Les contours psychosociaux de l’infanticide en Afrique noire: le cas du Sénégal

Objective: Following the example of Senegal, this study had two main objectives. First: Ring the alarm bell about the large number of infanticides in a country where people usually consider a child as a treasure. Second: Highlight the deep motivations which may induce an African woman to kill her child.Method: The author examined psychiatric experts reports about crimes and varied offenses acquired from Fann University Hospital in Dakar during a 27 year period, from January 1968 to December 1994.Results: For a total number of 164 reports, 33 or 20% concerned infanticides. This underlines the importance of the phenomenon. Mental pathology appeared in two cases (3%) but 97% were supposed to be mentally healthy.Conclusion: These results suggest that social and cultural reasons more than medical ones explain the occurrence of infanticides. It seems that it is under the pressure of social and cultural motivations that women and especially young mothers, depreciate becoming a mother.     

Analyse factorielle des skills du savoir-lire en première année d'étude

Seize tests de lecture, administrés à 217 enfants de première année d'étude, après trois, six et neuf mois d'enseignement, ont été soumis à des analyses factorielles en composantes principales. Après trois mois on trouve trois facteurs: une aptitude générale de lecture, unc aptitude à reconnaître du matériel écrit (précodage) et l'aptitude à comprendre des texts. Après six mois, trpis facteurs sont identifiés: compréhension, précodage et déchiffrage. Après neuf mois on retrouve les mêmes facteurs. L'étude de l'évolution des structures factorielles dans le temps montre que les premières compétences en lecture, relativement générales au début de l'année scolaire, ont tendance à se diffiréncier en skills de déchiffrage et de compréhension, alors que les skills de compréhension apparaissent comme relativement spécifiques au début de l'année scolaire et tendent à se généraliser par la suite. 64% de la variance de la comprehension en fin d'année scolaire est expliquée par les facteurs du premier et du second trimestres. 68% de la variance du déchiffrage, mesuréà la fin de l'année scolaire, est expliquée par les facteurs du premier et du second trimestres.     

An Archetypal Phenomenology of Skholé

In this essay David Kennedy argues that children represent one vanguard of an emergent shift in Western subjectivity, and that adult–child dialogue, especially in the context of schooling, is a key locus for the epistemological change that implies. Following Herbert Marcuse's invocation of a “new sensibility,” Kennedy argues that the evolutionary phenomenon of neoteny — the long formative period of human childhood and the paedomorphic character of humans across the life cycle — makes of the adult–child collective of school a primary site for the reconstruction of belief. After exploring child–adult dialogue more broadly as a form of dialectical interaction between what John Dewey called “impulse” and “habit,” Kennedy identifies three key dimensions of dialogic schooling, all of which are grounded in a fourth: the form of dialogical group discourse called community of philosophical inquiry (CPI), which is based on the problematization and reconstruction of concepts through critical argumentation. As a discourse model, CPI grounds practice in all of the dialogic school's emergent curricular spaces, whether science or mathematics, whether literature, art, or philosophy. Second, CPI opens a functional space for shared decision making and collaborative governance, making of school an exemplary model of direct democracy. Finally, CPI as a site for the critical interrogation of concepts encountered in the curriculum (such as “alive,” “justice,” “system,” and “biosphere”) and as a site for democratic governance leads naturally to expression in activist projects that model an emergent “new reality principle” through concrete solutions to practical problems on local and global levels.     

Self-Regulated Learning in a TELE at the Université de Technologie de Compiègne: an analysis from multiple perspectives

Self-regulation has become a very important topic in the field of learning and instruction. At the same time, the introduction of new technologies in the field of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) has made it possible to create rich Technology-Enhanced Learning Environments (TELEs) with multiple affordances for supporting self-regulated learning (SRL). This study was conducted within the framework of the TELEPEERS project where we wanted to identify TELEs that seemed to have a potential for supporting SRL. For the last ten years, our University has been deeply involved in research, innovation, and exploration of digital technologies for training (initial and continuous). Local, regional, national, European and international projects were conceived and developed, so that a very significant knowledge base exists today. Our study focuses on a course called 'Introduction to Algorithms and Programming' (NF01) which our University is offering and on the perception of different stakeholders (experts and students) of its affordances for supporting SRL.