Changing knowledge,changing technology: implications for teacher education futures

Recent research in teacher education futures has identified two themes that require further study: the changing nature of knowledge and the changing capabilities of technologies. This article examines the intersection of these two themes and their implications for teacher education. The research employed futures methodologies based on scenario creation. With a focus on the above themes or dimensions, a panel of experts was interviewed to draw on its collective wisdom to explore alternative teacher education futures. Data from these interviews were analysed to stimulate the construction of four future teacher education scenarios. Feedback on the scenarios was obtained from teacher educators in Europe and Australia. The scenarios were then revised based on this feedback. The final scenarios are presented here as a way of provoking discussion among teacher educators about teacher education futures.     

The tensions between indigenous knowledge and western science

Cultural Studies of Science Education - In their paper Ramos de Robles, Gariby-Chávez and Curiel-Ballesteros offer that indigenous traditional knowledge (IK) concerning edible wild plants in...     

Locating the global: culture,language and science education for indigenous students

The international literature suggests the use of indigenous knowledge (IK) and traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) contexts in science education to provide motivation and self‐esteem for indigenous students is widespread. However, the danger of alienating culture (as knowledge) from the language in which the worldview is embedded seems to have been left out of the philosophical and pedagogical debates surrounding research and comment in the field. This paper argues that one of the main ways in which indigenous knowledge systems will survive and thrive is through the establishment of programmes taught through indigenous languages so that a dialectal relationship between language and knowledge is established that continues to act as the wellspring. The article concludes by reviewing the situation in Aotearoa New Zealand with respect to the indigenous population, Maori, and the recent science education initiatives in te reo Maori (Maori language).     

Rethinking environmental science education from indigenous knowledge perspectives: an experience with a Dene First Nation community

This auto-ethnographic article explores how land-based education might challenge Western environmental science education (ESE) in an Indigenous community. This learning experience was developed from two perspectives: first, land-based educational stories from Dene First Nation community Elders, knowledge holders, teachers, and students; and second, the author’s critical self‐reflections focusing on how land-based education could offer unlearning, rethinking, relearning, and reclaiming ESE. This auto-ethnography provides particular insights into who we are as environmental educators, the challenges in Western ESE, why land-based education matters, why and how a significant move should be made from Western ESE to land-based ESE, and how land-based education offers a bridge between Western and Indigenous education.     

The importance of place in indigenous science education

In this issue of Cultural Studies of Science Education, Mack and colleagues (Mack et al. 2011) seek to identify the necessary components of science education in Indigenous settings. Using a review of current research in informal science education in Indigenous settings, along with personal interviews with American educators engaged in these programs, the authors suggest some effective practices to use Indigenous ways of knowing to strengthen science programming. For the past 4 years, we have been interested in the importance of place in culturally relevant science education. We have explored the role of place and have used Gruenewald’s critical pedagogy of place (2003) to examine the importance of place in a variety of Indigenous contexts. In response to Mack and colleagues, in this paper we explore the importance of place as a means to reinhabituate Indigenous youth who live in urban, First Nation, and rural Costa Rican contexts.     

Hawks and baby chickens: cultivating the sources of indigenous science education

In this response to Hewson and Ogunniyi??s paper on indigenous knowledge (IK) and science teaching in South Africa, I seek to broaden the debate by setting the enterprise of integrating IK into science education in its cultural and socio-political context. I begin by exploring the multiple meanings of indigenous knowledge in Africa, next consider the sources available for accurately apprehending those different varieties of IK and then raise three issues of procedure that the Hewson and Ogunniyi approach seems largely to overlook: the varying meanings and styles of argumentation in African culture; the relevance of more participatory and discovery-based modes of inquiry to their topic; and the critical importance of grasping the socio-political terrain on which IK must operate. I conclude that, while their initiative opens valuable new paths of inquiry and practice, the proposed methodology would benefit from more solid grounding in discovery learning, African styles of debate and a clear mapping of stakes and stakeholders.     

Rethinking argumentation-teaching strategies and indigenous knowledge in South African science classrooms

Our response to Hewson and Ogunniyi’s paper focuses, on the one hand, on some of the underlying tensions associated with alinging indigenous knowledge systems with westernized science in South African science classrooms, as suggested by the new, post-apartheid, curriculum. On the other hand, the use of argumentation as a vehicle to accomplish the alignment when the jury is still out on the appropriateness of argumentation as a pedagogical and research tool heightens the tension. We argue that the need for education stakeholders from indigenous heritages to value, know and document their own indigenous knowledge becomes paramount. The textualizing of indigenous knowledge, as has been done in western science, will create repositories for teachers to access and may help with the argumentation strategies such as advocated by the authors.     

Pasts and futures that keep the possible alive: Reflections on time,space, education and governing

Abstract

Over the last years, the European Commission has heavily promoted various forms of digital education. In this article, we draw upon two recent European policy documents as key articulations of Europe’s contemporary governing apparatus: Opening Up Education and the Digital Education Action Plan. The article more particularly conceives of both policy documents as offering a point of departure to analyze how this apparatus is presently seeking to enact a specific mode of existence of the contemporary learner. We argue that this educational mode of existence is being enacted by the fabrication of highly specific sorts of time and space. In order to highlight the particularity of the enacted sorts of time and space exemplified in the policy documents, we start this article with a discussion of how a traditional, modern governing apparatus aims to fabricate linear time and institutional space. The article proceeds by arguing that the present-day European governing apparatus that is concerned with digital education fabricates different sorts of times and spaces, namely potential (rather than linear) temporalities and ecological/networked (rather than institutional) spatialities. Likewise, the concrete instruments (such as platforms, portals, credits and certificates) presently adopted in order to do so largely differ from modern instruments. Conclusively, we argue that the presence of these newly emerging (often digital) instruments, and the times and spaces that are fabricated through these instruments, call for an opportunistic mode of existing as a contemporary learner.     

Research quality assessment in education: Impossible science,possible art?

For better or for worse, the assessment of research quality is one of the primary drivers of the behaviour of the academic community with all sorts of potential for distorting that behaviour. So, if you are going to assess research quality, how do you do it? This article explores some of the problems and possibilities, with particular reference to the UK Research Assessment Exercise and discussion around the proposed new Research Excellence Framework and the ongoing work of the Framework 7 European Education Research Quality Indicators project (EERQI). It begins by asking whether there are any meaningful generic criteria of quality which can be applied to research, and tension between such criteria and the diverse and sometimes contradictory requirements of educational research. It then looks at attempts to identify measurable indicators of quality, including consideration of the location of the publication, citation and download counts, and approaches based semantic analysis of machine readable text—but finds all these quasi ‘scientific’ attempts at quality assessment wanting (hence the ‘impossible science’). This is all the more the case because of their attachment to extrinsic correlates of quality rather than intrinsic characteristics of quality and hence the probability that the measures will induce behaviours not conducive to quality enhancement. Instead the article turns to a different approach. This is better expressed perhaps as quality ‘appreciation’, ‘discernment’ or even ‘connoisseurship’ and is rooted in the arts and humanities rather than in (quasi) science. It considers whether this might offer a better approximation to the kind of judgement involved in quality assessment of a piece of research writing than the sort of metrics approaches favoured in current discussion.     

Discursive geographies in science: space, identity, and scientific discourse among indigenous women in higher education

Despite completing undergraduate degrees in the life sciences, few Indigenous women choose to pursue careers in scientific research. To help us understand how American Indian students engage with science, this ethnographic research describes (1) how four Navajo women identified with science, and (2) the narratives they offered when we discussed their experiences with scientific discourse. Using intensive case studies to describe the experiences of these women, my research focused on their final year of undergraduate study in the life sciences at a university in southwestern US. I point to the processes by which the participants align themselves with ideas, practices, groups, or people in science. As each participant recounted her experiences with scientific discourse, they recreated for me a discursive geography of their lives on the reservation, at home, at community colleges (in some cases), and on the university campus. In the construction and analysis of the narratives for this research, mapping this geography was critical to understanding each participant’s discursive relationship with science. In these discursive spaces, I observed productive “locations of possibility” in which students and their instructors: valued connected knowing; acknowledged each other’s history, culture, and knowledge; began to speak to each other subject-to-subject; and challenged normative views of schooling. I argue that this space, as a location of possibility, has the power to transform the crushing impersonalized schooling that often characterizes “rigorous” scientific programs in a research institution.

Knowing 'now', learning futures. The politics and knowledge practices of vocational education and training

This paper locates vocational knowledges and institutions (of the state) within the broader context of contemporary discourses of ‘risk society’, while paying attention to the history and politics of Vocational Education and Training (VET) and work-related learning in Australia VET is interrogated as institutional space(s) in and through which the projects of governance and regulation and that of knowledge management co-exist in a symbiotic relationship. Rather than position VET as an objectified site of unified knowledge, this paper attempts to map epistemological ontological terrains that shape knowledge practices inherent in VET. Although challenging and re-mapping familiar terrain may involve discomfort and anxiety, it is argued that, through such a shared endeavour, knowledge practitioners within VET - learners, teachers, researchers and policy makers - will be better situated to make sense of the epistemological ontological challenges inherent in these ‘new’ times and so continually make the case for policies and practices that have the capacity to contribute more equitable and sustainable futures.     

Argumentation-teaching as a method to introduce indigenous knowledge into science classrooms: opportunities and challenges

An innovative school science curriculum in South Africa requires the inclusion of African societal/cultural knowledge, such as indigenous knowledge (IK). The main project involves introducing argumentation to accomplish this requirement. We used a focus group plus critical incident technique to ascertain nine teachers’ understandings of argumentation and IK, their perceptions of how argumentation helps in teaching IK, examples of how argumentation-teaching had (or had not) worked in their classrooms, and their suggestions. Our results show that the teachers accepted argumentation as a viable approach to teach science and introduce IK into their classrooms.     

The perceptions of knowledge and learning of Amazonian indigenous teacher education students

This study focuses on the perceptions of knowledge and learning by indigenous students in an intercultural bilingual teacher education programme in Amazonian Ecuador. The study framed within postcolonial and critical theory attempts to create a space for the indigenous students to speak about their own views through the use of photography and researcher-respondent discussions. We found that the students conceptualised knowledge and learning primarily through their everyday domestic life rather than through their experiences of schooling which appears to play a secondary role.     

Autobiography in science education: Greater objectivity through local knowledge

In our paper we argue that (1) autobiography ought to be considered both the telling of one's story and the using of that story with others to understand and use difference productively, and (2) autobiography (as telling and interacting) dismantles the universalistic tug of science and replaces it with a push for science as local knowledge. To accomplish this dual task, we share selective autobiographical accounts of lives (autobiography as telling), and then use these accounts to have a conversation about urban science education (autobiography as interacting). Following these autobiographical accounts we then discuss how our different stories apart and together provide a greater objective insight into what it means to come-to-know science. When talking about their lives, people lie sometimes, forget a lot, exaggerate, become confused, and get things wrong. Yet, they are revealing truths. These truths don't reveal the past “as it actually was,” aspiring to a standard of objectivity. They give us instead the truths of our experiences. (Personal Narratives Group (PNG), 1989, p. 261)     

Climbing the Staircase: science education for the knowledge economy

Science and technology are widely regarded as the dominant drivers of transformation to a ‘knowledge’ economy and society — a transition in which higher education has a critical role. This paper reviews the influence of successive NZ governments intention to ‘proactively steer’ the tertiary education system towards the achievement of this critical role, and describes an initiative at the Auckland University of Technology (AUT) specifically designed to meet New Zealand's needs for a well trained, articulate and flexible workforce of scientists, engineers, technicians and support staff. The ‘staircasing’ model is the culmination of an effort to adapt, modify and extend traditional models of professional science and technology education to provide a mechanism for ‘life‐long learning’ through a flexible and responsive network of purpose‐built courses.     

Culture,indigenous knowledge systems and sustainable development: A critical view of education in an African context

The article’s focus is the relationship between culture, indigenous knowledge systems (IKS), sustainable development and education in Africa. It analyzes the concept of sustainability with particular reference to education and indigenous knowledge systems. In particular the article analyzes the documents from the World Summit in Johannesburg in 2002 as well as from the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development. Moreover, the article discusses South Africa’s Curriculum 2005 (C 2005) launched by the African National Congress (ANC) by focusing on the dilemmas of exclusively introducing Western-based scientific knowledge in a cultural context based on indigenous epistemology. The article concludes by calling for more research into the viability of indigenous knowledge systems as a potential tool in sustainable development.     

Pedagogical content knowledge in science education: perspectives and potential for progress

Pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), since its inception as teacher‐specific professional knowledge, has been researched extensively. Drawing on a wide range of literature, this paper seeks to clarify how the potential offered by PCK could be utilised to further develop science teacher education. An analysis of PCK models proposed by various researchers, together with methods of elucidating PCK in experienced and novice teachers, is provided. The paper argues that making PCK more explicit in the teacher education process may help novices adjust to teaching, as well as aiding experienced teachers in developing more reflective practices.