). Their concerns remain largely unchanged over the three timeframes, except that they are fleshed out in more detail for the short term, particularly with regard to the complexity of taking into account the pupils’ characteristics, the teachers’ situation and the collaborative nature of these activities. Results also describe how their planning activities are supported by multiple actions and communications over an entire school year.


PUBLIC INTEREST STATEMENT
Planning is a key component that supports teacher interaction with pupils, allows the anticipation of learning activities and the distribution of content to be taught over time. It is also a complex and implicit professional activity that is hard to understand for beginners' teachers because of all decisions made in interaction and lack of written details from experienced teachers. The aim of this study is to describe the planning activities of in-service elementary teachers to better understand how it unfolds over an entire school year. Data were collected through semidirected interviews conducted with 12 teachers using authentic planning material to ease the description of their planning activity. Their actions, concerns, expectations, knowledge mobilized were then reconstructed in the chronology of time over an entire school year on the basis of what ensued them when the action was carried out. The study emphasized that teacher's planning activity mainly differ in timeframe (short, medium and long-term) and describes how planning is supported by multiple actions.

Introduction
In order to promote academic achievement, student engagement and inclusive education, elementary school teachers are expected to plan complex and authentic teaching activities, learning and assessment situations, integrating various school subjects and mobilizing various technologies, while taking into account the content to be taught, the teaching programs to be respected, knowledge from the field of education sciences and the pupils' characteristics, in particular, through differentiated instruction (Tomlinson et al., 2003). Several studies have produced empirical knowledge on the practice of planning at the elementary school level, including its cognitive and decision-making aspects (Hall & Smith, 2006), shedding further light on literature reviews conducted by John (2006) and Wanlin (2009). These studies have shown that, for experienced teachers, planning largely consists in adapting existing teaching material (Sullivan et al., 2012) while ensuring that it is appropriate to the context and their pedagogical approach (Avraamidou & Zembal-Saul, 2010;Mangiante, 2015). With experience, teachers develop a repertoire of lesson plans and teaching material for each subject and each grade, which they can then choose from and adapt, depending on the context (Ainsworth et al., 2012;Hall & Smith, 2006;Warren, 2000). When they plan lessons, in addition to these external resources, teachers also rely on various internal resources, such as their knowledge of didactics and the subject matter itself (Avraamidou & Zembal-Saul, 2010;Salmon et al., 2008). Their knowledge of their students also constitutes an important resource (Davis et al., 2011;Hall & Smith, 2006;Salmon et al., 2008;Sullivan et al., 2012). Moreover, studies have shown that lesson planning sometimes also involves collaborating with other teachers at their school (Avraamidou & Zembal-Saul, 2010;Kauffman & Johnson, 2002;Sullivan et al., 2012) or other education professionals, such as resource specialists (Ainsworth et al., 2012).
With regard to the difficulties encountered in planning, studies have shown that some teachers strongly feel the impact of the rigidity of teaching programs or constant changes to them, the high degree of prescribed content and the growing culture of accountability (in particular through standardized testing). All of these aspects contribute to a feeling of loss of control and of having insufficient room for manoeuvre to be able to adapt to pupils (Ainsworth et al., 2012) and foster deep learning (Kauffman & Johnson, 2002). Studies have also shown that pre-set schedules, especially those that dictate a certain number of hours per subject, do not allow teachers to adapt to pupils or easily integrate school subjects into a single lesson plan (Warren, 2000), take into account the fact that pupils are regularly absent from class (Warren, 2000) or juggle the various individual subjects (Ding & Carlson, 2013;Salmon et al., 2008). All these constraints lead to the feeling, among many teachers, that they lack the necessary time or energy to reflect on their teaching practices and plan their lessons in a sufficiently detailed way (Holmqvist, 2011).
Most of the studies reviewed examine lesson planning among pre-service rather than in-service teachers (Kang, 2017;Ko, 2012;König et al., 2020;Land & Rubin, 2020;Norman, 2011;Ross & Cartier, 2015;Wallace & Coffey, 2019;Williams Chizhik & Williams Chizhik, 2018). Many studies deal with the teaching of specific school subjects as mathematics or sciences for example, (Johnston, 2013;Li et al., 2009;Sullivan et al., 2012) rather than describing how teachers plan for all subjects concurrently, which is nevertheless the reality for elementary school teachers. In short, a host of factors and contextual elements have a bearing on teachers' planning decisions, and a finer understanding of methodology could be of use to their activity in order to accurately reflect the complexity of the cognitive task and to the way in which it manifests concretely in their practice, particularly in the case of experienced teachers whose decision making is informed by a wide array of knowledge (Hall & Smith, 2006;Wanlin & Crahay, 2012). Thus, with the aim of enriching the existing knowledge, this study examines the planning activities of experienced inservice teachers, with regard to various timeframes (short, medium and long-term), for all subjects concurrently, in order to describe their decision-making process and the main reasoning behind it at different times of the year.

Theoretical framework
In view of describing planning and its complexity, in context and in order to understand its decision-making component, this study subscribes to an enactive conception of activity, namely, Theureau's semiological course-of-action framework (Theureau, 2003(Theureau, , 2006. Based on the paradigm of situated action, this framework is used to study activity in its actual context, combining both an extrinsic description (characteristics and state of the actor, his/her environment and culture) and intrinsic description of the actor's experience, referred to as the actor's course of experience. According to this framework, based on the work of Peirce (1931), an actor's course of experience can be described in terms of a series of hexadic signs, that is, signs comprising six components.
The components of each sign interact with each other in a dynamic fashion and can be classified into three different states. First, individuals always experience a situation from their state of preparation, which is composed of a number of commitments and one or many concerns related to various items (see 1.1 in Figure 1). For example, a teacher could be concerned about starting the school year with new pupils. The commitments reflect the concerns relative to the teacher's previous experience and specific knowledge relevant to the situation and the items in question. (see State of preparation in Figure 1). For example, a teacher could be concerned about teaching complex math concepts given their awareness of what pupils have to know in order to pass end-of -year government exams. In light of their previous experience, the teacher has certain expectations (e.g., to organize the physical environment of their classroom, to receive their schedule in August, etc.) (1.2 in Figure 1). Depending on the individual's commitments and expectations, the knowledge mobilized from their frame of reference (1.3 in Figure 1) includes information acquired through previous experiences and situations that the individual can draw on to guide them in their activity, such as knowledge about the pupils, other teachers, the curriculum, etc.
Second, when the action is carried out, the individual perceives, feels or identifies an item in their environment as being significant, attributing meaning to it based on their previous state of preparation and being prompted to engage with the situation in one way or another, such that the perceptual judgment in the situation constitutes a disturbance. It may be a sensorial item (seeing, hearing, smelling, feeling something) or a mnemonic item (remembering something), and it will make sense only if it rests on one or more items of the individual's state of preparation (see 2.1 in Figure 1). This perceptual judgment resulting from the situation may translate as carrying out an action, feeling something, saying something to oneself or communicating with someone else, which we call a unit of experience (see 2.2. in Figure 1).
Lastly, it is in the state of appropriation that the experience is transformed. Based on the unit of experience mobilized in the situation to respond to the perceptual judgment that emerged against a backdrop of expectations, commitments and knowledge, the interpretant (see 3.1 in Figure 1) enables the individual to account for the appropriation of a given experience.
Including both intrinsic and extrinsic elements allows for a fuller description of human activity, taking account of the dynamics underlying the activity, its context, and its significance for the actor. This makes it possible to describe human activity in its totality and all of its complexity, including its cognitive, emotional, corporal and developmental dimensions. This theoretical framework also includes a broader theoretical object, namely an actor's life course relating to a practice. This theoretical object makes it possible to go beyond an analysis of temporally circumscribed situations (e.g., planning one lesson), to describe discontinuous events related to this same practice over a longer timespan, as well as moments of reflection on this practice, based on the hypothesis that discontinuous events present enough coherence to be described as a sequence of events.
The goals of this article were thus threefold: (1) To describe the life course of in-service elementary school teachers relating to their planning activities, for all subjects concurrently, including, in particular their state of preparation (concerns, expectations, knowledge mobilized from their frame of reference) and what ensued when the action was carried out (perceptual judgment and any actions/communication/private discourse or emotions stemming from it).
(2) To describe how their planning activities unfolded over an entire school year (how their actions, concerns unfolded in short, medium and long-term planning and to which perceptual judgment it echoes).
(3) To analyze the constraints and effects pertaining to this life course from the perspective of the teachers, that is, their characteristics and state, situation and culture (extrinsic description).

Participants and description of context
To be selected as study participants, the teachers had to have at least five years of teaching experience at the elementary school level and consent to participate in the study voluntarily. A email recruitment has been sent to several school in Quebec and 12 teachers were recruited on a first-come, first-chosen basis. Table 1 presents the participants' characteristics in which pseudonym were given to them. All participants were teaching in different schools in Quebec (see ,  Table 1). This project has been approved by the Research Ethics Commitee of Laval University (No.2016-261).
In Quebec, classroom teachers at the elementary school level are responsible for the following subjects: French, which is also the language of instruction, mathematics, science and technology, social sciences, ethics and religious culture and, depending on the school, arts education. Most are part of a team of teachers teaching in the same grade. Teachers are free to choose their own teaching and evaluation methods (including teaching materials), as long as these methods adequately reflect the competencies to be developed and the subject matter to be learned as per the Québec Education program and the Progression of Learning. These two education ministry documents set out common references with respect to the subject matter that must be taught in each teaching cycle (two years per cycle). Teachers must ensure that their planning complies with the suggested number of hours of instruction for each subject provided for in the basic school regulation (e.g., in cycle one of elementary school, pupils must have seven hours per week of mathematics instruction and nine hours per week of their language of instruction [French]). In all schools in Quebec, the school year is divided into three terms (with a set date for emitting report cards), and schedules are developed around a 9-or 10-day cycle.

Data collection
To describe the life course of the teachers relating to their planning activities and the constraints and effects pertaining to this life course from the perspective of the teachers' state, situation and culture, we conducted interviews with 12 participating teachers, during which they recounted their planning activities over the entire school year, with material supports. This interview technique is a method developed by Theureau, based on the work of Von Cranach et al. (1982), and aims to document activities that take place over an extended timespan, and/or for which direct observation would be difficult or impossible. This type of interview thus corresponded to our goal, namely, to examine teachers' planning activities over a long timespan (an entire school year), in moments and spaces in which such activity would be difficult to anticipate and thus to observe. Interviews were conducted in each teacher's school, in a vacant classroom to ease their description while pupils were with a specialist teacher. Interviews lasted about 1,25 hour per participant and were recorded on video. To help them go back in time and remember their activities as experienced in order to better describe them, considering the time that had elapsed since some of the documented activities took place, the teachers were encouraged to bring in the material supports they use to plan (written lesson plans, agenda, electronic files with themes listed by months, exercise booklet, list of subjects to be taught, guides developed by educational consultants, etc.) and to refer to it while they were expressing their activities (Theureau, 2010). Refering to the action described by participants to explain their planning activities, these sample questions were asked to help them recall their planning activities and to obtain data related to most of the hexadic sign' components (What were you doing right then? What were you saying to yourself? How did you feel? What concerns did you have? What expectations did you have? What knowledge did you have that allowed you to . . . ? Which elements of the situation emerged as being significant for you at that time?). Thus, these interviews made it possible to discern what was significant for the individual during a whole school year through that which is [Translation] "showable and tellable by them at every moment" [of their planning activity] (Theureau, 2006,  p. 42) to then situate this activity's story in all its complexity through a chronological reconstitution of the significant elements a posteriori, in the form of a series of hexadic signs (see, Figure 1).

Data analysis
First, the 12 interviews were transcribed. Because the participants' responses did not necessarily reflect the chronological order of events, relevant interview segments were sorted chronologically in a 2-column table, with one column listing the temporal markers referred to and the other recording each teacher's verbatim account of their activities with reference this temporal marker • Expects to go back over the same concept or the same notions with the pupils several times Knowledge mobilized from the participant's existing frame of reference Regarding the pupils • Just because something has been seen with the pupils once does not mean it will not be necessary to go back over it again a few weeks later.
(see, Table 2 below). This table was subsequently used to reconstitute each participant's life course relating to planning activities over the entire school year, presented as a series of units of experience, and then described based on the components of the hexadic sign proposed by the semiological course-of-action theory. Considering the difficulty of associating a precise temporal marker with specific segments of the verbatim texts, these units of experience could include a number of elements unfolding at approximately the same time, with reference to a vague temporal marker (e.g., "at the end of the last school year" or "during the first weeks of this school year"). Also, these temporal marker were often refering to the perceptual jugdment impulsing teachers to act in some ways to plan.
Once all of the experience units have been placed in the participant's life course using perceptual judgment to give time markers, we deductively categorized the elements based on the components of the hexadic sign (units of experience, concerns, expectations, perceptual judgment, knowledge from the participant's frame of reference). The researchers then discussed and compared all hexadic signs from two participants to validate the reconstitution in tables used to illustrate their life course related to planning then they applied the method agreeded on each participant. For the second level of categorization, the researchers deductively categorized the elements, using the qualitative analysis software MaxQDA, based on the theoretical framework, bringing out a second level within the units of experience (private discourse, communication with colleagues or others, actions taken and emotions experienced), expectations (distinguishing between passive expectations-what the participant expected, and active expectations-what the participant expected to do). As for the other components of the hexadic sign (concerns, knowledge mobilized from the actor's frame of reference and perceptual judgment) to describe the participant's experience, it was inductively categorized, based on the constant comparative method (Glaser, 1965). After a certain number of items, the theoretical characteristics of the categories began to emerge and were arrange into a hierarchy, with some items being at the same level and others being more general. At this point, researchers met, compared and checked these categories to validate the preliminary results. Disagreements over coding were discussed and consensus was achieved (Campbell et al., 2013).
After carrying out this categorization, the life courses of all the participants relating to their planning activities were compared with respect to similar timeframes (e.g., end of previous school year or beginning of current one, medium-term and short-term planning). Given that the goal of our study was to describe planning practices and not the professional development related to these practices, the data associated with the interpretants were not analyzed (see 3.1 in Figure 1).

Results
Our findings illustrate that participants' activity fluctuates and varies throughout the school year and that certain experiences are more typical of certain time spans, depending on participants' particular commitments. Their activity is divided into three time spans: long-term planning (the entire school year), medium-term planning (one term or one month) and short-term planning (daily and weekly activities), depending on the elements that are significant for each participant. The participants' experience with planning is described below by successively addressing their state of preparation (what concerned them, what they were expecting and what knowledge they were mobilizing), what ensued when the action was carried out (what elements emerged from the situation as significant for them and what initiated the process of planning for them (perceptual judgment), as well as what they did/said/felt/told themselves (private discourse) concerning these significant elements.

Planning for the entire school year: "Making sure I don't forget anything and adjust to my group"
Teachers' state of preparation for planning the entire school year: Table 3 below describes the participants' experience planning for the "long term". Before the start of a new school year, teachers are very concerned about their pupils, about the need for an efficient planning practice and about abiding by certain rules that govern their profession. Josée clearly voices these three concerns when she explains that she wants to "comply with the ministry's program and spread learning activities out in time in order to fit everything in before the end of the year, cover all the required subject matter and ensure that pupils are able to progress." The teachers have commitments associated with wanting to feel ready before the school year has even begun: "I like it when my planning for the month of September is done before the end of the previous school year; that really gives me peace of mind going into summer break" (Anne). In preparation for revising this annual planning, some of the participants have expectations related to the physical organization of their classroom but also to their planning based on ideas they have thought of or activities they have found in various documents throughout the previous year. As Julie explains: "In my own notebooks, I have Post-Its that say things like 'Eliminate,' 'Change the question,' 'Change the answer because this doesn't work,' and so on." While they are concerned about being prepared ahead of a new school year, they also fully expect to have to make changes throughout the year in response to their pupils' pace and abilities (Suzanne, Anne, Carole, Lise and Isabelle), or to teach more advanced concepts if they end up having the time (Julie). As they plan the whole year, the teachers can mobilize a wide array of elements from their frames of reference related to material resources to use during the year, and particularly the way teaching materials (textbooks, workbooks, specific teaching programs, children's books, etc.) can be used, including to teach specific concepts (Martine, Julie, Elisabeth, Carole, Emily, Jessica, Isabelle). Julie and Emily also understand that it is not always possible to teach a concept in all its complexity relying only on workbooks: "The math book gives us two weeks to cover multiplication, which actually takes us a full month" (Julie). Some of the teachers are familiar with a number of online teaching resources that they wish to use at various times throughout the year (Anne, Suzanne, Elisabeth, Carole), while others have prepared their own lists of activities over the years (Isabelle, Lise, Brigitte, Josée, Jessica, Martine). For example, Carole uses certain teaching reference works: "Van de Walle is a go-to resource for me, he's in my class. He was a math researcher and educator . . . with my experience, I know I'm going to do suchand-such activity, it's on page 251." The teachers also have extensive subject-specific knowledge, particularly about the time pupils need to master certain concepts. On teaching math, Elisabeth explain: "At the beginning of the year, we don't go past the numbers 30 to 40 before December; we really make sure that the concept of numbers is clear for them, because there's no point going up to 60 if they haven't grasped the basic idea." When the action is carried out: It is the final months of the school year and the ones prior to the beginning of the new year that prompt the participants to engage in this type of whole-year planning exercise. More specifically, Julie, Elisabeth, Anne, Brigitte and Martine use the professional development days at the end of the school year to re-examine their planning structure. Others engage in long-term planning in the months before the start of a new school year (Emily and Carole) or in the first weeks of the school year (Lise, Josée, Isabelle and Jessica). These professional development days usually scheduled appeared to be particularly suitable times to plan for the entire year, particularly when the planning was collaborative. Regardless of when they engage in planning, all the teachers who were teaching the same grade as the year before (all except Emily and Carole) based their plan for the year on the previous year's plan, adapting it, often based on notes they had taken over the course of the previous year. For several of the teachers, these adjustments took different forms, such as deleting content deemed to be unessential, shifting or moving content around over the year, allotting more or less time to a given learning content, adding new children's books or new learning activities, modifying the pages of a workbook, etc. As Elisabeth explains, "I move things around for next year, I note important dates and new books coming out (sometimes there's new literature)." For Lise, planning documents from previous years are also useful points of comparison when it comes to choosing new activities: "Sometimes I look back at what I did in a given year . . . I need something to compare my planning to." Two participants (Emily and Carole) were teaching a grade for the first time (extrinsic element), although they are both experienced teachers. Their planning activities thus differed from those of the other participants. Emily chose the textbooks corresponding to her needs in French and math in May of the previous year. When planning her year, she mainly relied on the lesson plans suggested in the teacher's manuals. Carole, instead, chose to base her planning on the official curriculum. She identified all the notions to be taught (particularly those to be learned by the end of the school cycle). She also took into account the reading strategies she was required to teach (school-wide decision) as well as any standardized tests. She then organized the learning content by level of difficulty according to the teaching cycles (eighteen 10-day cycles), placing the most complex notions at the beginning of the school year, to ensure that "the pupils had time to deepen or master these concepts". Whether or not it was their first time teaching the grade level, several of the participants reported discussing their plan for the year with colleagues in the same grade, sometimes planning an entire school subject or a specific component (e.g., grammar-Isabelle) together. This kind of communication could also take place with colleagues in the grade level preceding or following their own grade (so as to spread out the program content over these grades and coordinate their efforts) or with other education professionals (Carole).
At the end of the previous year and beginning of the current year, perceptual judgments related to the cohort of pupils were added (Isabelle, Lise, Carole and Brigitte). This information came from two sources: colleagues from the previous year (at the end of the year), and their own observations at the beginning of the current year, allowing them to assess whether they had a "good group." In particular, they observed "the group's level of energy and motivation" (Carole). This information led some participants to readjust their lesson plans, for example, the time allotted to each subject, as illustrated by this comment by Brigitte: "My group was weaker in reading, so for sure, I wasn't going to take out any reading activities. I would go faster in math." When planning for the entire year, some participants said they felt comfortable and confident, particularly because they were able to rely on the previous year's plan as illustrated by Isabelle "I could see how the year was going to unfold." Planning ahead for the year also appeared to give some participants the sense that the task was lighter all year long and to facilitate collaboration.
However, several participants experienced negative emotions (stress, discomfort). For many of them, these negative emotions were related to extrinsic elements, such as teaching a grade level for the first time (Carole and Emily), being part of an unstable school team (Carole), being required to use a particular workbook (Anne) or, on the contrary, not having a workbook to use (Suzanne), particularly when this decision had been made by someone else (e.g., the team of teachers from the previous year). Anne expressed the sense of being "stuck with an exercise booklet".

Medium-term planning: "We Know the Material and Everything, and We Know Where
We're Going" Table 4 below describes the participants' experience planning for the "medium term." This timeframe varied by participant, sometimes referring to the different school terms (all except Elisabeth, Carole and Jessica), sometimes to specific months (Jessica), and sometimes to Teacher's state of preparation before mid-term planning: Once the school year was under way, the participants' concerns focused more on the pupils. Rather than concentrating on "what to teach," as when they were planning for the year ahead, they now directed their focus on "how to teach" and "how to evaluate the pupils' learning" to be sure that the activities they had chosen would really help the pupils learn the material in question. Some participants wished to ensure that the pupils acquired a deep understanding, within a logic of progression and before the end of the teaching cycle.
Similarly, the participants expressed a number of concerns related to adapting to the pupils' needs and meeting them where they were at, such as by providing them with learning situations at their level in order not to discourage them or not overloading them with homework (Suzanne), as well as ensuring that the chosen activities interested them (Anne) or that the assessments were adapted to the level of all pupils (Julie and Anne). Preparing the pupils for the standardized tests was also a concern for two participants (Lise and Martine). The participants' concerns also related to their own practices, as they sought to respect their initial plan, to the extent possible, while also adapting it to the pupils. As for the rules of the profession, the participants expressed concerns relating to assessments, particularly regarding the congruence between what was assessed and what was taught: "You really have to look at what you've taught so as to be able to evaluate the right things" (Suzanne).
Over the course of the year, when planning for the medium term (i.e. a school term, month or theme, depending on the participant), the teachers again mobilized knowledge from their vast frame of reference. This frame of reference mainly pertained to teaching strategies and the problems encountered by pupils related to specific learning contents, particularly in French (the language of instruction) and math. For example, with regard to teaching fractions, one participant said: "I know fractions are a difficult concept, it takes a while for the pupils to get it." Similarly, another participant said she knew that food was a good theme to use in teaching this notion because it provided the possibility of cooking activities. Their frame of reference also largely pertained to the characteristics of the teaching material and resources available to them, both external resources (textbooks, exercise booklets, web sites, etc.) and internal resources (their own activity bank, constructed over the years). Some of these resources were imposed by the school, for example, a reading textbook. The teachers also mobilized knowledge from their reference framework pertaining to lesson planning itself. Through experience, they knew that some periods in the year required a specific kind of planning, such as the beginning of the school year (which had to be planned ahead of time and not be too full of content) and the end of the school year, when there were many standardized tests and it was difficult to add new content to the basic material: "In early June, when the Ministry exams are over, there's a lapse of time when we have to be with the kids and not have them sitting around doing nothing. That's when we do those little (social science) projects (. . .) In June, we're pretty much done with French (language of instruction)" (Jessica).
In planning for the medium term, the participants mainly expected to implement specific learning situations (e.g., projects, themes or activities) and evaluate their pupils. However, they knew they would have to adapt and fine-tune their lesson plans as they went along, particularly around exam time, in relation to the content of the tests: "When you see the end of term approaching, you send all your tests to be photocopied and you can say, I'll schedule this one for this week, and that one for that week. When we've seen the material, we can plan for the long term" (Martine).
The participants also had some expectations regarding their colleagues. For example, some participants expected to confer with their colleagues in the same grade and coordinate their planning, but not necessarily for all lesson plans. For instance, Isabelle planned French (language of instruction) with her colleagues and expected to follow this plan for grammar but not for reading and writing. . "In reading and writing, there are things written down [in my lesson plan] but, frankly, I do that more for the sake of my colleagues because I don't really work that way in reading and writing. There are other things that I use." When the Action Was Carried Out: Medium-term planning began at the end a given month, term or theme. For Suzanne, March Break also constituted a perceptual judgment, initiating a new bout of planning: "The end of March is when I always adjust my lesson plans for the end of the year." At this time, the participants took up their long-term plan for the entire year and fine-tuned it or made it more specific. Thus, for each term, month or theme, depending on how they operated, the participants determined which learning activities were most important (e.g., projects, writing situations or problem-solving situations in math), and decided how to formally assess the learning achieved. For several participants (Elisabeth, Lise, Carole and Suzanne), this medium-term planning was carried out individually. For others (Julie, Anne, Jessica and Martine), it was carried out with their colleagues in the same grade. It should be noted that the data for Emily, Brigitte and Josée did not contain references to medium-term planning. These three participants appeared to go directly from long-term planning for the entire year to day-to-day planning. This can be explained, in Emily's case, by the fact that the participant used the plan provided with the textbooks and, in the case of Brigitte and Josée, by the fact that the participants' long-term plan was very detailed, already including learning content and activities. Positive and negative emotions were also experienced by the participants in relation to their medium-term planning activities-in some cases, by the same participant. For example, Jessica felt comfortable about the textbook she was using in French while feeling the burden of having to evaluate her pupils in ethics and religious culture.

Planning for the week or day: "How do I plan that over time?"
State of preparation before planning for the short term: Once the participants had completed their medium-term planning, they all entered into another, shorter-term planning mode (see Table 5). At this time, their concerns mainly related to the pupils. Thus, several participants said they wished to implement learning activities that would allow their pupils to master the notions in question and that would respond to and could be adapted to their needs and interests.
The participants also expressed concerns relating to their own teaching practices, such as following their lesson plans and the routine they had established, having an overview and being ready to teach before finding themselves at the front of the classroom, or even anticipating being replaced by a supply teacher at the last minute: "Over time and with experience, I've learned, first, that planning ahead makes me feel more secure. Also, if you're absent at the last minute, everything will be planned and ready. When I leave at night, everything is ready for the next day on the corner of my desk. I tell myself that if something happens, a supply teacher can come in and everything will be in order. The plan for the day is up on the board" (Brigitte).
When planning for the short-term, some participants were also concerned with making their own work easier or helping with work-family balance: "I always schedule a test before a free period because I know I'll be able to correct it during the free period . . . The goal is to not always bring work home, but rather to do as much as possible at school" (Josée).
The participants also expressed concerns regarding the rules of the profession, such as covering and respecting the program. They also had concerns relating to the parents, such as keeping parents informed and facilitating parental tasks, for example, regarding homework and lessons. Lastly, among participants who engaged in collaborative lesson planning, concerns relating to colleagues were also noted, such as respecting collective decisions or "following" their colleagues to the extent possible.
When planning for the short term, the participants also mobilized knowledge from their rich frame of reference, particularly regarding lesson planning itself. The participants said they knew it was advantageous to plan on a day-to-day basis, as this allowed them to know where they were going and not forget anything. They also mobilized their experiential knowledge regarding strategies that facilitate lesson planning and make it easier to adapt to the pupils, such as keeping some periods or days free in order be able to make adjustments, knowing that many factors could end up disrupting their plans.
"I always keep a period free so as to be able to make up for a lesson that might have taken longer or been less well understood. [. . .] You start a math lesson and then someone loses a tooth, or someone feels sick and the phone rings. You can't teach, you've lost the pace. So yes, you have to plan for those things . . . " (Lise).
The participants also mobilized a great deal of knowledge relating to the teaching material and resources available to them. Other knowledge from their reference framework was more didactical in nature, relating to the teaching or learning of a specific content, mainly in French (language of instruction), such as the fact the pupils have trouble self-correcting effectively (Martine) or the pedagogical advantages of using "zero-error" dictations (metacognitive writing) (Emily). Some knowledge from their reference framework related to pedagogical interventions (e.g., using a project-based approach or children's literature, working in small groups, etc.) and the characteristics of the pupils themselves, particularly the fact that they learn better at certain times of the day or year. For example, several participants said they knew from experience that pupils are more agitated and less attentive in the afternoon (Emily, Anne, Brigitte, Jessica and Martine), or after time away, such as on Mondays (Josée) or following the Christmas holidays (Lise). Lastly, the participants also mobilized what they knew about themselves, such as their need to write down their plan or plan ahead. Other participants like Isabelle did not feel this need: "I don't write things down, but I know what I'm going to do in my head." When the action is carried out: Given these concerns and the knowledge they mobilized from their frame of reference, the participants expected various situations to arise that would require them to adjust their plan, such as unanticipated events (e.g., a snowstorm), or difficulty mastering certain notions, etc. The perceptual judgments that initiated short-term planning activities among the participants mainly pertained to a temporal marker. Thus, many participants mentioned that they did their planning for the week (or, in some cases, a few days, a teaching cycle 1 or a two-week period) at a specific time, such as on Thursday evening (Isabelle), Friday at noon (Martine), Saturday (Carole) or Sunday (Anne and Lise). Others used a free period during the week, such as when the pupils were with a specialist teacher. The pupils' reactions (learning pace, needs or interests) could also constitute a perceptual judgment, as described by Anne: "I teach [reading strategies in French] and I can tell when [the pupils] don't understand, so I'll do another lesson rather than moving on to something else." They are all open to reorganizing their weekly planning to adjust to pupils' needs, pace or interests when elements typical of these three aspects emerge. Some of the teachers are forced to revise their short-term planning multiple times per week in response to these day-to-day factors in their class.
Faced with this perceptual judgment (temporal marker or pupils' reactions) and considering their state of preparation (concerns regarding their pupils, their own practices or the overall context), the participants implemented various actions. Thus, they organized their schedule for the coming week/cycle/days. They divided up the content to be covered and the assessments to be conducted (when applicable), while setting aside some days or periods for specific purposes. For example, they might schedule dictations on Thursdays (Martine), set aside a period for social sciences, save time to read to the pupils (Elisabeth), or a period every day to do the "Daily 5" activities (Josée). Several participants made sure any important new material was covered at the beginning of the week, in the morning, and when no pupils were missing. Several participants, as Martine, also set aside "catch up" periods or days, for which they planned only a few elements: "In my agenda, I fill in all the boxes but I always keep one or two spaces open on Thursday or Friday. Sometimes things take longer and I get off schedule." These reserved periods or days allowed them to adjust their plan to unanticipated events or the learning pace or needs of their pupils. When planning for the short term, the vast majority of the participants (Julie, Anne, Isabelle, Lise, Brigitte, Josée, Suzanne, Jessica and Martine) experienced positive emotions, mainly comfort and a sense of self-efficacy: "I feel good and I feel that what we're doing is working" (Julie). At the same time, most of them (all except Lise and Suzanne) also experienced negative emotions, such as discomfort, stress and discouragement. These negative emotions included, for example, fear that they would not manage to cover the entire program or would forget some elements, or discomfort related to teaching a particular subject.

Discussion
The purpose of this study was to describe the real activity of teachers at various times throughout the school year as they plan their instruction, with the primary goal of accounting for the elements that have a bearing on teachers' decision making. First, our findings show that teachers are always concerned about their pupils when they plan for the long, medium and short term, but that these concerns come into sharper focus during more short-term planning. Whereas pupil-related concerns during long-term planning are more general in nature and directed toward a hypothetical group, these concerns become more specific as teachers plan for the medium and short term and must develop approaches that cater to the characteristics and learning needs of their pupils. These findings support the idea that teachers rely on their broad knowledge of their pupils to shape their planning decisions, also shown as an important resource in previous studies (Davis et al., 2011;Hall & Smith, 2006;Salmon et al., 2008;Sullivan et al., 2012). We can clearly see this adaptation from the long term to the short term when the teachers acknowledge, at the beginning of the school year, that certain concepts may be, as a general rule, more complex to grasp. Therefore, when they plan the school year, the teachers are prepared to spend more time teaching certain concepts. Nevertheless, they pay attention to their pupils' learning pace through day-to-day classroom activities, and they must then adjust the markers of their annual planning to bring their weekly and daily teaching plans in line with the noticed items in pupils' reactions, their work, their interests, etc. The teachers' concerns about their own practice also stay with them all throughout the year. The concerns include wanting to be able to plan and anticipate the subject matter to teach and activities to do in class at various times of the year to meet the expectations set out in the Program. They also want to adapt these more general planning exercises carried out at the beginning of the school year or in the medium term in order to bring them closer in line with the reality of each class (how a typical day unfolds, unpredictability, pupils' interests, etc.), particularly so that the teachers feel ready to teach at the start of each new day, to lessen the amount of work they have to bring home at the end of the day, etc.
Our results concur with those reported by Ainsworth et al. (2012) and Warren (2000), showing that experienced teachers develop a repertoire of lesson plans and teaching material for each school subject and each grade, which they can then choose from and adapt depending on the context. Our results also show that teachers base their planning on a number of external resources (e.g., teaching material, textbooks, programs) and internal resources (e.g., their knowledge of the school subjects to be taught and didactics; Avraamidou & Zembal-Saul, 2010;Salmon et al., 2008). Lastly, particularly with regard to the medium-term planning of assessments, our results brought out the collaborative nature of these planning activities, as has also been observed by others (Avraamidou & Zembal-Saul, 2010;Kauffman & Johnson, 2002;Sullivan et al., 2012). This collaboration, which mainly took place between teachers in the same grade level, was, however, highly dependent on contextual factors (size and stability of the team) and the level of congruence between the teachers in terms of their approach to teaching. Moreover, considering what teachers concretely do when they plan lessons, our findings concur with those reported by John (2006), Hall and Smith (2006), and Wanlin (2009). Indeed, the more experienced teachers are, the more they tend to plan in a general (rather than detailed) and informal way, which makes it difficult to track and understand their planning activities (Mogharreban et al., 2010;Mutton et al., 2011;Osam & Balbay, 2004;Strangis et al., 2006). We observed that the participants' short-term planning was rather informal and tended not to be written down in much detail (a few words in their agenda generally sufficed for them to know what would take place in class). On the other hand, we also saw evidence of medium-and long-term planning that was much more formal and detailed, although this varied from one teacher to the next.
Nevertheless, some of our results are not entirely consistent with the literature reviewed. First, quite surprisingly, the planning approach adopted by all the participants when they plan for the long term was fairly close to the outcomes-based planning approach (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005) whereas planning is often rather seen as an iterative process that take root in interactions in the classroom (John, 2006;Wanlin, 2009). Indeed, when planning for the entire year, our participants began by asking themselves what learning goals they were aiming for, particularly in terms of the content to be taught at different moment. Then, when planning for the medium-term, they asked themselves what assessments and main teaching strategies would be coherent with these goals. They then chose the specific learning activities on a shorter-term basis and frequently readjusted their weekly schedules to cater to pupils' learning pace, needs and interests.
While the reviewed literature shows that some teachers experience a great number of difficulties related to planning, we documented relatively few, aside from some negative emotions experienced by some participants. Again, these negative emotions (fear, feeling "stuck") can largely be explained by the context. Certain situations appeared to lead to these emotions, such as teaching a grade level for the first time (even when the teacher had several years of teaching experience), not having colleagues with whom they could collaborate or having to collaborate with colleagues with whom they did not share the same approach to teaching or who imposed pedagogical choices on them, or changing from one teaching approach to another (e.g., teaching without a workbook). This relative lack of difficulties with regard to planning can clearly be explained by the participants' profile, as they were all experienced teachers. Thus, a similar methodology applied to beginning teachers would likely bring out a much different approach to planning (particularly given the impossibility of referring to previous lesson plans) as well as many more difficulties and negative emotions, as documented by Kauffman and Johnson (2002). It would be relevant to explore this avenue in future studies.
Our study and its methodology contribute to describing real-life time-based planning activities. Results illustrate what really do teachers and how decisions about planning are made during one year in echoes to activities fluctuation in authentic school context. Knowing what is really significant in teacher's activity to propulse them to plan (perceptual judgment) indicates that certain specific months of the school year are considered conducive to establishing planning guidelines, that the beginning and end of a month or a school term are good times to revise annual planning and benchmark for the medium term, and lastly, that a plethora of contextual elements specific to each class (pupils' pace, free periods, classroom routines, last day of the week, etc.) prompt teachers to revise their daily and weekly planning. Generally, when teachers are asked what they do with their pupils at a given moment in time, their responses will likely be more focused on learning activities, because these are what are effectively planned in the short term. This does not mean that the goals and means of assessment have not been considered upstream, but this analysis likely took place well before the teacher was asked about it. In our study, using material support (agendas, workbooks, schedules, etc.) during interviews helped teachers to go back in time to remember their activities. This allowed us to describe in detail their actions or communications, but also their concerns and elements that encourage them to initiate various actions related to planning during school year.
Lastly, our results show that the professional activity of planning is an iterative process (Hall & Smith, 2006;Wanlin & Crahay, 2012). This description contrasts with the requirements of current teacher training programs, which often focus on short-term planning (lessons or a sequence of lessons) for a specific subject, whereas teaching at the elementary school level involves planning for all subjects concurrently. It is also likely that, in their teaching practicums, student teachers mainly see the cooperative teacher engage in short-term, informal planning that tends not to be written down, whereas other forms of planning have actually been carried out earlier on. This likely contributes to constructing an erroneous representation according to which formal lesson planning is merely an academic requirement of teacher training programs rather than a real component of teaching activities (John, 2006;Ko, 2012;Land & Rubin, 2020;Mogharreban et al., 2010;Mutton et al., 2011;Norman, 2011;Osam & Balbay, 2004;Strangis et al., 2006). It would thus be relevant for teacher training programs to develop learning situations and tools to support longerterm planning. This would likely also better support the professional integration of new teachers and help them transition from planning that tends to be more focused on the short-term during practicum exeperiences toward more long-term planning. Since planning cannot be isolated from teaching in general, future research could study teacher's activity as a whole, in order to examine how and when planning takes place in relation to other dimensions of the teaching practice.