ED Sociétés, Politique, Santé Publique
Developing a local integrated food policy: behind-the-scene insights through the lense of interdependencies
by Julie LAILLIAU (Environnement, Territoires en Transition, Infrastructures, Sociétés)
The defense will take place at 14h00 - Salle Estuaire INRAe Nouvelle-Aquitaine Bordeaux Site de Cestas Gazinet 50 avenue de Verdun 33612 Cestas Cedex
in front of the jury composed of
- Caitriona CARTER - Directrice de recherche - Université de Bordeaux - Directeur de these
- Salma LOUDIYI - Professeure - VetAgro Sup - Rapporteur
- Alain FAURE - Professeur - PACTE IEP Grenoble - Rapporteur
- Laura MICHEL - Directrice de recherche - Université de Montpellier - UMR CEPEL - Examinateur
- Xabier ITçAINA - Directeur de recherche - Sciences Po Bordeaux - Examinateur
Despite the fact that local food policies are seen as an innovation in local public action, nevertheless their construction and implementation have received little study. Indeed, local food policies underpin, above all, political choices that inform both the changes pursued in terms of local regulation of food within territorial food systems, and legitimisation strategies led by public actors which support them. This thesis takes a ‘behind-the-scenes' look at the construction and implementation of an integrated departmental food policy, using the Gironde Departmental Council as a case study. Applying a conceptual framework which brings together three literatures: i) an interdependency approach, ii) political work and iii) policy integration, the thesis sheds light on the political work carried out by departmental players during the problematisation and instrumentation stages of the Gironde food strategy, and examines the effects of this public action on the local food system as well as within the department. To this end, this work is based on an immersion of more than three years within the departmental Agenda 21 mission, due to a Cifre thesis contract, which enabled the constitution of a composite research material made up of participatory observation, the analysis of grey literature, and two series of semi-structured interviews. An analysis based on interdependencies shows how the integrated food policy for the Gironde was developed over a fifteen-year period, between 2008 and 2023. It highlights the fact that the political work in terms of interdependencies carried out by departmental actors - whose influence varies - is constantly renewed. It also allowed us to distinguish four cognitive frameworks leading to four ‘types' of departmental food policies, eachwith their own configurations of actors and their own arbitrations in terms of interdependencies - and hence their own levels of policy integration. In other words, over the last fifteen years, the Department of Gironde has not approached food with a consistent vision and has not associated the same objectives with it. Through identifying and exploring these different framings, the thesis sheds light on many aspects of the 'black box' of the Gironde integrated food strategy: the interplay of actors between political and administrative spheres, the trade-offs made between areas of public intervention, the variation in the Department's positions when it comes to bringing about change in the food system and its regulation, and more generally, the Department's strategies for legitimising itself within the political arena. Finally, the analysis of political work carried out by the players around different types of interdependency (e.g. territorial, public/private, knowledge) highlights the interweaving of policy, politics and polity in the creation of the Gironde Departmental Council's food strategy. We consequently conclude that there is a perpetual shift between politicisation and depoliticisation of the food issue as a result of changes in cognitive frameworks, the definition of objectives (transformative aim or political display), inter-territorial relations (in alliance with or opposing the State ; cooperation or avoidance), reconfigurations of players within the Department itself (influence of administrative and political players) or changes in the stance adopted by the Department (front-office approach, facilitator, experimenter, etc.). Finally, the thesis provides new knowledge on the construction of an unstable integrated food policy, whose constituent elements are constantly being reshaped, and through which it is shown that local regulation of food is not so much the objective pursued by the public actor as such, but rather a means of participating in a more global strategy of legitimisation of a Department continually positioning itself as an intermediary actor.
Guiding the Minds of Tomorrow: Conversational Agents to Train Curiosity and Metacognition in Young Learners
by Rania ABDELGHANI (Bordeaux Population Health Research Center)
The defense will take place at 14h00 - Ada Lovelace 200 Av. de la Vieille Tour, 33405 Talence
in front of the jury composed of
- Hélène SAUZEON - Professeure des universités - Université de Bordeaux & Inria de l'Université de Bordeaux - Directeur de these
- Pierre-Yves OUDEYER - Directeur de recherche - INRIA Université de Bordeaux - CoDirecteur de these
- Jamie JIROUT - Professeure associée - University of Virginia, School of Education and Human Development - Examinateur
- Susan ENGEL - Professor - Williams college, Rice Center for Teaching - Examinateur
- Jill-Jênn VIE - Chargé de recherche - Inria, SODA team & École polytechnique - Examinateur
- Margarida ROMERO - Professeure des universités - Université Côte d'Azur - Rapporteur
- Azzurra RUGGERI - Professeure - Max Planck Institute for Human Development & School of Education of the Technical University Munich & Department of Cognitive Science, Central European University, Vienna - Rapporteur
Epistemic curiosity---the desire to actively seek information for its inherent pleasure---is a complex phenomenon extensively studied across various domains. Several researchers in psychology, neuroscience, and computer science have repeatedly highlighted its foundational role in cognitive development and in fostering lifelong learning. Further, epistemic curiosity is considered key for cultivating a flexible mindset capable of adapting to the world's uncertainties. These insights have spurred significant interest in the educational field, recognizing curiosity as essential for helping individuals be active and in control of their learning. These properties are crucial for addressing some of today's major educational challenges, namely offering students individualized support to suit their competencies and motivations, and helping them become able to learn autonomously and independently in their dynamic and uncertain environments. Despite this well-documented importance of curiosity in education, its practical implementation and promotion in the classroom remains limited. Notably, one of the primary expressions of curiosity---question-asking (QA)---is nearly absent in most of today's educational settings. Several reports show that students often spend a lot of time answering teachers' questions rather than asking their own. And when they do ask questions, they are typically low-level and memory-based, as opposed to curious questions that seek novel information. In this context, this thesis aims to develop educational technologies that can foster children's curiosity-driven learning by practicing curious QA behaviors, and their related metacognitive (MC) skills. Ultimately, we implemented interventions to train three dimensions: 1) Linguistic QA Skills: We implement a conversational agent to train the ability to formulate curious questions using compound questioning words and correct interrogative constructions. It helps children generate curious questions during reading-comprehension tasks, by providing specific cues. The effectiveness of different cue structures (a sentence vs. series of keywords) and implementations (hand-generated vs. GPT-3-generated content) is studied. 2) Curiosity-related metacognitive Skills: We create animated videos to give declarative knowledge about curiosity and its related MC skills: the ability to self-reflect, make educated guesses, formulate efficient questions, and evaluate newly-acquired information. We also propose sessions to practice these skills during reading-comprehension tasks using specific cues given by conversational agents we designed to train procedural MC. 3) Social Perceptions and beliefs: We create animated videos to address the negative constructs learners tend to have about curiosity. They explain the importance of curiosity and how to control it during learning. Over 150 French students aged 9 to 11 were recruited to test these trainings of the three dimensions. Combined, these latter enhanced students' MC sensitivity and perception of curiosity. At their turn, these factors facilitated students' divergent QA behaviors which, at their turn, led to stronger learning progress and positive, affordable learning experiences. But despite the positive results, our methods had limitations, particularly their short duration. We suggest testing longer-lasting interventions to examine their long-term effects on curiosity. Finally, this thesis highlights the need to continue exploring QA and MC research in the age of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI). Indeed, while GAI facilitates access to information, it still requires good QA abilities and MC monitoring to prevent misinformation and facilitate its detection. We thus propose a framework to link efficient GAI use in education to QA and MC skills, and GAI literacy. We also present a behavioral study we intend to conduct to test this framework.