Olivier Las Vergnas' English speakers personal Home page

Olivier Las Vergnas' Tank
for english speakers

drafts, papers, infos and pathways for collaborative works.

Action research about
Science Self directed learning

... Olivier's French homepage ->.

Prof. Dr. Olivier LAS VERGNAS
in a Mini CV [full Cv]

Full Professor @ Lille Sciences & Tech. University,
(CUEEP-Trigone team, EA 4354
Invited PhD director @ EA 1589 (CREF -UPX)
"learnance and adults learning"

Creator of "Cité des métiers" concept.
Cité des métiers/Cité de la santé - La Villette-Paris

General Secretary of Cités des métiers
international Network

Président of Association française d'astronomie
Publisher of "Ciel et espace" monthly journal
Social fiction novelist
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Ph.D in Astronomy,
Post graduate in Data Analysis,
M.Sc in Physics
"Habilitation à diriger des recherches" in Education
Born in Paris-France in 1954 - lives in Paris
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Olivier's research works are focussed on life long learning and particularly self directed science learning : i.e. self learning classical situation of "autodidactes" but also citizen sciences, patient experiential knowledges & popular epidemiology.

He leads researches about the secondary-school social divide between so-called "scientits" and "non scientits" and the a posterio effect of what we could call a school prophety of science ability or unability.

His fellows researchers and PhD students study particularly the obstacles for lifelong learning resulting from that "school prophety" on adults and their relation to scientific and technological knowledge and skill.

Go to Olivier's
main web site in French

http://enviedesavoir.org

Read some Olivier's papers
in English about Science Self directed learning

download a summary of olivier's current works in Education [here]

Discover Olivier's social fiction Novels (in French)

(2007) Romanesque 2.0

(2009 republished in 2012)
Autopsie d'un sans-papiers"
and "un vrai temps de chiens"

Olivier's research papers (in French) related to Science Self directed learning

open [here] OLV' education open archiv @ hal-archives ouvertes CCsd for free access
open [here] OLV's page @ Amazon.com for line book shoping
visualise [here] a mind map of OLV Education papers

Olivier Las Vergnas HDR defense
(2011, Paris Ouest University, Philippe Carré as promoteur)

Non-scientists’ relationship with sciences: between allegiance and
transgression of school categories

Mainly because of their ambiguity and reliance on school curricula, views promoting a “cultural knowledge” of science (in French: “culture scientifique”) have been repeating themselves identically since thirty years, holding it able to improve both elite detection and knowledge sharing, forgetting that the educational system categorises pupils into one quarter of scientists and three quarters of non-scientists. For the latter, a conative obstacle adding to natural cognitive obstacles literally teaches them to accept this categorisation, which may even become a self-fulfilling prophecy that they are not able any more to deal with any sort of science. Moreover, this “knowledge”, being a prescription without any relation to the scientific and technological dimension of culture as experienced by everyone, reinforces the epistemological divide between scientific knowledge and knowledge originating in day-to-day life: instead of recognising the opportunities of acculturation to science brought about by technical practices, it introduces a “scholastic” obstacle.
We suggest that this field of cultural knowledge of science for adults can be categorised in two families. The first one organises the dialogue between scientists and “laymen” without questioning this divide. The second, which fosters the appropriation of knowledge and of approaches that transgress the “scientific-unscientific” stereotypes, belongs to historical currents in self-directed learning, fighting for chosen knowledge and empowerment: make the best of a chronic illness through life-acquired knowledge, take part in activist-organised surveys, or find fulfilment in experimental technico-scientific leisure activities.

[download the HDR paper in French here @ open archiv]

Olivier Las Vergnas PhD defense in Astronomy and Data Analysis
(1990, LSM/UPMC, J.-P. Benzécri as Director)

Contribution in the study of historical brightness estimates of bright stars
using multivariate analysis

Do bright stars have secular brightness variations ? Although this problem has been studied by some astronomers during the last centuries, no serious answer has been given to it. A hundred years ago, C. Flammarion collected old stars brightness estimates and published them in his book Les étoiles et les curiosités du ciel. It was obvious to him that a great number of stars had secular variations. Pickering (1895) and Zinner (1926) published two other compilations of catalogues. They did not agree with Flammarion's opinion, but they were not really able to analyze the amount of genuine information the old data contained. No other study has been published since then. New data analysis methods have been created in the last years, such as Correspondence Factorial Analysis, that allow further studies of large data tables. The aim of the work here presented is to appraise whether those methods can help to progress in this secular variations problem. The use of original sources allows to build a table of data integrating "signatures" of suspected causes for the magnitude différences (from astrophysical causes to data reliability problems). Factorial analyses of this table have be performed, thanks to new data coding methods, as "differences with expected values" coding or "unsharpened" coding, created to get rid of notation differences between observers. It is not possible to find significatively correlated "signatures" and expected effects, such as color observers' equations, are not visible. It seems that there is a kind of global brightness "memory", from one catalogue to an other, except for Sir William Herschel's catalogue which is also the only one to give brightness comparison and not magnitudes values. Perhaps has it been protected from this "memory" effect by this notation difference ? This work does not pretend to close the debate about secular variations. It ends with the description of the further inquiries that are to be done : in order to draw astrophysical conclusions, it can be then useful to test some statistical treatment combining factorial and Fourier analyses. Such treatment could allow to get rid of phase information and open the way for periods correlation studies.

[download the PhD paper in French here]

Olivier Las Vergnas' last social fiction novel
"Un vrai temps de chiens"
POCKET Science-Fiction n°7069 (2012)

This novel has been first published in French untittled "Autopsie d'un sans-papiers" in 2009 by Le passager clandestin publisher. It has been republished by Universpoche/Pocket/Fleuve Noir in one of the most famous French SF pocket editions as "Un vrai temps de chiens". It is the second social fiction novel written by Olivier Las Vergnas after Romanesque 2.0 (2007, le passager clandestin, publisher in Paris)

The Plot ?
A young kurdish geek is a robots and dogs fan. He is not welcome in France and has to hide himself from the police. He lives in basement of a Paris suburd building, taking care of strange robots dogs. His girl frind is with him also hidden in this very small cave with 3 dogs. The novel is the diary of this guy names Sirwan; it starts when she is bitten buy one of the dogs... and the risk for her is to die of a massive septicemia.

...
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.

Olivier Las Vergnas' Tank for english speakers drafts, papers, infos and pathways for collaborative works.

Olivier Las Vergnas' Tank
for english speakers

drafts, papers, infos and pathways for collaborative works.