This research explored the common experiences, values, and beliefs of three science teacher educators with elementary teaching experience and how these commonalities influenced their thinking about teaching preservice elementary teachers. This qualitative study used a life story approach and included an autobiographical component. Data were collected through interviews, observations, and archival records. The findings were shared in eight chronologically ordered vignettes that portrayed an individual representing a composite of the participants. The participants shared numerous life experiences including: growing up in small towns, having older parents, being part of a two sibling family, having strong female role models, learning science through everyday occurrences, and having successful experiences in school math and science. They also placed a high value on education, responsibility, spiritual development, and contributions of diverse groups. Two beliefs stood out in the data. First, each participant believed that she had been a "good" elementary teacher. Second, each participant believed in the importance of attending to the affective domain within teaching and learning environments.These findings represent an extension of the existing limited literature base regarding qualifications and characteristics of science teacher educators. The findings direct our attention to the need for changes in science teacher education programs with regard to recruitment and design in order to attract more applicants with elementary teaching experience and understandings of the elementary school culture.

Cette thèse porte sur la place dans la ville des acteurs quotidiens de la sécurité à Nairobi, au Kenya. Ces acteurs, appelés génériquement « les veilleurs » afin de signifier du même coup leur tâche professionnelle (surveiller la ville) et leur condition incertaine (« être en veille », vivre dans une forme de suspens), sont entrevus au prisme de deux groupes particuliers : les gardiens de sécurité privée aux portes des résidences de la ville planifiée et les jeunes recrues des youthgroups dans les quartiers de bidonvilles. Privilégiant une approche par les individus et le quotidien, je m’inscris dans le champ renouvelé de la sécurité, sensible depuis une dizaine d’années aux effets « micro » produits par les dispositifs sécuritaires, notamment sur les subjectivités particulières, les affects, les corps et les pratiques routinières. La capitale kenyane présente un double caractère me permettant de mettre en lumière l’acuité de la condition des veilleurs dans la ville : une fragmentation urbaine iconique, voire « cliché » en termes d’imaginaire et une atmosphère générale d’inquiétude, relative au contexte traumatique des violences politiques récentes et à l’émergence de la menace terroriste. Cette recherche s’appuie sur une méthode qualitative de type ethnographique, combinée à l’expérimentation d’une méthodologie de création poétique, afin de lever l’inhibition de la parole. Elle appréhende la condition des veilleurs à trois niveaux de lecture : la condition politique d’individus maintenus dans un registre d’ambiguïté vis-à-vis des communautés qu’ils protègent, la vie quotidienne dérivant de cette condition, enfin le sens que ces individus s’efforcent d’en extraire. Ces trois niveaux me permettent de développer une approche spatiale des concepts d’abandon, désignant cette puissance sécuritaire ambiguë qui assigne les veilleurs dans un « ni dedans, ni dehors » (sur la ligne de démarcation entre le Familier et l’Étranger) ; de vies en attente, pour souligner le poids de l’incertitude au sein de leur quotidien ; enfin de place complexe afin de signifier la puissance des imaginaires spatiaux et temporels par lesquels les veilleurs s’approprient leur condition. / This PhD thesis aims at analysing the place within the city of everyday security actors in Nairobi, Kenya. I call them “veilleurs” (sentinels of the city), playing on the double meaning of the word in French : referring both to their professional activity (watching over the city) and their feeling of living a passive life (watching all day long can be considered as a non-action). The study focuses on two groups in particular : private security guards at the gate of residential compounds in the planned city, and youthgroups members in slum areas. Adopting an individual and everyday-centred approach, this work fits in with the recent renewal of security studies. For the last ten years, those have been advocating a closer attention to “micro” effects produced by security assemblages, especially on subjectivities, affects, bodies, and everyday routines. The city of Nairobi displays a double feature that sheds new light on the sensitive question of the veilleurs. First, its urban fragmentation appears as particularly iconic in terms of imaginaries. Second, Nairobi can be qualified as an “anxious city” in light of the recent political violence (2007-2008) and the emerging terrorist threat. This study is based on both an ethnographic approach and a creative methodology using poetry as a way to free the speech of my interlocutors. It seeks to analyse the place of the veilleurs through three layered readings: their ambiguous political condition (being “on the line” between familiarity and otherness: neither inside nor outside the community they are supposed to watch over), the uncertain everyday life resulting from this condition, and the diverse imaginaries they produce to make sense of it. These three layers allow me to develop both a spatial and social reading of the key concepts of abandonment, lives on hold, and complex place to better understand this particular category of urban workers.