In the "video" section of our site, a new introduction video, that of regular member and professor Patrick Charland, is now available. These videos, created as part of an initiative launched a few years ago, aim at describing the research projects and interests of the many EREST members. We invite you to keep an eye on this section of our website, as more videos should be uploaded in the coming weeks!

To see Patrick Charland's video right now, however, simply click on the thumbnail to the right!

In a recent ceremony, the Université du Québec à Montréal paid hommage to three doctoral students who were granted a Vanier scholarship, the most prestigious graduate sholarship in Canada, of a 50 000$ annual value for a period of three years. The EREST wishes to once again congratulate Jean-Philippe Ayotte Beaudet, a student member of the research team, for the quality of his project and for the colossal efforts it required.

To know more on this topic, or to learn more on the other UQAM laureates, do not hesitate to read this article (in french) on the Actualités UQAM website.

On october 16th, Geneviève Allaire-Duquette, doctoral student and member of the EREST, left Montreal for Israel. Travelling for an internship, she will have the chance to work with Ruth Stavy and Reuven Babai, professors at the University of Tel Aviv and international leading experts in scientific education and cognitive neuroscience, on a research project related to pedagogical interventions aimed at overcoming intuitive interferences while learning science-related concepts. Good luck for your internship, Geneviève!

Geneviève Allaire-Duquette, student member of the EREST and currently pursuing her Ph.D., has recently been granted the EREST scholarship for out-of-Quebec internships. This scholarship, of a maximum value of 1500$, is granted to meriting students who must travel beyond the borders of the province of Quebec for internships or for data collection. In the case of Geneviève, it is for her internship in Israel, which should begin in the following weeks. Congratulations, Geneviève, and good luck on your internship!

On september 16th, Google and TechnoMontréal hosted a conference on youth interest towards science and technology, an important issue for these organisms, who view with apprehension the declining numbers of students opting for science-related careers. For this occasion, they invited Patrice Potvin and Abdelkrim Hasni, respectively regular members and collaborators of the EREST, to talk about the principal findings resulting from the first two years of operations of the CRIJEST, of which they are the co-chairmen.

The Journal of science education and technology has recently published an article prepared by Patrice Potvin and Abdelkrim Hasni, both co-directors of the Chaire de recherche sur l'intérêt des jeunes à l'égard des sciences et technologies (CRIJEST). This article, titled "Analysis of the Decline in Interest Towards School Science and   Technology from Grades 5 Through 11", presents the results of a large scale questionnaire survey and discusses the different dimensions of the observed decline in interest towards science and technology of students from the province of Quebec.

For those interested, the article is freely available on the Springer website.

In an article published last month, it was possible to learn that, sometimes,

you need to take a step backwards if you want to go forward. In a recent research on learning, Nathaniel Lasry, a graduate student from McGill University now pursuing a post-doctoral degree at Harvard, revealed that 30% of the initially correct student answers are no longer so at the end of the semester while, during the same period, 50% of the incorrect answers were corrected. This could be explained, according to the authors, by the students' tendency to generalize and to try to apply, like a recipe, their newly acquired knowledge to phenomenons that could already be explained by prior knowledge. For more details, follow this link to the original article on the Metro journal webpage (french only).