The relevance of context in questionnaire instrument design: examples from a study involving learners from Guadeloupe and Quebec

Résumé En

In this presentation, we discuss data issued from the project TEEC (Educational Technologies for Teaching in Context - Technologies Éducatives pour l' Enseignement en Contexte, funded by the ANR-FRQSC program). The project involves 10-year-old students from Guadeloupe and Quebec who collaborate on the study of the same scientific object, yet their social, scientific and identity representations may be different depending on the characteristics of their respective territories. This paper raises questions about the design of measurement instruments (quantitative and qualitative) in the social science studies and the existing relationships between contexts and the representations made by the students involved. During an experimentation, studying the “sugar” (cane sugar and its alternative, maple syrup) as a scientific notion, students were encouraged to work together, through synchronous and asynchronous sessions, in order to better understand various aspects of sugar such as biology, health, economy, agriculture, history, culture, etc. We have collected by using questionnaires, learners' conceptions, before and after the experimentation. Categorizing the contextuality of learners’ conceptions remains a methodological challenge. Hence, is it possible to evaluate the contextual dimension of conceptions of students from various contexts through a uniformed categorization of responses? Or else, how to better develop a contextual survey analysis methodology allowing the comparison of heterogeneous samples? In order to answer these questions, we will discuss firstly the process of conceptualizing and developing questionnaires depending on the context. Then, we will discuss the specificities of the analysis and the treatment of contextual responses.