Early Childhood Science and Engineering: Engaging Platforms for Fostering Domain-General Learning Skills

Early childhood science and engineering education offer a prime context to foster approaches-to-learning (ATL) and executive functioning (EF) by eliciting children’s natural curiosity about the world, providing a unique opportunity to engage children in hands-on learning experiences that promote critical thinking, problem solving, collaboration, persistence, and other adaptive domain-general learning skills. Indeed, in any science experiment or engineering problem, children make observations, engage in collaborative conversations with teachers and peers, and think flexibly to come up with predictions or potential solutions to their problem. Inherent to science and engineering is the idea that one learns from initial failures within an iterative trial-and-error process where children practice risk-taking, persistence, tolerance for frustration, and sustaining focus. Unfortunately, science and engineering instruction is typically absent from early childhood classrooms, and particularly so in programs that serve children from low-income families. However, our early science and engineering intervention research shows teachers how to build science and engineering instruction into activities that are already happening in their classrooms, which boosts their confidence and removes some of the stigma around science and engineering. In this paper, we discuss the promise of research that uses early childhood science and engineering experiences as engaging, hands-on, interactive platforms to instill ATL and EF in young children living below the poverty line. We propose that early childhood science and engineering offer a central theme that captures children’s attention and allows for integrated instruction across domain-general (ATL, EF, and social–emotional) and domain-specific (e.g., language, literacy, mathematics, and science) content, allowing for contextualized experiences that make learning more meaningful and captivating for children

G. Bligh, Les bases philosophiques du positivisme juridique de H.L.A. Hart (Varenne, 2017)

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The Inquiry Game: Assessing Inquiry Skills in Low-Income Preschoolers

Inquiry skills in young low-income children may be an important point of intervention for promoting school readiness and later academic achievement. The current study aimed to investigate and measure the inquiry skills of low-income preschoolers. In a newly-designed, game-based assessment (the Inquiry Game), children were instructed to ask questions to determine a target picture among an array of pictures varying by color and object type. Asking constraint-seeking questions that use color and object type to eliminate multiple pictures is a more efficient strategy (and thus evidence of greater inquiry skills), in comparison to asking about a specific picture. One hundred and sixty Head Start preschoolers’ inquiry skills were assessed using the Inquiry Game at three time points. Data on children’s problem solving, math, language, and literacy skills were also collected to examine concurrent and predictive validity of the measure. Results revealed that asking about one picture at a time was the most popular strategy at all time points; however, children asked more efficient questions in the winter and spring when compared to performance in the fall. Analyses revealed a relationship between inquiry skills and vocabulary, verbal reasoning, and matrix reasoning ability. Results, as well as future directions, are presented and discussed.</p

H.L.A. Hart’s Pluralist Penal Philosophy

Cette thèse porte sur la philosophie pénale de Herbert Hart, c’est-à-dire sur ses réflexions au sujet de la définition de la peine, de la justification de la peine, de la responsabilité pénale et de la détermination de la peine en qualité et en quantité. Nous soutenons que Hart ne défend ni une théorie mixte de la peine, ni une forme d’utilitarisme de la règle, ni une forme d’utilitarisme libéral, ni une approche goal / constraint. Son approche est pluraliste. En effet, son pluralisme des valeurs, très proche de celui d’Isaiah Berlin, lui permet de résoudre la tension entre la justification utilitariste de la peine et certains principes de justice concernant la responsabilité pénale (par exemple, ne pas punir ceux qui n’auraient pas pu agir autrement) et la détermination de la peine (par exemple, ne pas infliger des peines disproportionnées). Par ailleurs, son pluralisme des formes de raison morale lui permet d’admettre une pluralité de justifications de la peine qui ne sont pas du même type (la justification utilitariste, celle fondée sur le droit spécial a l’obéissance des désobéissants, celle fondée sur le droit général a un niveau raisonnable de sécurité) et d’expliquer comment la commission d’une infraction peut en elle-même justifier l’infliction d’une sanction. Tout au long de cette thèse, nous analysons les rapports complexes entre Hart et la tradition utilitariste (en particulier Bentham et Mill). Même si Hart a indéniablement une dette envers l’utilitarisme, il ne cesse de critiquer son monisme et la tentative de fonder l’ensemble de nos convictions morales bien pesées sur le principe d’utilité. En outre, nous essayons de montrer que la philosophie du langage ordinaire a eu une influence non négligeable sur sa philosophie pénale, même si cette influence est moins visible que dans sa théorie générale du droit. Enfin, nous accordons une attention particulière au débat Hart/Wootton dont les enjeux ont été sous-estimés : la question du choix entre un système pénal base sur des peines et un système préventif base sur des mesures, selon nous, reste ouverte. Cette thèse ne vise pas uniquement à corriger les mauvaises interprétations de la philosophie pénale de Hart. Elle cherche également à approfondir les idées qu’il a seulement esquissées, à clarifier les principes qu’il a défendus, à mettre en évidence les points faibles de sa pensée et à mettre de l’ordre dans ses réflexions. En ce sens, elle est autant la lecture d’une œuvre qu’un dialogue avec celle-ci.This dissertation focuses on Herbert Hart’s penal philosophy, i.e. his thoughts on the definition of punishment, justification of punishment, criminal responsibility, and sentencing. We argue that Hart defends neither a mixed theory of punishment, nor a form of rule-utilitarianism, nor a form of liberal utilitarianism, nor a goal/constraint approach. His approach is pluralist. Indeed, his value pluralism, very close to that of Isaiah Berlin, allows him to resolve the tension between the utilitarian justification of punishment and certain principles of justice concerning criminal responsibility (e.g. not punishing those who could not have acted otherwise) and sentencing (e.g. not inflicting disproportionate punishments). In addition, his pluralism about forms of moral reason enables him to admit a plurality of justifications of punishment that are not of the same type (the utilitarian justification, that based on the special right to the obedience of disobedient persons, that based on the general right to a reasonable level of security) and to explain how the commission of an offence may in itself justify the imposition of a sanction. Throughout this dissertation, we analyse the complex relationship between Hart and the utilitarian tradition (particularly Bentham and Mill). Although Hart undeniably owes a debt to utilitarianism, he is a constant critic of its monism and the attempt to base all of our considered moral convictions on the principle of utility. Moreover, we try to show that ordinary language philosophy has had a significant influence on his penal philosophy, even if this influence is less visible than in his jurisprudence. Finally, we pay particular attention to the Hart/Wootton debate, the stakes of which have been underestimated: the question of the choice between a penal system based on punishment and a preventive system based on measures, in our view, remains open. This dissertation is not only intended to correct the misinterpretations of Hart’s penal philosophy. It also seeks to deepen the ideas he only sketched out, to clarify the principles he defended, to highlight the weaknesses in his thinking, to put his thoughts in order. In this sense, it as much the reading of a work as a dialogue with it

Learning through Inquiry: Examining the Relationship between Child-Generated Questions, Teacher Practices, and School Readiness in Head Start Classrooms

Research consistently shows that children from low-income environments tend to lag behind their peers in school readiness, language-development, and problem-solving skills. A number of studies have indicated that inquiry, or asking questions, is a domain-general learning tool that can help improve outcomes in all areas of academic readiness. Research conducted in middle-income samples shows that by the time children enter preschool, they often generate questions that seek to explain phenomena or extend understanding, and that those children who ask more questions have better academic outcomes. This work, however, has not been replicated with children from low-income families. Using multilevel modeling, the proposed project is the first to empirically examine child-generated inquiry in a sample of preschoolers from disadvantaged backgrounds. The study also assessed gains in inquiry over the school year, and the moderating role of teacher emotional and instructional support on these gains. Further, the study investigated associations between children’s inquiry and their school readiness outcomes (i.e., mathematics, literacy, and science). Findings revealed that children asked few questions overall, that they made significant gains in inquiry over the school year, and that Emotional Support significantly moderated gains in inquiry. Children who showed a basic level of inquiry in the fall made more vocabulary gains over the course of the school year than those who did not. Implications for research, practical applications, and future directions in the field of child-generated inquiry as well as teacher practices are discussed

Drug Courts and the “responsibility without blame” approach

International audienceThis paper starts from a paradox and aims to solve it. On the one hand, although Drug Courts (DCs) are one of the most interesting penal innovations in recent years, running counter to the dominant retributive approach and the rival approach based on deterrence, they have surprisingly not attracted the attention of philosophers and therefore lack a solid philosophical foundation. On the other hand, although Pickard’s “responsibility without blame” approach looks very convincing on paper, its practical applications remain unclear outside the clinical context. I argue that Pickard’s approach is the theoretical framework that DCs need and that they are a compelling application of it: DCs do ascribe to participants various forms of responsibility (criminal “liability-responsibility”, responsibility of choice, responsibility for progress or failure, responsibility as answerability, tort liability) while striving to keep “affective blame” at bay in order to help them regain their autonomy. However, I argue that some of the limitations of both this approach and DCs become apparent once we consider the “outer limits” of DCs, in other words those who are terminated from DCs and those who refuse to enter DCs in the first place

The Varieties of Attitudes Towards Offenders

International audienceI argue that penal philosophy should focus more on our attitudes towards offenders, since these attitudes can shed new light on theories or principles of punishment (of which they are often expressions) and also play a significant role in changing the face of criminal justice. Building on Strawson’s “Freedom and Resentment,” I define attitudes as certain ways of seeing human beings that logically include or exclude various emotional, behavioral, and linguistic responses, that can be more or less natural, and over which we have some degree of voluntary control. I argue that, understood in this sense, there are broadly speaking six attitudes towards offenders: the retributive, the hostile, the moralistic, the paternalistic, the merciful, and the actuarial. After presenting each of these attitudes, I sum up my analysis by focusing on the Polanski sexual abuse case. I then introduce the concept of second-order attitudes, where egalitarianism is the attitude that consists of taking the same attitude towards all offenders, and particularism is the attitude that consists of adjusting your attitude to each offender. Finally, I briefly explain why a mix of the retributive and the merciful should be our default attitude

Faut-il mériter de souffrir pour être puni ? Parfit et la sanction pénale

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