The purpose of this study is to understand how engineering students perceive the patterns of culture at the disciplinary level using Hofstede's constructs (power distance, individualism, uncertainty avoidance, and masculinity). The methodology design for this study is mixed methods. More specifically, the design of this study is an explanatory sequential design that begins with the collection and analysis of quantitative data from a version of Hofstede's survey developed by Sharma (2010), followed by subsequent collection and analysis of qualitative data, with the qualitative analysis being informed by preliminary results from the initial quantitative phase. Results from the quantitative study led to a review of the literature regarding Hofstede's main critiques and how other authors have successfully implemented his model in different contexts, and qualitative data collection with semi-structured interviews with undergraduate students. There are three aims of this study, which are addressed and presented in three separate manuscripts. The first aim (Manuscript 1) was identifying if Hofstede's theory of dimensions of national culture can map to academic disciplines. Results from surveying 3388 undergraduate students provided scores on Hofstede's dimensions for each major. Responses matched the national culture of the students rather than the disciplinary culture; therefore, Hofstede's theory didn't map to explain cultural differences in academic majors. The second aim (Manuscript 2) of this study was to review the extensive available literature regarding the critiques of Hofstede's model and its implementation in different settings. Results provided with conceptual, and methodological critiques and misuse of his theory that allowed us to understand the value of his model to understand cultural differences at the national level, as well as the value of the dimensions to inform our qualitative research design. The third aim (Manuscript 3) of this study was to explore students' perceptions of disciplinary engineering culture and how it compared to other disciplines using a qualitative interview protocol that provided rich findings that complement the quantitative results. Results from interviewing 24 students in industrial and systems engineering, electrical and computer engineering, marketing, and industrial design provided with valuable information on how students perceive their disciplinary culture in terms of what it is valued, how they learn, how it is taught, why they learn, how it is going to be used in the workplace, and the reason for select the major. Implications for research and practice in the engineering education field are provided to inform how to make decisions on engineering curriculum, and engineering classrooms and try to find ways to improve some of the issues that engineering education has been facing for the last decades. / Ph. D.

Research data is essential to scholarship. The value of research data and its management has been increasingly recognized by policy makers and higher education institutions. A deep understanding of disciplinary practices is vital to develop culturally-sensitive policy, tools and services for successful data management. Previous research has shown that data practices vary across sub-fields and disciplines. However, much less is known about how disciplinary cultures shape data practices. There is a need to theorise research data practices based on empirical evidence in order to inform policy, tools and services. The aim of the thesis is to examine the interrelation between data practices and disciplinary cultures within geography. Geography is well-established and multidisciplinary, consisting of elements from the sciences, social sciences and humanities. By examining a single discipline this thesis develops a theoretical understanding of research data practices at a finer level of granularity than would be achieved by looking at broad disciplinary groupings such as the physical and social sciences. Data collection and analysis consisted of two phases. Phase one was exploratory, including an analysis of geography department websites and researcher web profiles and a bibliometric study of collaboration patterns based on co-authorship. Phase one aimed to understand the disciplinary characteristics of geography in preparation for Phase two. The second phase consisted of a series of 23 semi-structured interviews with researchers in geography, which aimed to understand researchers data practices and their attitudes toward data sharing within the context of the sub-discipline(s) they inhabited. The findings of the thesis show that there are contrasting intellectual, social and data differences between physical and human geography. For example, intellectually, these two branches of geography differ in terms of their research objects and methods; socially, they differ in terms of the scale of their collaborative activities and the motivations to collaborate; furthermore, the nature of data, how data is collected and data sharing practices are also different between physical and human geography. The thesis concludes that differences in the notion of data and data sharing practices are grounded in disciplinary characteristics. The thesis develops a new three-dimensional framework to better understand the notion of data from a disciplinary perspective. The three dimensions are (1) physical form, (2) intellectual content and (3) social construction. Furthermore, Becher and Trowler s (2001) disciplinary taxonomy i.e. hard-soft/pure-applied, and the concepts urban-rural ways of life and convergent-divergent communities, is shown to be useful to explain the diverse data sharing practices of geographers. The thesis demonstrates the usefulness of applying disciplinary theories to the sphere of research data management.

Dans le secteur médical, la nanovectorisation ciblée (NVC) est susceptible de lever de nombreux verrous technologiques en matière de traitements médicaux. L’absence d’une démarche axée sur les impacts possibles, l’acceptation et l’acceptabilité de la NVC pourrait toutefois conduire à un manque d’adéquation entre les applications développées et les besoins et valeurs des utilisateurs, freinant ultimement leur déploiement. Sur la base d’un modèle interdisciplinaire d’analyse d’impact et d’acceptabilité, les variables de perception des impacts, d’acceptation d’acceptabilité ont été opérationnalisées et étudiées au regard de la nature du nanovecteur, du contexte d’usage clinique et de la culture disciplinaire et sociale des répondants. L’exploration des impacts perçus, mobilisés et pondérés sur un ensemble d’enjeux éthiques, économiques, environnementaux, légaux et sociaux (E3LS) a permis d’établir un premier portrait de l’acceptabilité de cette application. Une approche descriptive-exploratoire fondée sur un devis mixte avec triangulation séquentielle des données a été employée. Les données ont été collectées en deux phases, d’abord par le biais d’un questionnaire en ligne (n=214), puis par des entrevues individuelles semi-dirigées (n=22). Une recension des scientifiques actifs du secteur des technologies émergentes oeuvrant en sciences naturelles et ingénierie ainsi qu’en sciences humaines et sociales a permis de former l’échantillon final composé de chercheurs Français et Québécois. L’opérationnalisation du cadre de référence a permis de montrer l’importance de distinguer le dispositif et les usages lors de la formulation du jugement d’acceptabilité, relevant parallèlement une influence du contexte d’usage sur l’acceptabilité des applications de NVC. Des variations disciplinaires et sociales quant aux jugements d’acceptabilité ont aussi été soulevées, soulignant des sensibilités culturelles relativement aux éléments mobilisés dans le jugement d’acceptabilité. Ces distinctions relatives à la manière d’appréhender la NVC invitent à dépasser les approches traditionnelles d’acceptation technologiques et à converger vers une approche d’acceptabilité axée sur les impacts perçus et valorisés relativement à un ensemble d’enjeux E3LS. Les résultats des deux phases de l’étude ont aussi montré que l’opérationnalisation du cadre théorique de référence était adéquate pour arriver à cette fin. Ultimement, afin de prendre en compte et de comprendre l’étendue possible des impacts perçus et valorisés dans le jugement d’acceptabilité de l’ensemble des acteurs concernés par les nouvelles applications nanomédicales, l’élaboration de ces applications bénéficierait à employer une telle approche et à l’intégrer aux processus de développement technologique. / In many medical fields, nanocarrier-based targeted drug-delivery (TDD) is likely to remove many technical obstacles regarding treatment. The lack of an approach based on variables such as potential impacts, acceptance, and acceptability could however lead to a mismatch between TDD applications being developed and users’ needs and values; this mismatch could ultimately hold back their deployment. Based on an interdisciplinary approach for the analysis of impact and acceptability of emerging technologies, three main concepts of a new theoretical framework—perceived impacts, acceptance, and acceptability—have been operationalized. This operationalisation has been studied in the light of several variables, namely the nature of the nanocarrier, the clinical context of use, and the disciplinary and social culture of the respondents. An exploration of the impacts perceived, mobilized and weighted, based on a set of ethical, economic, environmental, legal and social (E3LS) issues allowed to establish a first portrait of the acceptability of this application. A descriptive-exploratory approach based on a mixed-methods design with sequential data triangulation was used. The data were collected in two phases, first through an online questionnaire (n = 214), and then through semi-structured individual interviews (n = 22). The final sample was composed of French and French-Canadian researchers involved in themes related to emerging technologies, all from natural sciences and engineering or from humanities and social sciences. The operationalisation of the theoretical framework highlighted the importance of distinguishing the device and the uses when formulating the acceptability judgment, revealing also the influence of the context of use on the acceptability of TDD applications. Disciplinary and social variations related to acceptability judgments were also raised, highlighting possible cultural sensitivities regarding elements mobilized in those acceptability judgments. These distinctions on how are apprehended TDD applications invite to go beyond traditional approaches of technology acceptance and to converge toward approaches of acceptability; those approaches also need to integrate how impacts on E3LS issues are perceived and weighted. The results of both phases of the study also showed that the operationalization of the theoretical framework was adequate to achieve that end. Ultimately, in order to figure and to understand the broad spectrum of possible impacts that may be perceived and valued in the acceptability judgment of stakeholders affected by the development of new nanomedical applications as TDD, the development process of those applications could benefit from integrating this approach.

Résumé : Dans le secteur médical, la nanovectorisation ciblée (NVC) est susceptible de lever de nombreux verrous technologiques en matière de traitements médicaux. L’absence d’une démarche axée sur les impacts possibles, l’acceptation et l’acceptabilité de la NVC pourrait toutefois conduire à un manque d’adéquation entre les applications développées et les besoins et valeurs des utilisateurs, freinant ultimement leur déploiement. Sur la base d’un modèle interdisciplinaire d’analyse d’impact et d’acceptabilité, les variables de perception des impacts, d’acceptation d’acceptabilité ont été opérationnalisées et étudiées au regard de la nature du nanovecteur, du contexte d’usage clinique et de la culture disciplinaire et sociale des répondants. L’exploration des impacts perçus, mobilisés et pondérés sur un ensemble d’enjeux éthiques, économiques, environnementaux, légaux et sociaux (E[indice supérieur 3]LS) a permis d’établir un premier portrait de l’acceptabilité de cette application. Une approche descriptive-exploratoire fondée sur un devis mixte avec triangulation séquentielle des données a été employée. Les données ont été collectées en deux phases, d’abord par le biais d’un questionnaire en ligne (n=214), puis par des entrevues individuelles semi-dirigées (n=22). Une recension des scientifiques actifs du secteur des technologies émergentes œuvrant en sciences naturelles et ingénierie ainsi qu’en sciences humaines et sociales a permis de former l’échantillon final composé de chercheurs Français et Québécois. L’opérationnalisation du cadre de référence a permis de montrer l’importance de distinguer le dispositif et les usages lors de la formulation du jugement d’acceptabilité, relevant parallèlement une influence du contexte d’usage sur l’acceptabilité des applications de NVC. Des variations disciplinaires et sociales quant aux jugements d’acceptabilité ont aussi été soulevées, soulignant des sensibilités culturelles relativement aux éléments mobilisés dans le jugement d’acceptabilité. Ces distinctions relatives à la manière d’appréhender la NVC invitent à dépasser les approches traditionnelles d’acceptation technologiques et à converger vers une approche d’acceptabilité axée sur les impacts perçus et valorisés relativement à un ensemble d’enjeux E[indice supérieur 3]LS. Les résultats des deux phases de l’étude ont aussi montré que l’opérationnalisation du cadre théorique de référence était adéquate pour arriver à cette fin. Ultimement, afin de prendre en compte et de comprendre l’étendue possible des impacts perçus et valorisés dans le jugement d’acceptabilité de l’ensemble des acteurs concernés par les nouvelles applications nanomédicales, l’élaboration de ces applications bénéficierait à employer une telle approche et à l’intégrer aux processus de développement technologique. / Abstract : In many medical fields, nanocarrier-based targeted drug-delivery (TDD) is likely to remove many technical obstacles regarding treatment. The lack of an approach based on variables such as potential impacts, acceptance, and acceptability could however lead to a mismatch between TDD applications being developed and users’ needs and values; this mismatch could ultimately hold back their deployment. Based on an interdisciplinary approach for the analysis of impact and acceptability of emerging technologies, three main concepts of a new theoretical framework—perceived impacts, acceptance, and acceptability—have been operationalized. This operationalisation has been studied in the light of several variables, namely the nature of the nanocarrier, the clinical context of use, and the disciplinary and social culture of the respondents. An exploration of the impacts perceived, mobilized and weighted, based on a set of ethical, economic, environmental, legal and social (E[superscript 3]LS) issues allowed to establish a first portrait of the acceptability of this application. A descriptive-exploratory approach based on a mixed-methods design with sequential data triangulation was used. The data were collected in two phases, first through an online questionnaire (n = 214), and then through semi-structured individual interviews (n = 22). The final sample was composed of French and French-Canadian researchers involved in themes related to emerging technologies, all from natural sciences and engineering or from humanities and social sciences. The operationalisation of the theoretical framework highlighted the importance of distinguishing the device and the uses when formulating the acceptability judgment, revealing also the influence of the context of use on the acceptability of TDD applications. Disciplinary and social variations related to acceptability judgments were also raised, highlighting possible cultural sensitivities regarding elements mobilized in those acceptability judgments. These distinctions on how are apprehended TDD applications invite to go beyond traditional approaches of technology acceptance and to converge toward approaches of acceptability; those approaches also need to integrate how impacts on E[superscript 3]LS issues are perceived and weighted. The results of both phases of the study also showed that the operationalization of the theoretical framework was adequate to achieve that end. Ultimately, in order to figure and to understand the broad spectrum of possible impacts that may be perceived and valued in the acceptability judgment of stakeholders affected by the development of new nanomedical applications as TDD, the development process of those applications could benefit from integrating this approach.