ABSTRACT:Although there has been considerable focus on the underrepresentation of minorities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines and the need for science instruction that fosters diversity, much of the associated effort has focused on the goal of diversity and tended to assume that science and science learning are acultural. We describe a conceptual framework employed in our work with both urban and rural Native American communities that focuses on culturally based epistemological orientations and their relation to the cultural practices associated with science instruction. We summarize evidence on the efficacy of community-based science education to support the proposition for a shift in orientation toward science education from aiming to have students adopt specific epistemologies to supporting students' navigation of multiple epistemologies.

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Calls for the improvement of science education in the USA continue unabated, with particular concern for the quality of learning opportunities for students from historically nondominant communities. Despite many and varied efforts, the field continues to struggle to create robust, meaningful forms of science education. We argue that ‘settled expectations’ in schooling function to (a) restrict the content and form of science valued and communicated through science education and (b) locate students, particularly those from nondominant communities, in untenable epistemological positions that work against engagement in meaningful science learning. In this article we examine two episodes with the intention of reimagining the relationship between science learning, classroom teaching, and emerging understandings of grounding concepts in scientific fields – a process we call desettling. Building from the examples, we draw out some key ways in which desettling and reimagining core relations between nature and culture can shift possibilities in learning and development, particularly for nondominant students.

For much of their history, the relationship between anthropology and psychology has been well captured by Robert Frost's poem, ''Mending Wall,'' which ends with the ironic line, ''good fences make good neighbors.'' The congenial fence was that anthropology studied what people think and psychology studied how people think. Recent research, however, shows that content and process cannot be neatly segregated, because cultural differences in what people think affect how people think. To achieve a deeper understanding of the relation between process and content, research must integrate the methodological insights from both anthropology and psychology. We review previous research and describe new studies in the domain of folk biology which examine the cognitive consequences of different conceptualizations of nature and the place of humans within it. The focus is on cultural differences in framework theories (epistemological orientations) among Native Americans (Menominee) and European American children and adults living in close proximity in rural Wisconsin. Our results show that epistemological orientations affect memory organization, ecological reasoning, and the perceived role of humans in nature. This research also demonstrates that cultural differences in framework theories have implications for understanding intergroup conflict over natural resources and are relevant to efforts to improve science learning, especially among Native American children.folkbiology ͉ mental models ͉ Native American ͉ science education T his review examines cognitive and behavioral consequences of cultural differences in conceptions of nature and conceptions of the role of human beings in it. The evidence suggests that these consequences are considerable, and as we piece them together, they form something of a mosaic. We concentrate on a set of comparative studies of a particular Native American and European American culture population, but the results are consistent with our previous findings and further suggest wider implications for culture and learning, in general, and science education, in particular. Our work falls at the interface between cognitive psychology and anthropology. A few decades ago, these two fields enjoyed a congenial division of labor, under which cognitive psychology's mission was to determine how people think and anthropology's focus was on what people think (1). But recent empirical research by cultural psychologists, cognitive anthropologists, and even philosophers (2-6) provides convincing evidence that cultural processes affect cognitive processes.These new observations have led to corresponding theoretical analyses. One approach to understanding cultural differences in cognitive processing (7) appeals to a ''cognitive toolkit'' and argues that cultures are associated with differences in the use and accessibility of particular strategies drawn from a common set of tools. Another approach (8) suggests that culture affects the chronic accessibility of constructs for approaching the social world (e.g., individu...

The field of science education has struggled to create robust, meaningful forms of education that effectively engage students from historically non-dominant communities and women. This paper argues that a primary issue underlying this on-going struggle pivots on constructions of nature-culture relations. We take up structuration theory (Giddens, 1984. The constitution of society: Outline of the theory of structuration. Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press.) and decolonizing methodologies (Smith, 2012. Decolonizing methodologies research and Indigenous peoples (2nd. ed.). London: Zed Books.) to reflect on the structural principles of the settled expectations of nature-culture relations. We suggest that taken together both Giddens' and Smith's respective discussions of time-space relations provide a powerful framing for nature-culture relations. Carefully examining shifts in the temporal and spatial scales during moments of talk and action in out-of-school science activities may help to increase the field's understanding of divergences, convergences, and productive generativity between Western science and Indigenous ways of knowing to create transformative science learning. Drawing on our work in community-based design research and studies of everyday parent-child interactions, we begin to describe emergent structural principles that may desettle normative time-space and nature-culture relations. In addition, we describe specific practices and pedagogical forms that expand views of human and non-human agency, as well as present and possible socio-ecological futures. The field of science education has struggled to create robust, meaningful forms of education that effectively and equitably engage students from historically non-dominant communities and women. In this paper we argue that a primary issue underlying this on-going struggle pivots on constructions of nature-culture relations. To achieve equity in the emerging era of science education (i.e., Next Generation Science Standards) we suggest we will need to simultaneously attend to: (1) underlying theories of learning and development that structure inequity and (2) expansive views of nature-culture relations, and related possible socio-ecological futures, that drive education. In this paper, we work to make visible some dynamics of nature-culture relations that are firmly embedded in most learning environments and structure how children and teachers imagine, know, study, and make meaning of the relations between the natural world (e.g., organisms and phenomena of all kinds as well as their interrelationships) and cultural forms of life (e.g., ways of thinking and acting that organize human communities). We present findings from a Correspondence to: M. Bang;

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