This paper makes use of postcolonial theory to think differently about aspects of cultural diversity within science education. It briefly reviews some of the increasing scholarship on cultural diversity, and then describes the genealogy and selected key themes of postcolonial theory. Postcolonial theory as oppositional or deconstructive reading practice is privileged, and its practical application illustrated by using some of these key ideas to (re)read Gloria Snively and John Corsiglia's (2001) article “Discovering indigenous science: implications for science education” and their rejoinder, from the special issue of Science Education (Vol. 85, pp. 6–34) on multiculturalism and science education. While many would regard the expressed views on diversity, inclusivity, multiculturalism, and sustainability to be just and equitable, postcolonial analysis of the texts reveals subtle and lingering referents that unwittingly work against the very attitudes Snively and Corsiglia (2001) seek to promote. Such postcolonial analyses open up thinking about the material and cultural conditions in which science education is produced, circulated, interpreted, and enacted. They also privilege a unique methodology already prominent in academic inquiry that is yet to be well explored within science education. Finally, I conclude this paper with some general comments regarding postcolonialism and the science education scholarship on cultural diversity. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Sci Ed 88:819–836, 2004
Like Lemke (J Res Sci Teach 38:296-316, 2001), I believe that science education has not looked enough at the impact of the changing theoretical and global landscape by which it is produced and shaped. Lemke makes a sound argument for science education to look beyond its own discourses toward those like cultural studies and politics, and to which I would add globalisation theory and relevant educational studies. Hence, in this study I draw together a range of investigations to argue that globalisation is indeed implicated in the discourses of science education, even if it remains underacknowledged and undertheorized. Establishing this relationship is important because it provides different frames of reference from which to investigate many of science education's current concerns, including those new forces that now have a direct impact on science classrooms. For example, one important question to investigate is the degree to which current science education improvement discourses are the consequences of quality research into science teaching and learning, or represent national and local responses to global economic restructuring and the imperatives of the supranational institutions that are largely beyond the control of science education. Developing globalisation as a theoretical construct to help formulate new questions and methods to examine these questions can provide science education with opportunities to expand the conceptual and analytical frameworks of much of its present and future scholarship. ß 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 42: [561][562][563][564][565][566][567][568][569][570][571][572][573][574][575][576][577][578][579][580] 2005
This paper reviews the significant sociocultural literatures on science studies, cultural diversity, and sustainability science to develop theoretical perspectives for science education more suitable to the challenges of contemporaneity. While the influences of science studies and cultural diversity are not uncommon within the science education literature on innovation, the difference here is the inclusion of the newer field of sustainability science. These threads are drawn are together to help formulate a view of science education that contributes to the ongoing discussion of what it could be in the 21st century. Finally, a science unit in a preservice teacher education course is then described, which aims to engage, inform, and empower beginning teachers in ways that tackle the challenges of contemporaneity. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Sci Ed 92:165–181, 2008
It is apparent that many of us live in a hyper-economized world, in which personal identities and routine practices are significantly oriented towards production and consumption of forprofit goods and services. Extreme consumerism resulting from this orientation often is associated with many personal, social, and environmental problems. Implicated as an agent, among many, in this problematic hyper-economized process is science education. Briefly, our literature reviews suggest that, under influences from apparently hegemonic forces of neoconservatism and neoliberalism, school science often functions to generate knowledge producers, including engineers, scientists and other theoretical workers-who, in turn, may develop and manage mechanisms of production of goods and services on behalf of global economic elite. At the same time, it also is apparent that school science generates a large class of citizens who are prepared, essentially, to serve as consumers-both in terms of faithfully following labor instructions from the aforementioned knowledge producers (who may be accountable mainly to their financiers) and also enthusiastically engaging in repeating cycles of consumption of goods and services. Such a use of education seems undemocratic, at the very least, and highly problematic, assuming an association between school science and many personal, social, and environmental problems. To perhaps bring about a more just and sustainable world, we offer a theoretical framework, along with a more pragmatic version of it, for organizing science and technology education in many contexts. Although based on principles like holism, altruism, realism, egalitarianism, and dualism that we suggest may help school science generate a citizenry willing and able to proactively contribute to the common good, we also urge readers to use it as a basis for further research and development. ß
This paper aims to further articulate multicultural science education scholarship. In particular, it explores the notions of borders and border epistemologies as intellectual resources to think again about the challenges of science education in the global world that demand more sophisticated concepts to unravel some of its complexities. It responds in part to Osborne's (2007) call for more “armchair science education” to “develop better theories about our goals and values” (p. 11). Borders and border spaces reconceptualize and extend the view of borders typically presented within the literature as unproblematic lines between cultures and knowledges that need to be crossed. The constructs of border epistemologies introduce to science education the work of cultural theorists, Boaventura de Sousa Santos and Walter Mignolo. Collectively, their scholarship helps to theorize alternative epistemologies from the Global South that argue social and political justice must be premised within epistemological justice. I finish by problematizing some of these ideas for ongoing thinking around multicultural approaches to science education. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Sci Ed 94:428–447, 2010
Science has seen considerable change in recent decades with the emergence of a new economic and sociopolitical contract between science, the nation, state, and private commercial interests. Generally regarded as having been precipitated by globalization, these changes in the sciences are beginning to be documented by a range of commentators. Clearly, science's changing forms hold profound implications for the development of science education. As there is little science education scholarship exploring the implications sciences' altering forms, this paper attempts to investigate the relationship at more depth. Detailing this relationship is important because it can help formulate new questions, and methods for their investigation, relevant to the work of science education in the newly global world. ß
In New Zealand there is ongoing tension between how indigenous Mäori (native to New Zealand) people and non-Mäori New Zealanders speak about the ways in which they occupy their space on the landscape. The ways that different groups identify their relationships with the landscape often conflict rather than complement each other, which has consequences for overall resource and environmental management plans. Using an environmental literacy framework-that is, how people 'read', 'see' and understand their relationships with the landscape-this paper will focus on the way that distinct groups use their own languages to explain how they, in the fullest sense, know themselves to occupy it. This paper accepts as a 'given' that there are a number of theorists who acknowledge the importance of language in defining the landscape, and the influence that language has on people's perceptions of what it is they are perceiving. However, this paper is based on a body of knowledge that legitimates the Mäori world view and understanding as a valid process of knowing the world. More specifically, contemporary Mäori theorists have developed a mätauranga Mäori (traditional Mäori knowledge) framework, which stems from a tradition-based value system. This paper seeks to apply this knowledge base to the conceptual framework of how the geography of Aotearoa/New Zealand is viewed and understood through different cultural lenses. Naming to own: Place names as indicators of human interaction with the environment 2 This paper has a dual focus: how environmental literacy is used to explain and understand human relationships with the environment, and how different ways of understanding the environment verify cultural identity within the nation of New Zealand. I will concentrate on ideas of identity as expressed through linguistic performances in relation to the landscape, and in particular how place names verify a people's place and space. By way of illustration, the paper explores two linguistic performances surrounding the Waitaki River in the South Island of New Zealand. 3 An environmental literacy framework will be used to explain how two groups understand the river, and to demonstrate the futility of claiming that New Zealand is a culturally homogeneous landscape that is devoid of difference. Environmental literacy is about how people speak about the landscape as they know it, and it is expressed through the language they use. Language is part of a culture. Every aspect of that culture-whether it be song, law, instruction, history or social organisationis expressed through language. The distinguishing features of each particular language 2. This article was first read as a paper at the
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