Education
Debate actual societal choices rather than personalities.
Debate actual societal choices rather than personalities.
Though changes are happening, we must recognize that in France the planning of citizen debates is a more recent development than in other countries such as Switzerland, where for many years citizens have been invited to take part in public debates followed by balloting. What's more, such debates are convened at the will of the public, not that of political representatives; this amounts to a real evolution in terms of the exchange of viewpoints.
Cultivation of critical thinking with respect to societal choices can already happen in schools! This is the the idea behind the platform Dialoguea, whose goal is to develop the reasoning skills of students through digital debates on subjects defined by teachers of philosophy, history, geography, life sciences, etc.
Dialoguea will soon be available on the National Education Resources Access Manager, facilitating contractual relationships among educational establishments and integration into various Digital Work Spaces (ENT). Our team is available to establishments, academies, and public groups who wish to make Dialoguea available to teachers as a component of the pedagogical resources they provide.
The project AREN - ARgumentation Et Numérique - is a project of e-FRAN launched by the French government as part of Futures Investment Project (Programme d'Investissement d'Avenir) (PIA) to respond to the emerging challenges of digital technology within the educational system. Its mission is to complete an evaluation the pedagogical value of a platform dedicated to digital debate as a tool for the development of reasoning skills and critical thinking.
Digital debate in a high school classroom.
Debate followed by a group project of analysis and synthesis.
The project undertaken by the University of Montpellier brings together the LIRMM (Computer Science Laboratory), the LIRDEF (Research Laboratory in Didactics), the Montpellier School District, which hosts the experiments, CartoDÉBAT and the association ControverScience.
CartoDÉBAT has hosted debates on science and society in university settings on numerous subjects: nanotechnologies; reading, writing and publishing in the digital age; artificial intelligence (Polytech, University of Montpellier); Corporate social responsibility (RSE) with ISIGE MINES ParisTech (Higher Institute of Engineering and Environmental Management).