EMOTIONS, VALUES AND KNOWLEDGE IN STUDENTS' ARGUMENTATION ABOUT FARM ANIMAL WELFARE

International audienceThe question of farm animal welfare has sparked strong debate in society and in scientific, technical and professional domains. In the field of education, teaching and learning about farm animal welfare (FAW) as a socially acute question (Legardez & Simonneaux, 2006), is particularly problematic in agricultural schools which train future breeders. This presentation focuses on one step of a protocol involving 44 students aged 16 to 18 years in order to encourage the development of informed decisions and actions on FAW. The students had to resolve individually and then collectively a dilemma which concerned a cattle farmer. The discourses were audio-recorded and were analyzed in order to study the influence of the articulation between emotions, values and knowledge-representations in the students' argumentation on the construction of their position. The results highlight the fine interdependence between these different components of the discourse and the elaboration of strategies by the students to reduce the emotional discomfort linked to the ethical problems encountered