This paper reports on an Action Research project that investigated the integration of Aboriginal and Western knowledge into science learning in a Montessori classroom in regional Queensland, Australia. Drawing on the local knowledge of fauna of community members, the study explored the teaching of science to 12-year 8–9 students in an Aboriginal independent high school in Queensland. The overall study covered 83 lessons that included an initial Short-beaked echidna study. It applied thematic analysis to data to explore the effect of this integrated approach on students’ pride in heritage, cultural knowledge, learning and the Linnaean zoology taxonomy. Results revealed that the contextualisation of Aboriginal and Western science knowledge strengthened students’ Aboriginal personal identity as well as identities as science learners and status of local Aboriginal knowledge.
This research article addresses an important issue related to how teachers can support Aboriginal secondary school students' learning of science. Drawn from a larger project that investigated the study of vertebrates using Queensland Indigenous knowledges and Montessori Linnaean materials to engage Indigenous secondary school students, this article focuses on the three-staged lessons from that study. Using an Action Research approach and working with participants from one secondary high school in regional Queensland with a high Indigenous population, there were several important findings. First, the materials and the three-staged lessons generated interest in learning Eurocentric science knowledge. Second, repetition, freedom and unhurried inclusion of foreign science knowledges strengthened students' Aboriginal personal identity as well as identities as science learners. Third, privileging of local Aboriginal knowledge and animal language gave rise to meaningful and contextualised Linnaean lessons and culturally responsive practices.
This paper presents a Both-Ways place-based science education initiative, which situates Indigenous and western science knowledge traditions together as official curriculum knowledge, within a Bachelor of Education science education unit. This program is delivered in-situ to preservice teachers who work as Aboriginal Teaching Assistants in school classrooms. The program, known as Growing Our Own, is established in Indigenous communities in the Northern Territory (NT). This initiative has engaged Indigenous preservice teachers in border-crossing pedagogical practices as a way to recognise the legitimate use of the Indigenous concepts of place. It has also contextualised the teaching of school science as described in the Australian curriculum. This Both-Ways approach privileges the voices and knowledge of local Indigenous peoples and creates a bridge to the curriculum of science in a placebased contextually relevant methodological manner. Such modifications realise a meaningful cultural and place contextualization, which values and enables border-crossing between local Indigenous science knowledge, language and western science. The paper presents pedagogical discourses of place-based and contextual approaches in five NT Indigenous communities to demonstrate how the teaching of science has been reconceptualised. The authors and the preservice teachers use Indigenous perspectives intertwined with the science of the Australian curriculum. Such approaches have provided meaningful border-crossing opportunities for preservice teachers in the Growing Our Own program.
This article explores the contextualising of local Aboriginal animal stories with the zoology curriculum in Queensland at one independent high school, where students’ learning potential often remains untapped. Contextualisation, encompasses heritage, cultural knowledge, country and Linnaean zoology taxonomy to form a culturally responsive pedagogy that supports students’ learning and pride in their heritage. To illustrate how students can learn in culturally responsive ways, a sinuous path encompassing six phases for collecting local faunal stories was necessary, prior to delivering the Linnaean zoology taxonomy. Elders’ animal stories were documented and then contextualised into classificatory materials to integrate local faunal knowledge. Drawing on an Indigenist Research Framework including storytelling, talking circles, interviewing and Action Research methodology, transcribing, retranscribing and restorying was used to explore the effect of a culturally responsive approach on students’ culture, and knowledge of local fauna. Findings indicated that the local animal stories became the foundation for the development of a First Classification of Animal Kingdom chart from the non-Aboriginal animal knowledge tradition which tapped into students’ learning potential through elders’ stories about local culture. Real-life storytelling on country is preferable as such contexts provide meaningful learning for students, rather than in decontextualised classroom spaces.
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