Echelle de flow en contexte éducatif v.2 (EduFlow2, Heutte, Fenouillet, Martin-Krumm, Boniwell & Csikszentmihalyi, 2016)
The concept of flow was first described by Csikszentmihalyi in his book Beyond Boredom and Anxiety in 1975. As of November 2014, the European Flow Researchers Network offers the following consensus definition: "It is a state of fulfilment related to the deep involvement and sense of absorption that people feel when faced with tasks of high demands and perceive that their skills enable them to meet these challenges. Flow is described as an optimal experience in which people are deeply motivated to persist in their activities. A large body of scientific work highlights that flow has important implications for self-development, contributing to both well-being and good personal functioning in daily life." (EFRN, 2014, translation Heutte, 2017b).
The optimal experience (or state of flow) occurs when there is an adequate match (an optimal balance) between the challenge (the demands of the activity) and the skills. The feeling of having an optimal learning experience (the pleasure of seeing that one is progressing/understanding) is one of the major determinants of persistence in training, as well as of increased challenge and skill improvement.
In their latest version of the modelling of autotelic-flow in education (EduFlow2), Heutte, Fenouillet, Martin-Krumm, Boniwell and Csikszentmihalyi (2016) identify four dimensions: cognitive control (FlowD1), immersion and Time transformation (FlowD2), loss of self-consciousness (FlowD3), and autotelic experience - well-being rooted in the activity itself(FlowD4). These four dimensions shed remarkable light on the persistence of learners' behaviour in a training or learning context.
The first three dimensions (FlowD1+FlowD2+FlowD3) constitute cognitive absorption, the fundamental determinant of persistence in understanding and the quality of learning induced by this persistence.