Notre thèse étudie la position et la fonction qu’occupa le philosophe Erich Rothacker (1888-1965) dans le champ philosophique et scientifique allemand de son temps. Elle retrace l’évolution de sa politique intellectuelle de la République de Weimar à l’après-guerre, évolution qu’il faut lire comme un processus de redéfinition de son historisme conservateur face aux contextes historiques successifs. Tandis que son activité sous la République de Weimar fut guidée par sa volonté d’imposer un paradigme d’historisme polémique et idéologisé, l’avènement du national-socialisme l’a conduit, après une phase d’étroite adhésion, à redéfinir cet historisme, qui devint progressivement (et non sans quelques ambiguïtés) un simple paradigme épistémologique désidéologisé. C’est au terme de cette évolution que Rothacker put influencer dans l’après-guerre la réflexion de certains de ses étudiants devenus par la suite célèbres, tels Jürgen Habermas, Karl-Otto Apel et Hermann Schmitz. Outre qu’elle répond à plusieurs questions jusqu’à présent en suspens dans la littérature secondaire sur Rothacker (relatives à son rapport au nazisme, ou encore au rôle – éminent mais paradoxal – qu’il joua au sein du champ théorique de son temps), notre étude de sa politique intellectuelle met ainsi en évidence deux phénomènes qui dépassent le cadre de son analyse stricto sensu : le mouvement – commun à plusieurs penseurs – de radicalisation puis de déradicalisation du conservatisme intellectuel allemand au cours du 20ème siècle, et l’existence d’une ligne de continuité souterraine de la pensée historiste dans l’Allemagne de l’après-guerre en dépit de l’ostracisme dont cette tradition faisait alors l’objet. / Our dissertation investigates the position in, and function of, the german philosopher Erich Rothacker (1888-1965) within the philosophical and scientific fields of his time. It traces the developments in Rothacker’s intellectual politics from the Weimar Republic into the post-war world – a development that can be interpreted as a process of redefining his conservative historicism within the framework of changing historical contexts. While his work was guided by the aim of promoting a polemic and ideologised paradigm of historicism at the time of the Weimar Republic, Rothacker, faced with the national-socialist regime, subsequently redefined this historicism after a period of enthusiastic endorsement with the National-Socialists. Rothacker’s historicism thus gradually developed (though not without remnants of ambiguity) into a purely epistemological paradigm, stripped of all ideology. As a consequence of this development Rothacker succeeded in the post-war era in influencing the thought of several of his students who were to become well-known intellectual figures, such as Jürgen Habermas, Karl-Otto Apel and Hermann Schmitz. Besides offering answers to some questions concerning Rothacker that remain unanswered in critical discourse to this day – such as his relationship to Nazism, or his role within the theoretical field of his time – our analysis provides a picture of two phenomena transcending Rothacker’s own person: the deradicalization of German intellectual conservatism in the course of the twentieth century, and the persistence of historicist thought in post-war Germany despite the ostracism that this tradition was subjected to in the decades following the war.

This study examines a range of South African speculative novels which situate their narratives in futuristic or ‘alternative’ milieus, exploring how these narratives not only address identity formation in a deeply divided and rapidly changing society, but also the ways in which human beings place themselves in relation to Nature and form notions of ‘ecological’ belonging. It offers close readings of these speculative narratives in order to investigate the ways in which they evince concerns which are rooted in the natural, social and political landscapes which inform them. Specific attention is paid to the texts’ treatment of the intertwined issues of identity, belonging and ecological crisis. This dissertation draws on the fields of Ecocriticism, Postcolonial Studies and Science Fiction Studies, and assumes a culturally specific approach to primary texts while investigating possible cross-cultural commonalities between Afrikaans and English speculative narratives, as well as the cross-fertilisation of global SF/speculative features. It is suggested that South African speculative fiction presents a socio-historically situated, rhizomatic approach to ecology – one that is attuned to the tension between humanistic- and ecological concerns.

Researchers have explored immigrant identity in various contexts, but few studies have examined identity in low-income immigrant women entrepreneurs. To address this research gap, I conducted in-depth interviews with eight low-income Latino immigrants who were starting their own businesses and receiving support through a local microenterprise development program (MDP). The study explored how participants' microenterprise efforts affected their identities and their investments in learning English. The research found that entrepreneurship promoted positive identity construction by providing opportunities for participants to develop personal and cultural pride, strengthened parental roles, and interdependence with the community. These benefits helped participants decrease family stress and increase optimism for the future, regardless of the microenterprises' financial success. Participants reported that their families were healthier and their children were doing better in school, suggesting a broad impact beyond the business owner. This finding indicates that MDPs and other social service programs should have explicit goals related to increasing participants' symbolic resources. In the language-learning realm, this study introduced the construct "relationship with English," extending Norton's (2000) notion of investment in language learning. The relationship construct encompasses the situated nature of immigrants' English use, investment in learning, and feelings about using English. The businesses helped most participants improve their relationship with English by providing motivation and informal learning opportunities. The non-English speaking participants improved their relationship with English by finding ways to use English even without working on their ability to speak. This finding suggests that social service agencies, ESL programs, and employers should broaden their view of immigrants' capabilities to use English and to invest creatively in their own learning. Another significant finding was that participants demonstrated signs of internalized racism, which can make it hard for immigrants to see their own strengths. New research could help MDPs and other social service providers address internalized racism and decrease its negative impact on identity construction. Looking ahead, long-term studies of MDP participants could help optimize program design, extend learnings to other types of programs, and help providers, policymakers, and funders allocate resources for maximum effect.

Stereotype threat (Steele & Aronson, 1995) refers to the risk of confirming a negative stereotype about one’s group in a particular performance domain. The theory assumes that performance in the stereotyped domain is most negatively affected when individuals are more highly identified with the domain in question. As federal law has increased the importance of standardized testing at the elementary level, it can be reasonably hypothesized that the standardized test performance of African American children will be depressed when they are aware of negative societal stereotypes about the academic competence of African Americans. This sequential mixed-methods study investigated whether the standardized testing experiences of African American children in an urban elementary school are related to their level of stereotype awareness. The quantitative phase utilized data from 198 African American children at an urban elementary school. Both ex-post facto and experimental designs were employed. Experimental conditions were diagnostic and non-diagnostic testing experiences. The qualitative phase utilized data from a series of six focus group interviews conducted with a purposefully selected group of 4 African American children. The interview data were supplemented with data from 30 hours of classroom observations. Quantitative findings indicated that the stereotype threat condition evoked by diagnostic testing depresses the reading test performance of stereotype-aware African American children (F[1, 194] = 2.21, p < .01). This was particularly true of students who are most highly domain-identified with reading (F[1, 91] = 19.18, p < .01). Moreover, findings indicated that only stereotype-aware African American children who were highly domain-identified were more likely to experience anxiety in the diagnostic condition (F[1, 91] = 5.97, p < .025). Qualitative findings revealed 4 themes regarding how African American children perceive and experience the factors related to stereotype threat: (1) a narrow perception of education as strictly test preparation, (2) feelings of stress and anxiety related to the state test, (3) concern with what “others” think (racial salience), and (4) stereotypes. A new conceptual model for stereotype threat is presented, and future directions including implications for practice and policy are discussed.

La valeur philosophique des œuvres de Bachelard est généralement circonscrite dans les simples limites d’une double spécialisation, vers la science et vers la poésie. Or, bien que la double spécification de l’œuvre soit manifeste, elle conduit le plus souvent à une vulgate qui empêche d’en saisir la richesse et la complexité, au point qu’on parlerait de la philosophie de Bachelard au singulier par simple commodité. Est-Il sérieux de soutenir que Bachelard développe une philosophie au sens fort du terme, alors que les interprétations communes de son œuvre la réduisent à une réflexion sur la rationalité et l’imaginaire ? Quelles raisons peut-On avoir de dire qu’il existe une philosophie intégrale chez Bachelard, qui se déploie à partir de ses enquêtes régionales, mais qui excède le cadre disciplinaire de l’épistémologie et de la poétique pour s’essayer à des « aventures d’idées » et à des spéculations plus audacieuses ? Nous pensons qu’il faut réévaluer la pensée de Bachelard, et lui reconnaître une place de choix dans le tableau de la philosophie française du XXe siècle. Nous engageons une telle réévaluation en proposant la reconstruction de la philosophie pluraliste de Bachelard, sur la base d’une interprétation d’ensemble de son œuvre et d’une lecture intégrale du corpus. Nous défendons ainsi la thèse selon laquelle la philosophie de Bachelard, à la fois théorique et pratique, est un pluralisme cohérent, dont les implications sont psychologiques, ontologiques et axiologiques, en sorte que le pluralisme bachelardien se déploie autour non seulement d’une conception de l’esprit (Partie I), de l’être-Au-Monde et des modes d’existence (Partie II), mais aussi d’un perfectionnisme de la vie bonne, dans l’horizon d’une anthropologie complète (Partie III). / The philosophical significance of the works of Bachelard is generally contained within a simple, two-Fold speciality, science and poetry. Although the double specificity of the work is evident, it often leads to a vulgate which obscures the richness and complexity of the works to such an extent that it is just simpler to speak of the philosophy of Bachelard in the singular. Is it relevant to uphold the theory that Bachelard develops a philosophy in the true sense of the word, whereas the normal interpretation of his works reduces them to a reflection on rationality and imaginary? How can one defend the idea that an integral philosophy exists in the works of Bachelard, which is developed from his regional research, but which exceeds the disciplinary framework of epistemology and the poetic to experiment "adventurous ideas" and more audacious suppositions? We believe we need to re-Evaluate the theories of Bachelard and to grant him a place of honour in twentieth century French philosophy. We undertake this re-Evaluation by proposing the reconstruction of the pluralist philosophy of Bachelard, on the basis of an overall interpretation of his work and a reading of the whole corpus. We therefore defend the thesis whereby the philosophy of Bachelard, both theoretical and practical, is a coherent pluralism, with psychological, ontological and axiological implications, so that the pluralism of Bachelard unfolds around not only a conception of the mind (Part I), of the "being-In-The-World" and concepts of existence (Part II), but also perfectionism in leading the good life, within the scope of a complete anthropology (Part III).

The purpose of this study was to identify and understand how African American alumni of urban high schools perceived that they could best contribute to their former schools. Despite numerous improvement efforts for several decades, the academic performance of urban high school students has failed to keep pace with that of their suburban counterparts. This research was framed around the premise that the rich legacies and diverse cultural experiences of African American alumni of urban high schools could mitigate the outside factors that negatively impact student performance at urban schools. These funds of knowledge, as Moll and Amanti (2005) described the cultural and cognitive resources that are derived from the lived experiences of marginalized people, are unique to African American alumni of urban high schools. The 45 participants of this study were African American alumni of two prominent urban high schools, Jean Ribault High School and William Raines High School, located in Jacksonville, Florida. Using Q methodology, participants sorted 38 statements reflecting how they perceived that African American alumni could best contribute to their former schools. The researcher then employed statistical software to correlate the 45 Q sorts, factor analyzed those correlations, and extracted five collectively held factors. However, since the fifth factor was bipolar, the researcher interpreted the five-factor solution as having six perspectives, one for each of the first four factors and two opposite perspectives for factor five. The six perspectives were named College Preparation, Relationship Building, Spirituality, Self-efficacy, Visibility (students), and Visibility (parents). Through the lens of social capital, these resulting perspectives were then systematically interpreted to provide a rich description of how African American alumni of urban high schools perceived that they could best contribute to their former schools.

Published research suggests that literature should transmit ethnic and societal values as well as reassure one's own confidence and self-respect. This study provides a model for examining Asian-American children's and adolescent literature critically from the perspective of identity issues. It examines fifteen award-winning Asian-American children's and adolescent titles written by writers of that culture and published in the United States from 1999 to 2007, with a focus on Chinese (Taiwanese) American, Korean American, and Japanese American books. As published studies indicate, self, social, and ethnic identities are significantly intertwined. Hence, a content analysis was conducted based on these three major groups of categories. The findings of the study demonstrate that even though the selected books cover all three aspects of the identity issues to a certain degree, a considerably greater number of depictions of ethnic identities are made over those of internal identities and social identities. Moreover, less than half of the main characters assume an active role in improving the difficult situation. Two major voids regarding the presentation of social identities are successful social integration and positive social interactions. Recommendations for teaching, writing, illustrating, publishing, and future research are suggested, including publishing more Asian-American books which present an optimistic outlook on life, active conflict-resolving behaviors, and a balance of gender among individuals with whom the main character interacts.

School vouchers.

Ce mémoire présente les effets d’une séquence d’enseignement-apprentissage de l’oral inspirée des approches de la philosophie pour enfants et des approches plurilingues sur la compétence discursive (la justification et la reformulation) d’élèves allophones scolarisés en classe d’accueil du 3e cycle du primaire, et ce, à partir d’une étude de cas de type exploratoire auprès de six élèves cas. Pendant les discussions philosophiques, qui constituent le genre oral mis en place pour pratiquer la justification et la reformulation, les données recueillies au moyen d’enregistrements vidéos ont permis d’observer que l’enseignement des deux conduites discursives permet aux élèves de prendre davantage la parole. La mise en place des ateliers formatifs a aidé les élèves à produire des justifications plus élaborées et à utiliser des reformulations pour pallier les bris de communication lors des interactions. Sans oublier, grâce à l’apprentissage des deux conduites discursives, les interactions sont davantage liées entre elles et l’étayage se fait davantage entre les élèves. / This research presents the effects of an oral teaching-learning sequence inspired by approaches to children's philosophy and plurilingual approaches to discourse competence (the justification and reformulation) of second language learners in school. Thoses students are 3rd cycle of primary school. This is an exploratory type case study with six students cases. During the philosophical discussions, which is the oral genre set up to practice justification and reformulation, the data collected through video recordings have found that the teaching of the two discursive competence allows students to talk more in thoses discussions. The teaching-learning sequence helped the students to produce more elaborate justifications and to use reformulations to overcome communication breakdowns during the interactions. Finally, the learning of the two discursive behaviors permits to know that the interactions are more related to each other and the scaffolding is done more between the students.

[pt] Nesta tese, à luz do prisma filosófico, empreendemos um olhar que abrangeu o pensamento médico filosófico desde a Antiguidade até a Revolução Terapêutica. Nosso olhar contemplou: na Antiguidade, uma época em que houve uma estreita colaboração entre Filosofia e Medicina, baseada na pesquisa mútua dos aspectos etiológicos, quer da enfermidade da alma, quer daquela do corpo; foi a época do nascimento e apogeu da Analogia Médica; na Idade Média, identificou um estado de hibernação da Analogia Médica no século XII, seguido de um leve despertar no século XIII, a volta a um estado de adormecimento e o despertar definitivo, no século XV; na Renascença, captou a retomada dos textos médicos e a queda do saber galênico tradicional; na Modernidade, finalmente, diagnosticou o início do distanciamento entre os saberes filosófico e médico, com o respectivo definhamento da Analogia Médica. Desde então, nosso olhar aprofundou se nas idas e vindas do saber médico filosófico, especulando as causas e consequências desse distanciamento, e chegou à conclusão de que o legado deixado pelo pensamento médico moderno orientou e orienta a Medicina contemporânea para um sentido de desumanização em relação à pessoa do paciente. Por fim, depois de tanto ver, nossa razão assentiu para a necessidade de uma reforma na Medicina, principalmente em sua paidéia, baseada numa próxima colaboração com a Filosofia a fim de receber subsídios quando à questão central de qualquer procedimento terapêutico: qual é o ser do ser humano? / [en] In this Thesis, using the light of the philosophical prism, we undertake an examination embracing medical philosophical thought beginning in antiquity, continuing up until the Therapeutic Revolution. Our view contemplates: in antiquity, a time during which there was a strict collaboration between Philosophy and Medicine, based upon mutual research of the etiological aspects of disease not only of the soul but also of the body; it was the time of the birth and apogee of the Medical Analogy; during the Middle Ages it was possible to identify that the Medical Analogy had entered a state of hibernation in the twelfth century, followed by a slight awakening in the thirteenth century, returning to a state of sleep, with the final awakening occurring in the fifteenth century; during the Renaissance it captured a return to the medical texts and the fall of traditional Galenic knowledge; finally during the Modern era we have diagnosed the initial phases of a distancing between philosophical and medical knowledge, with a respective weakening of Medical Analogy. Since the Modern era our examination has focused upon the vacillations of medical philosophical knowledge, speculating upon the causes and consequences of this distancing, and our examination found that the legacy left by modern medical thought has oriented and continues to orient Modern Medicine towards a dehumanization in relation to the person of the patient. Finally, we concluded that medical reform is needed, principally, in its Paideia, based upon a closer collaboration with philosophy, with the intent to provide subsidies to help answer the central question of any therapeutic procedure, which is: what is the nature of the being of the human being?