| The first goal of this study is to examine the reactions of a small group of students of collegial level called upon to work on a social controversy, in occurrence that of cellular telephony. The study of this social controversy is carried out within the framework of a technoscientific literacy project taking place in two geographically separate cegeps under the supervision of a distinct inter-University research team. For our investigation, we chose to join this research team because it worked in the mind frame of citizenship education. In compliance with the idea of reiterating citizenship education in schools (CSE, 1998) our study comes along on top of this broader research project and endeavours to answer precise objectives. Initially, this study aims to try to perceive if the students react vis-a-vis the controversy study. The two sub-objectives are to name and qualify their reactions and subsequently to observe how these students negotiate their emotions (Durkheim, 1992) vis-a-vis the controversy. In the contrary case, the second objective of this study is to try to explain the students' absence of reactions.;Under the ethnologist's eye, we followed one of the research collective (one work team), a sample of 5 students divided in geographically separate classrooms and cegeps. Our research thus fits in an exploratory ethnographic frame (Erny, 1991, Karsenti and Savoy-Zajc, 2000). About fifteen observation sessions (sound recordings), field notes, two formal interviews, an abstract interview, hard copies on the interactive Web site (http://cybercitoyen.levinux.org) as well as hard copies on the wiki. (http://cyberwikini.levinux.org) were analyzed by the means of "grounded theory" (Glaser and Strauss, 1967, Strauss and Corbin, 2004).;The results of the analysis show a low level of reactions to political or social dimensions of the controversy at study. Although in the early stages, social aspects were considered and retained, when time came to draw up the assessment of the controversy, the social arguments initially considered were suddenly neglected or ignored and the main focus became the scientific aspects of the controversy. We can only imagine this is symptomatic of a certain tradition in pure sciences. However, the data tends to show that for our inquired students, the plurality and accumulation of novelties or innovations (technical, methodological, philosophical, etc) introduced by the project as a whole and the incurred adaptation difficulties could have slowed down their capacity to engage in the socio-political stakes of the controversy at study. We are therefore forced to note that an empirical investigation would certainly bring additional lighting to the aspects treated in this investigation.;Keywords: Education, citizenship, social controversy, socio-political issues, reactions and emotions, ethnology. |
