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Cette thèse investit, d'abord, sur un plan théorique l’enseignant professionnel et la mise enplace des dispositifs censés encourager le développement de cet enseignant, à partir de lalittérature de recherche dans ce domaine. Dans un second temps, elle vise à contextualiser cesenjeux dans le contexte du Kenya et, plus particulièrement, en considérant l'évolution de laprofession enseignante à partir de données historiques mais aussi d'un travail empirique menéauprès des enseignants stagiaires. A cet égard elle traite la naissance et l’évolution de laprofession enseignante au Kenya en mettant un accent particulier sur les représentationssociales et professionnelles. Dans un troisième temps, ce travail analyse le sens donné à lanotion d'enseignant professionnel par les politiques éducatives et par les enseignants enformation initiale. / First, from a theoretical perspective, this thesis makes reference to existing literature toexamine the notion of the professional teacher and the approaches that have been set up toencourage his/her development. Secondly, it seeks to contextualise this notion within theKenyan context and, specifically, analyse the evolution of the teaching profession based onhistorical data as well as on an empirical study carried out amongst student teachers. In thisregard, this thesis analyses the emergence and evolution of the teaching profession in Kenyawhile placing a particular emphasis on social and professional representations. Finally, thiswork examines the sense that educational policies and pre-service student teachers accord tothe notion of the “professional teacher”.

Published Article / This article reviews research on learning with external representations and provides a theoretical background on how to optimize learning from external representations. General factors, such as the type of material to be learned, learner characteristics and the testing method, are some of the variables that can determine if graphic medium can increase a subject's comprehension and if such comprehension can be accurately measured. These factors are discussed and represented by a model to suggest how external representations can be effectively used in a learning environment. Two key conclusions are drawn from the observation made in these studies. Firstly, the proper design of a particular external representation and supporting text can promote relevant activities that ultimately contribute to fuller understanding of the content. Secondly, external representations must be developed to address the size complexity and variety of the content that must be analysed in order to extract knowledge for scientific discovery.

Asthma management in school-aged children, particularly controller medication use, is best conceptualized as parent-child shared management. Controller medication nonadherence is common, and leads to higher disease morbidity such as cough, sleep disruption, poor activity tolerance, and asthma exacerbation. The purpose of this study was to describe asthma illness representations of both school-aged children (6-11 years) with persistent asthma and their parents, and to examine their interdependence. The Common Sense Model of Self-regulation, modified to include Parent-Child Shared Regulation, provided the framework for this descriptive, cross-sectional study. Thirty-four parent-child dyads independently reported on asthma control, controller medication adherence, and asthma illness representations by completing the Childhood Asthma Control Test, Medication Adherence Report Scale for Asthma, Brief Illness Perception Questionnaire, and Beliefs about Medicines Questionnaire. Using intraclass correlations, moderate agreement was evident between the parent and child timeline (perceived duration) illness representation domain (ICC= .41), and there was a weak association between the parent and child symptoms domain (ICC = .13). The remaining controllability and consequences domains showed no agreement. Hierarchical regression analyses were used to test parent and child illness representation domain variables as predictors of parent or child estimates of medication adherence. With parent-reported medication adherence as the dependent variable, regression models used parent illness representation variables followed by the corresponding child variable. Parent beliefs about medication necessity versus concerns was a significant predictor of parent-reported treatment adherence (β = .55, p < .01). Child-reported treatment control was also predictive of parent-reported treatment adherence (β -.50, p < .01). When child-reported medication adherence was the dependent variable, the child illness representation variable was entered first followed by the parent variable. Child beliefs about medication necessity versus concerns was the only significant predictor of child-reported adherence (child β .50, p < .01), none of the parent variables reached significance. Findings from this study indicate that although there are similarities between parent and child asthma illness representations, parental illness representations do not predict children's estimation of controller medication adherence. These findings indicate that school-aged children develop illness representations somewhat independent from their parents and, therefore, are critical participants in both asthma care as well as research.

In this thesis we consider in detail the following two problems for semigroups: (i) When are semigroups finitely generated and presented? (ii) Which families of semigroups can be efficiently presented? We also consider some other finiteness conditions for semigroups, homology of semigroups and wreath product of groups. In Chapter 2 we investigate finite presentability and some other finiteness conditions for the O-direct union of semigroups with zero. In Chapter 3 we investigate finite generation and presentability of Rees matrix semigroups over semigroups. We find necessary and sufficient conditions for finite generation and presentability. In Chapter 4 we investigate some other finiteness conditions for Rees matrix semigroups. In Chapter 5 we consider groups as semigroups and investigate their semigroup efficiency. In Chapter 6 we look at "proper" semigroups, that is semigroups that are not groups. We first give examples of efficient and inefficient "proper" semigroups by computing their homology and finding their minimal presentations. In Chapter 7 we compute the second homology of finite simple semigroups and find a "small" presentation for them. If that "small" presentation has a special relation, we prove that finite simple semigroups are efficient. Finally, in Chapter 8, we investigate the efficiency of wreath products of finite groups as groups and as semigroups. We give more examples of efficient groups and inefficient groups.

Although having conscious experiences is a fundamental feature of our everyday life, our understanding of what consciousness is is very limited. According to one of the main conclusions of contemporary philosophy of mind, the qualitative aspect of consciousness seems to resist functionalisation, i.e. it cannot be adequately defined solely in terms of functional or causal roles, which leads to an epistemic gap between phenomenal and scientific knowledge. Phenomenal qualities, then, seem to be, in principle, unexplainable in scientific terms. As a reaction to this pessimistic conclusion it is a major trend in contemporary science of consciousness to turn away from subjective experiences and re-define the subject of investigations in neurological and behavioural terms. This move, however, creates a gap between scientific theories of consciousness, and the original phenomenon, which we are so intimately connected with. The thesis focuses on this gap. It is argued that it is possible to explain features of consciousness in scientific terms. The thesis argues for this claim from two directions. On the one hand, a specific identity theory is formulated connecting phenomenal qualities to certain intermediate level perceptual representations which are unstructured for central processes of the embedding cognitive system. This identity theory is hypothesised on the basis of certain similarities recognised between the phenomenal and the cognitive-representational domains, and then utilised in order to uncover further similarities between these two domains. The identity theory and the further similarities uncovered are then deployed in formulating explanations of the philosophically most important characteristics of the phenomenal domain—i.e. why phenomenal qualities resist functionalisation, and why the epistemic gap occurs. On the other hand, the thesis investigates and criticises existing models of reductive explanation. On the basis of a detailed analysis of how successful scientific explanations proceed a novel account of reductive explanation is proposed, which utilises so-called prior identities. Prior identities are prerequisites rather than outcomes of reductive explanations. They themselves are unexplained but are nevertheless necessary for mapping the features to be explained onto the features the explanation relies on. Prior identities are hypothesised in order to foster the formulation of explanatory claims accounting for target level phenomena in terms of base level processes—and they are justified if they help projecting base level explanations to new territories of the target level. The thesis concludes that the identity theory proposed is a prior identity, and the explanations of features of the phenomenal domain formulated with the aid of this identity are reductive explanations proper. In this sense, the thesis introduces the problem of phenomenal consciousness into scientific discourse, and therefore offers a bridge between the philosophy and the science of consciousness: it offers an approach to conscious experience which, on the one hand, tries to account for the philosophically most important features of consciousness, whereas, on the other hand, does it in a way which smoothly fits into the everyday practice of scientific research.

We study the following geometric representation problem: Given a graph whose vertices correspond to axis-aligned rectangles with fixed dimensions, arrange the rectangles without overlaps in the plane such that two rectangles touch if the graph contains an edge between them. This problem is called Contact Representation of Word Networks (Crown) since it formalizes the geometric problem behind drawing word clouds in which semantically related words are close to each other. Crown is known to be NP-hard, and there are approximation algorithms for certain graph classes for the optimization version, Max-Crown, in which realizing each desired adjacency yields a certain profit. We present the first O(1)-approximation algorithm for the general case, when the input is a complete weighted graph, and for the bipartite case. Since the subgraph of realized adjacencies is necessarily planar, we also consider several planar graph classes (namely stars, trees, outerplanar, and planar graphs), improving upon the known results. For some graph classes, we also describe improvements in the unweighted case, where each adjacency yields the same profit. Finally, we show that the problem is APX-complete on bipartite graphs of bounded maximum degree.