Sciences and Citizenship

Bij controversiële maatschappelijke vraagstukken denken veel collega’s van onderzoeker Laurence Guérin meteen aan religie, tolerantie, diversiteit in seksuele voorkeuren, enzovoorts. Deze onderwerpen zijn zeker maatschappelijk relevant en controversieel, maar overschaduwen gemakkelijk zakelijker of technischer controversiële onderwerpen die ook maatschappelijk relevant zijn, maar vaak minder in het oog springen en waarover geen consensus is, ook niet onder experts

Group problem solving as citizenship education:Mainstream idea of participation revisited

Policy makers in Europe pursue a specific participatory approach to citizenship education, based upon a particular idea of democracy and citizenship. In this approach, schools are required to foster certain virtues such as solidarity, empathy and an active participation that will enhance social cohesion. The present study argues that such an approach to citizenship education holds three constraints, a practical one, a political one and a fundamental one: it is not feasible for implementation in schools (practical constraint); it doesn’t explicate and justify the theory of citizenship underlying its idea of ‘good citizenship’ (political constraint); it aims at ‘making’ a certain kind of citizen in order to solve society’s problems, instead of developing students’ autonomous thinking (fundamental constraint). This study develops and justifies an alternative participatory approach to citizenship education, based on the democratic principle of group problem solving. An important part of the justification is to show that the alternative approach meets the three constraints, the practical one, the political one and the fundamental one

Friction properties of fluorinated carbons

In boundary lubrication regime, friction reduction and antiwear processes are associated to the presence of additives in the lubricating oils or greases. These processes are due to the formation of protective tribofilms resulting from chemical reactions between the additives and the sliding surfaces, in the physico-chemical conditions of the sliding contact. Conventional antiwear additives mainly consist of transition metal organo phosphate or thiophosphates which present a remarkable efficiency in the case of contacts between ferrous alloys. In the case of non reacting surfaces, these additives become inactive. Recently developped lubrication strategies consist in the use of dispersion in oils of nano additives able to build the protective tribofilm in the sliding contact without reaction with the surfaces. Carbon fluorinated phases, due to their lamellar structure and their high chemical stability even at relatively high temperature (400°C) represent interesting candidates as lubricant nano-additives subjected to present friction reduction, anti wear and anti corrosion actions. This work presents the tribologic behaviour of some carbon fluorinated derivatives such as graphite fluorides, fluorinated carbon nanofibers, fluorinated carbon nanodiscs and fluorinated carbon blacks. The influence, on the tribologic performances, of the structure of the initial carbon phases, of the fluorination rate (0<F/C<1) and the structure of the fluorinated compounds is discussed

Effects of a developmental adventure on the self-esteem of college students

This study examines the effects of outdoor developmental adventure programming (ODA) on college students’ self-esteem. Although some previous studies have shown that outdoor adventure programming has positive effects on self-esteem, others did not find any effect. A quasi-experimental study was conducted over 5 months, which included two pretests and two posttests to address some limitations of previous studies. A total of 84 participants completed the Questionnaire d’estime de soi hiérarchique, a questionnaire assessing self-esteem on four occasions. The experimental group (outdoor adventure; n = 32) was compared with the control groups (travel, n = 17; soccer, n = 35) using repeated measures of covariance analyses. Positive and significant increases were found for the athletic dimension of self-esteem and for global self-esteem for the experimental group (outdoor adventure) only. The increased benefits provided by the combination of adventure and sports in ODA, over sports-only or traveling-only interventions, underline the importance of developing ODA with college students

Questioning participation and solidarity as goals of citizenship education

According to many governments and educationalists, education should aim to develop dispositions conducive to political participation and solidarity, because democratic citizenship presupposes participation and solidarity. But there are radically different views on the nature of good citizenship. We examine the implications of this dissensus for citizenship education. Education, we contend, should involve and develop autonomy and open-mindedness. We argue that this requires a more critical approach than is possible when political participation and solidarity are conceived of as goals of education