Elizabeth McKinley

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).

Language, culture and science education

An area for future research in science education is that of the interaction of language, culture and science education. This paper outlines the background to current debates and development work in language, culture and science education in New Zealand, with respect to the indigenous Maori people. Concern about the participation and achievement of Maori students in science education has led to considerations of their culture (beliefs, traditions, knowledge, heritage, experiences and values) and the Maori language in science lessons. A bicultural‐only approach to science education has been discarded by Maori in favour of educating for bilingual students. Further research to inform future policy making by Maori is discussed.

Towards an Indigenous Science Curriculum.

The recent development of a national science curriculum in Māori opened up space to contest whose knowledge and whose ways of knowing are included. This paper outlines the background to the curriculum development work in Aotearoa New Zealand with respect to the indigenous Māori people and science education. Concern is expressed about the fitting of one cultural framework into another and questions are raised about the approach used in the development of the science curriculum. Further research in the area of language, culture and science education is discussed along with how Māori might move forward in the endeavour of developing a curriculum that reflects Māori culture and language.

Brown Bodies, White Coats: Postcolonialism, Maori women and science

In Aotearoa New Zealand journeys of discovery and colonization were also scientific journeys that brought “Maori woman” under the intellectual control of the emerging “scientific” academy. This paper argues that the historical construction of “Maori woman” through the discourses of Enlightenment science continues to affect the constitution of the subjectivities of Maori women scientists today. The paper draws on a doctoral thesis that used literary historical techniques to investigate the imperial archives and feminist narrative interviews with 16 Maori women scientists to collect the research data. I explore the conditions by which the subject “Maori women scientist” emerges and how the Maori women experience these conditions in relation to how they see themselves. I conclude by arguing that the identity of “Maori woman scientist” appears to be “impossible fiction” due to the fragmented nature of the sign “Maori,” “woman,” and “scientist”, which can be “traced” to the historical construction of the signs.

Working at the Interface: Indigenous Students’ Experience of Undertaking Doctoral Studies in Aotearoa New Zealand

Māori (indigenous) 1 doctoral students in Aotearoa New Zealand face challenges not usually experienced by other doctoral candidates. We draw on data from in-depth interviews with 38 Māori doctoral candidates and argue that because of the tensions between academic disciplinary knowledge frameworks and knowledge drawn from te ao Māori (the Māori world) indigenous students have additional cultural, academic, and personal demands placed on them while aiming to produce research theses that meet conventional standards of academic scholarship. Complex methodological and ethical issues also emerge in undertaking doctoral research projects situated at the interface of academy and indigenous communities. Moreover, Māori students experience various degrees of tension between their sometimes strong cultural identities and their emerging and, therefore, less certain identities as researchers and scholars.

The gown and the korowai: Maori doctoral students and the spatial organisation of academic knowledge

This paper draws on 38 student interviews carried out in the course of the team research project ‘Teaching and Learning in the Supervision of Māori Doctoral Students’. Māori doctoral thesis work takes place in the intersections between the Māori (tribal) world of identifications and obligations, the organisational and epistemological configurations of academia and the bureaucratic requirements of funding or employing bureaucracies. To explore how students accommodate cultural, academic and bureaucratic demands, we develop analytical tools combining three intellectual traditions: Māori educational theory, Bernstein’s sociology of the academy and Lefebvre’s conceptual trilogy of perceived, conceived and lived space. The paper falls into six parts. Section 1 is an overview of the research and is followed in Section 2 by identification of intersecting ‘locations’ in which Māori students’ theses are produced. In Section 3, Henri Lefebvre’s spatial analysis highlights connections between students’ multiple allegiances and affinities. Drawing on Bernstein, Section 4 relates the theses to the organisation of ‘Western’ academic disciplines. Section 5 addresses students’ cultural locations beyond the reach of ‘Western’ disciplines. We conclude with implications for supervision.

Colouring the pedagogy of doctoral supervision: considering supervisor, student and knowledge through the lens of indigeneity

According to David Lusted, doctoral pedagogy is a ‘process of production and exchange’ that, at best, leads to transformations in all its players. Taking Lusted’s three abstract ‘agencies’ of pedagogy as our starting point – teacher/supervisor, student, and knowledge – we draw on data from interviews with indigenous (Māori) doctoral students and their supervisors to particularise the players by situating them within the context of Aotearoa/New Zealand. In so doing, we draw attention to the ways in which matters of history and locality colour this core pedagogy of doctoral education. We also highlight the dynamic boundaries between the academy and its outside communities, between traditional academic knowledge and traditional indigenous knowledge, and the possibilities for transformation of all involved.

Out of Place: Indigenous Knowledge in the Science Curriculum

This chapter reviews the history of indigenous science education research, which has emerged from wider discourses of multiculturalism and equity for non-Western students in science education. There is a history of fierce debate between oppositional positions taken on the question of including indigenous knowledge (IK) in the science curriculum: while none dispute the importance of indigenous knowledge, only some equate it with indigenous science, understood as a valid form of science incompatible with Western science. Research into the inclusion of Māori knowledge in the science curriculum in Aotearoa New Zealand indicates that such efforts often employ emblematic aspects, extracted from authentic cultural contexts, and treated in isolation from the historical socio-political relationship between Māori and Western cultures. In this way, including indigenous knowledge in the science curriculum exposes deeper layers of cultural knowledge to caricature, in the form of distorted representation. Rather, to hold IK in tension with science catalyses insight into the philosophical nature of science, serves as a reminder of occasions when science has been subject to political distortion, and returns the focus to the question of equity in outcomes of science education for indigenous students.

International Science Educators’ Perceptions of Scientific Literacy

Science educators worldwide are calling for the development of scientific literacy in today’s schools, yet there is little consensus as to what criteria or goals might constitute the attainment of scientific literacy. In this chapter, we explore the diverse meanings international science teacher educators have for scientific literacy as it relates to their own cultural backgrounds and professional practices. We conducted the study in the interest of preserving two types of context: the unique context of a science educator’s life story and the biographical contexts that enrich the meaning of the individuals’ perceptions of scientific literacy. Participants involved in the study included six science teacher educators representing: Guinea; West Africa; South Korea; Japan; New Zealand; Austria; and Colombia. We initiated interviews with participants using several open-ended questions with the intent to elicit conversational responses. We wrote the narratives presented in the study to preserve the insights shared by participants from their unique perspectives, and to avoid imposing an interpretation drawn from our worldview. Ultimately, the chapter highlights the ways in which scientific literacy is reflective of social, cultural and political situations that shape local communities and science teacher education practices.

Brown Bodies in White Coats: Maori Women Scientists and Identity

Abstract The literature on women and science primarily targets issues of access and participation and it has tended to scrutinise structural barriers to participation, recover narratives of women scientists to raise their profile, and focus substantially on the history of science. While this literature has contributed much to our understanding of women and science, the role of colonialism and the embodiment of ‘race’ in womens participation in science have been rendered ‘invisible’. This paper is drawn from a wider research project that includes open‐ended interviews with 16 Maori women scientists. For this paper, I have focused on parts of the womens interviews when they were asked to discuss their identity in relation to their work. I draw on feminist, postcolonial, and poststructural theories to explore some of the conditions by which the subject ‘Maori women scientist’ emerges in the workplace and how the Maori women experience these conditions in relation to how they see themselves. I will argue that the term ‘Maori woman scientist’ appears to be ‘impossible fiction’ due to the fragmented nature of the identity, ‘Maori’, ‘woman’, and ‘scientist’.