by DeGennaro, Donna; Brown, Tiffany

We examine the inseparability of one’s environment with the elements of adaptation and identity. Specifically, we revisit the Project H.O.M.E. learning environment as we suggest that the entities of adaption and environment are not only binding, but also naturally in constant flux as they interact with each other. Contrary to nature, however, the social distance between the instructors and learners is the result of a human construct that often hinders adaptation and identity development. We address the factors that afforded participants overcoming social distance and ultimately cultivating a shift in the learning structure of Project H.O.M.E.

DOI: 10.1007/s11422-008-9146-5
Online Date: 9/24/2008
Print publication date: 3/1/2009
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by Simonneaux, Laurence; Simonneaux, Jean

In this article, we study third-year university students’ reasoning about three controversial socio-scientific issues from the viewpoint of education for sustainable development: local issues (the reintroduction of bears in the Pyrenees in France, wolves in the Mercantour) and a global one (global warming). We used the theoretical frameworks of social representations and of socio-scientific reasoning. Students’ reasoning varies according to the issues, in particular because of their emotional proximity with the issues and their socio-cultural origin. About this kind of issues, it seems pertinent to integrate into the operations of socio-scientific reasoning not only the consideration of values, but also the analysis of the modes of governance and the place given to politics.

DOI: 10.1007/s11422-008-9141-x
Online Date: 9/13/2008
Print publication date: 9/1/2009
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by Simonneaux, Laurence; Simonneaux, Jean

Based on the comments by Lopez-Facal and Jiménez-Aleixandre, we consider that the cultural identities within Europe interfere with the question of the re-introduction of the Slovenian bear, generating a kind of “discrimination.” When the SAQs under debate run against the students’ systems of value, it seems that the closer the connection between the SAQs (socially acute questions) and the territorial and cultural identity, the more deeply the associated systems of values are affected; and the more the evidence is denied, the weaker the socio-scientific reasoning becomes. This result shows the importance of attempting to get the students to clarify the values underlying their socio-scientific reasoning. As Sadler observed, there was no transfer of socio-scientific reasoning on the three questions considered; each SAQ, as they are deeply related to social representations and identity, generated a specific line of reasoning balancing more or less each operation. Among various methods of teaching SAQs—problematizing, genetic, doctrinal and praxeological methods––socio-scientific reasoning may be a complex activity of problematization fostering the development of critical thinking. Confronted with the refusal to analyse the evidence in the case of the bear, and because of the nature of SAQs, we explore the notion of tangible proof. We think it relevant to study, together with the students, the processes of investigation used by the actors to establish
or disestablish tangible proof on SAQs by analysing the intermediary states of the systems of proof, and possibly the “weak signals” which result in calling for the implementation of the precautionary principle.

DOI: 10.1007/s11422-008-9145-6
Online Date: 9/6/2008
Print publication date: 9/1/2009
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