Mieux connaître ses élèves à la formation générale des adultes pour mieux les accompagner

Résumé : La réussite et la persévérance des étudiants inscrits en formation générale adulte est un enjeu social et éducatif au Québec. La diversité et la fragilité de cette clientèle en est un second. Pour l’enseignant dans ce contexte, il est essentiel que des stratégies pédagogiques renforçant l’estime de soi et permettant la différenciation étayent son intervention. Cependant, celui-ci se sent parfois démuni. Des informations sur le parcours scolaire antérieur des étudiants qui lui sont confiés et sur les défis à relever pour chacun lui permettraient d’être plus proactif quant aux risques de décrochage. Un portrait-questionnaire a été élaboré pour répondre au besoin de ces enseignants qui veulent mieux connaître leurs élèves pour mieux les accompagner. Il peut devenir un point d’ancrage pour une relation éducative éclairée et collaborative. Des entrevues interrogeant des enseignants sur leurs perceptions avant l’élaboration de l’outil puis après sa mise à l’essai nous informent sur la pertinence et le gain possible de cette démarche.Abstract : The success and perseverance of students enrolled in adult general education is a social and educational issue in Quebec. The diversity and fragility of these students is a pedagogical challenge. For the teacher in this context, it is essential that educational strategies enhancing self-esteem and allowing differentiation support the practice. Yet, teachers sometimes feel helpless. Getting some Information on ones’ own students’ former school experience and personal struggles could allow a better responsiveness to the risks of dropping out. A “portrait-questionnaire” has been developed to meet the need of those teachers who want to know their students better in order to give better support. It can become a starting point for an informed and collaborative educational relationship. Interviews questioning teachers about their perceptions before the development of the tool and then after testing it inform us about the relevance and the possible gains from this approach.Resumen : El éxito y la perseverancia de los estudiantes matriculados en la educación general para adultos es un problema social y educativo en Quebec. La diversidad y la fragilidad de estos clientes también lo es. Para el profesor, en este contexto, es esencial que las estrategias educativas que mejoran la autoestima, permitiendo la diferenciación apoyen su intervención. Sin embargo, este se siente a veces impotente. La información sobre la trayectoria escolar de los alumnos que se le confían y los desafíos para cada uno le permitirían ser más sensible en cuanto a los riesgos de volver a abandonar los estudios. Un retrato-cuestionario fue desarrollado para satisfacer las necesidades de aquellos profesores que quieran conocer mejor a sus estudiantes para darles un mejor apoyo. Puede convertirse en una base para una relación educativa clara y colaborativa. Las entrevistas hechas a los maestros acerca de sus percepciones antes del desarrollo de la herramienta y después de la prueba nos informan acerca de la pertinencia y la posible ganancia de esta medida

Désensibilisation morale et légitimation de l'intimidation entre pairs au secondaire

Cette thèse doctorale, qui prend la forme de quatre articles, est une étude corrélationnelle mettant en relation le raisonnement moral et la légitimation des dynamiques d’intimidation par les pairs chez des adolescents de 3ème secondaire. L’objectif principal poursuivi était d’examiner la contribution de la désensibilisation morale aux conduites adoptées par les adolescents lors d’incidents d’intimidation à l’école. L’objectif secondaire était d’examiner l’importance accordée respectivement à des standards de conduite issus des domaines moral, conventionnel et personnel chez les adolescents impliqués dans des incidents d’intimidation. Le premier article expose la problématique de la légitimation des dynamiques d’intimidation par les jeunes en faisant état des croyances normatives et des caractéristiques des environnements scolaires qui y sont associées. L’article discute de l’écart qui s’observe entre l’opposition affirmée de la majorité des adolescents face aux conduites d’intimidation et leur récurrence dans les milieux scolaires et vient compléter une première section décrivant les conséquences de l’intimidation pour les communautés scolaires. Le deuxième article s’inscrit dans le cadre théorique de cette thèse et fait état des connaissances sur le raisonnement moral des élèves impliqués dans des dynamiques d’intimidation. Il présente une explication des conduites d’intimidation dans la perspective de la théorie des domaines de la connaissance sociale et dans celle de la théorie de l’agentivité morale. Ces approches ont été retenues pour opérationnaliser le concept de désensibilisation morale afin de rencontrer les objectifs de recherche poursuivis. Le troisième article rapporte la démarche utilisée pour vérifier l’hypothèse d’une relation positive entre les conduites d’intimidation et l’acceptabilité d’incidents d’intimidation hypothétiques, de même que l’hypothèse d’une relation positive entre les conduites d’intimidation et le désengagement moral chez les adolescents impliqués. Le quatrième article rapporte la démarche utilisée pour examiner les justifications sociomorales émises par différents profils d’adolescents impliqués dans des incidents d’intimidation de façon à associer leur conduite avec les domaines de connaissances normatives auxquels se rattachent leurs justifications. Les résultats obtenus sont ensuite discutés au chapitre suivant afin de mettre en évidence la contribution de chacune des approches morales retenues à l’explication des conduites en contexte d’intimidation et les caractéristiques du raisonnement moral associées aux rôles adoptés et des pistes d’intervention sont offertes. Finalement, cette thèse doctorale conclue que seul le niveau moyen de désengagement moral, un indice global de l’adhésion à des croyances normatives antisociales, contribue statistiquement à l’explication des conduites adoptées lors d’incident d’intimidation au-delà du sexe des participants. Quant au raisonnement sociomoral, il informe davantage sur la façon dont les circonstances d’incidents d’intimidation sont reliées à la désensibilisation morale des jeunes impliqués. Les adolescents qui prennent activement la défense de pairs intimidés étaient caractérisés par un raisonnement moral plus uniforme, tandis que le raisonnement des élèves qui intimident et de ceux qui demeurent passifs était caractérisé par la subordination de principes moraux, respectivement en faveur d’impératifs à caractère conventionnel et d’impératifs à caractère personnel.This doctoral thesis, presented as four scientific articles, is a correlational study about moral reasoning and the legitimization of school bullying in third-year high school students. The primary objective was to investigate the contribution of moral disinhibition to the bullying incident roles adopted by teenagers. The secondary objective was to investigate the relative importance given to moral, conventional, and personal standards of conduct in students involved in bullying incidents. The first article acknowledges the problem that is the legitimization of bullying conducts by school communities and exposes related normative beliefs and school environment characteristics. It mainly discusses the gap between the vocal opposition to bullying conducts shown by most students and the occurrence of bullying incidents in schools. This completes a section exposing the consequences associated with bullying. The second article reviews recent literature about moral reasoning and its link to bulling incident roles. It also gives an explanation of bullying conducts from the viewpoints of the social domains theory and of the sociocognitive theory of moral agentivity. These theoretical paradigms were used in operationalizing the concept of moral disinhibition in order to meet study goals. The third article reports on the methodology used in order to verify the hypothesis of a positive relation between bullying conducts and acceptability of hypothetical bullying incidents, as well as the hypothesis of a positive relation between bullying conducts and moral disengagement in involved adolescents. The forth article reports on the methodology used in the investigation of sociomoral justifications from adolescents adopting different bullying incident roles in order to ascertain the relation between their conduct and the social domains from which stem their justifications. Results are discussed as to show the contribution of each approach to the explanation of bullying incident roles and the moral reasoning characteristics related to each role. Intervention guidelines are proposed as well. This doctoral thesis concludes that only moral disengagement mean scores, which work as a global indication of antisocial normative beliefs, explain bullying incident roles beyond participants’ gender. Sociomoral reasoning is better suited to understanding how bullying incidents’ characteristics promote moral disinhibition. Actively defending bullied peers wad linked to more uniform moral reasoning. On the other hand, bullying and pro-bullying conducts were linked to moral subordination in favor of conventional standards of conduct, and passive bystanding was linked to moral subordination in favor of personal standards of conducts

Gene family structure, expression and functional analysis of HD-Zip III genes in angiosperm and gymnosperm forest trees

BACKGROUND: Class III Homeodomain Leucine Zipper (HD-Zip III) proteins have been implicated in the regulation of cambium identity, as well as primary and secondary vascular differentiation and patterning in herbaceous plants. They have been proposed to regulate wood formation but relatively little evidence is available to validate such a role. We characterised and compared HD-Zip III gene family in an angiosperm tree, Populus spp. (poplar), and the gymnosperm Picea glauca (white spruce), representing two highly evolutionarily divergent groups. RESULTS: Full-length cDNA sequences were isolated from poplar and white spruce. Phylogenetic reconstruction indicated that some of the gymnosperm sequences were derived from lineages that diverged earlier than angiosperm sequences, and seem to have been lost in angiosperm lineages. Transcript accumulation profiles were assessed by RT-qPCR on tissue panels from both species and in poplar trees in response to an inhibitor of polar auxin transport. The overall transcript profiles HD-Zip III complexes in white spruce and poplar exhibited substantial differences, reflecting their evolutionary history. Furthermore, two poplar sequences homologous to HD-Zip III genes involved in xylem development in Arabidopsis and Zinnia were over-expressed in poplar plants. PtaHB1 over-expression produced noticeable effects on petiole and primary shoot fibre development, suggesting that PtaHB1 is involved in primary xylem development. We also obtained evidence indicating that expression of PtaHB1 affected the transcriptome by altering the accumulation of 48 distinct transcripts, many of which are predicted to be involved in growth and cell wall synthesis. Most of them were down-regulated, as was the case for several of the poplar HD-Zip III sequences. No visible physiological effect of over-expression was observed on PtaHB7 transgenic trees, suggesting that PtaHB1 and PtaHB7 likely have distinct roles in tree development, which is in agreement with the functions that have been assigned to close homologs in herbaceous plants. CONCLUSIONS: This study provides an overview of HD-zip III genes related to woody plant development and identifies sequences putatively involved in secondary vascular growth in angiosperms and in gymnosperms. These gene sequences are candidate regulators of wood formation and could be a source of molecular markers for tree breeding related to wood properties

Feasibility of a flash flood forecasting service

Water Qualit

L’incidence du volet scolaire du projet Ruelle de l’Avenir sur la motivation et la performance d’élèves de milieux défavorisés

L’évolution de la motivation et de la performance d’élèves du primaire ayant profité du volet scolaire du projet Ruelle de l’Avenir (N = 139) a été comparée à celle d’un groupe témoin (N = 164) issu du même milieu défavorisé. Les analyses de variance à mesures répétées (MANOVA) et les analyses complémentaires (ANOVA) indiquent une augmentation significative de la perception de l’utilité de l’école, du français et des mathématiques, de même qu’une amélioration de la performance en écriture et en mathématiques pour le groupe expérimental. L’importance du partenariat et du choix des situations d’apprentissage en milieux défavorisés est discutée

Plant cell wall patterning and expansion mediated by protein-peptide-polysaccharide interaction

Assembly of cell wall polysaccharides into specific patterns is required for plant growth. A complex of RAPID ALKALINIZATION FACTOR 4 (RALF4) and its cell wall-anchored LEUCINE-RICH REPEAT EXTENSIN 8 (LRX8)-interacting protein is crucial for cell wall integrity during pollen tube growth, but its molecular connection with the cell wall is unknown. Here, we show that LRX8-RALF4 complexes adopt a heterotetrametric configuration in vivo, displaying a dendritic distribution. The LRX8-RALF4 complex specifically interacts with demethylesterified pectins in a charge-dependent manner through RALF4's polycationic surface. The LRX8-RALF4-pectin interaction exerts a condensing effect, patterning the cell wall's polymers into a reticulated network essential for wall integrity and expansion. Our work uncovers a dual structural and signaling role for RALF4 in pollen tube growth and in the assembly of complex extracellular polymers

Involvement of Pinus taeda MYB1 and MYB8 in phenylpropanoid metabolism and secondary cell wall biogenesis: a comparative in planta analysis

The involvement of two R2R3-MYB genes from Pinus taeda L., PtMYB1 and PtMYB8, in phenylpropanoid metabolism and secondary cell wall biogenesis was investigated in planta. These pine MYBs were constitutively overexpressed (OE) in Picea glauca (Moench) Voss, used as a heterologous conifer expression system. Morphological, histological, chemical (lignin and soluble phenols), and transcriptional analyses, i.e. microarray and reverse transcription quantitative PCR (RT-qPCR) were used for extensive phenotyping of MYB-overexpressing spruce plantlets. Upon germination of somatic embryos, root growth was reduced in both transgenics. Enhanced lignin deposition was also a common feature but ectopic secondary cell wall deposition was more strongly associated with PtMYB8-OE. Microarray and RT-qPCR data showed that overexpression of each MYB led to an overlapping up-regulation of many genes encoding phenylpropanoid enzymes involved in lignin monomer synthesis, while misregulation of several cell wall-related genes and other MYB transcription factors was specifically associated with PtMYB8-OE. Together, the results suggest that MYB1 and MYB8 may be part of a conserved transcriptional network involved in secondary cell wall deposition in conifers

Green Edge ice camp campaigns : understanding the processes controlling the under-ice Arctic phytoplankton spring bloom

The Green Edge initiative was developed to investigate the processes controlling the primary productivity and fate of organic matter produced during the Arctic phytoplankton spring bloom (PSB) and to determine its role in the ecosystem. Two field campaigns were conducted in 2015 and 2016 at an ice camp located on landfast sea ice southeast of Qikiqtarjuaq Island in Baffin Bay (67.4797∘ N, 63.7895∘ W). During both expeditions, a large suite of physical, chemical and biological variables was measured beneath a consolidated sea-ice cover from the surface to the bottom (at 360 m depth) to better understand the factors driving the PSB. Key variables, such as conservative temperature, absolute salinity, radiance, irradiance, nutrient concentrations, chlorophyll a concentration, bacteria, phytoplankton and zooplankton abundance and taxonomy, and carbon stocks and fluxes were routinely measured at the ice camp. Meteorological and snow-relevant variables were also monitored. Here, we present the results of a joint effort to tidy and standardize the collected datasets, which will facilitate their reuse in other Arctic studies