Emmanuelle BROSSAIS

Cet article participe du debat sur la theorie du sujet dans les recherches en sciences humaines et sociales. Il s’agit plus particulierement de repondre a la question : a quel sujet se referent les etudes sur les pratiques d’enseignement et d’apprentissage ? Pour ce faire, j’expose trois conceptions du sujet correspondant a trois cadres epistemologiques distincts soit le sujet epistemique, le sujet social et affectif et le sujet de l’inconscient.

In socially acute question didactics and “education for” subject-specific areas, the objects of teaching are not considered to be fixed and they entail values and controversial issues. The set of issues related to neutrality thus arises for these problems, which combine advanced and often fragmented scientific knowledge, ethical issues, and complex political and administrative issues. The question of teacher opinion is particularly important in teaching these uncertain kinds of knowledge (Girault & Lhoste, 2010). The teaching of socio-scientific issues (SCI) confronts teachers with taking a new position: that of committed impartiality, whereas instructional communication has traditionally been built on a duty to remain impartial and neutral regarding schoolroom discourse (Urgelli, 2009). The particular context in which content knowledge is not stabilized raises once again the question of teacher subjectivity. This paper proposes reflecting epistemologically on the different ways of ...

Dr Panissal, Nathalie Maître de conférences en Psychologie, ERT64 GRIDIFE, IUFM Midi-Pyrénées, école interne de l’Université Toulouse II Le Mirail et Octogone, EA 4156, Université Toulouse II Le Mirail, Toulouse, France Dr Brossais, Emmanuelle Maître de conférences en Sciences de l’Éducation, ERT64 GRIDIFE, IUFM Midi-Pyrénées École interne de l’Université Toulouse II Le Mirail, Toulouse, France Dr Jourdan, Isabelle Docteur en Sciences de l’Éducation, formatrice, ERT64 GRIDIFE, IUFM Midi-Pyrénées École interne de l’Université Toulouse II Le Mirail, Toulouse, France

La comprehension des nanotechnologies et des enjeux de societe dont elles sont porteuses suppose une connaissance de leurs proprietes inedites et des promesses et risques qui leur sont associes. L’education citoyenne aux nanotechnologies en college permet-elle d’articuler des enseignements de caracterises par des contenus disciplinaires et culturels et une education a caracterisee par des competences sociales ?Notre methodologie est double : une analyse des textes officiels et une analyse d’un debat entre eleves. Nous identifions de quelle maniere le scenario s’implemente dans le curriculum et nous reperons les traces des savoirs enseignes et l’expression de l’esprit critique des eleves. Notre discussion porte sur les conditions d’existence d’une education citoyenne aux nanotechnologies et sur la mise en systeme d’interactions sciences-societe par les eleves.

ABSTRACT As support to research for economic development, the necessity to educate a large number of students of science and engineering in nanotechnologies has been proclaimed by many countries and institutions,. Unfortunately, in current curricula, nanotechnologies are introduced only at the university level, when students have already chosen scientific careers. Furthermore, due to the poor attractiveness of scientific and research careers in western European countries, like France, this implies that a very small fraction of the population have been educated in the fields of nanotechnology. On the other hand, in many countries of Europe, the development of nanotechnologies and their impact on our way of life may appear as a controversial societal issue. In the perspective of a large debate involving citizens, it is of crucial importance to educate young people about this new emerging field of science in order that they can contribute to a democratic discussion with no misconceptions. In this paper, we describe a French initiative aimed at teaching nanotechnologies to young pupils of age 17/18 years before their orientation in universities or engineering schools. The challenge of this educational experiment is to provide some lectures and experimental workshops without conflicting with the content listed in the official school curricula; in other words to incorporate nanotechnology into existing areas of the curriculum. Moreover, the purpose is to demonstrate the benefit of combining this scientific teaching with a debate on a socially acute question raised by nanotechnologies. In this paper we describe the scientific choices we have made for developing this innovative educational project as well as the method for preparing and organizing the debate at school. The whole procedure we are developing involves researchers, PhD students and educators. Educators at the pre-university level are not prepared themselves for such a multi-disciplinary teaching exercise. Most of them have never been educated about nanotechnologies and they have a self-made vision of the field based on information disseminated through the general media. It is therefore, a pre-requisite that in the first stage of the project, the lectures be given by researchers active and informed in the field of nanotechnologies.