Page 257 - Cultural Studies of Science Education

18 A Case Study of David, a Native Hawaiian Science Teacher 231

complex issues of race, culture, language, and power. Loucks-Horsley, Stiles, and
Hewson (1996) describe effective professional development programs as providing
situated, collegial, sustained, and transdisciplinary learning that
• Develops sensitivity to the diverse learning needs of individuals and people of
different cultures, languages, races, and gender (p. 1)
• Supports students’ construction of science knowledge by “doing science
and mathematics, by investigating for themselves and building their own
understanding, as opposed to being required to memorize what is ‘already
known’” (p. 2)
Such an approach requires teachers to develop experiential knowledge about their
diverse students’ lives, cultures, and communities.
Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT), a theory of human development
rooted in dialectical materialism, provides an analytical framework to understand
and potentially address issues of marginalization and underrepresentation in sci-
ence education. Beginning with Vygotsky’s key insight in the 1920s that all intra-
subjective processes that appear to be individualistic begin as intersubjective
processes situated in material and social settings, Vygotsky, A.N. Leont’ev, and
others developed a theory of human development, learning, and self nested in
historical and cultural contexts. Originating in biological views of activity, which
recognized that living things are part of systems connecting them to their environment
and other living things, activity theory began to be applied to human development
and cultural change.
Leont’ev (1981) extended Vygotsky’s insight into a materialist theory of self when
he proposed that human subjectivity develops out of each person’s unique complex
of material and social experiences: “[T]he activity of separate individuals depends on
their place in society, on the conditions that fall to their lot, and on idiosyncratic,
individual factors (p. 47). … [S]ociety produces the activity of the individuals it
forms” (p. 48).
Engestrom (1999) adapted Vgotsky’s central concepts of externalization/inter-
nalization into a view of learning as an expansive cycle:
[T]he expansive cycle of an activity system begin with an almost exclusive emphasis on
internalization, on socializing and training the novices to become competent members
of the activity as it is routinely carried out. Creative externalization occurs first in the
form of discrete individual innovations. As the disruptions and contradictions of
the activity become more demanding, internalization increasingly takes on the form of
critical self reflection – and externalization, a search for solutions, increases. Externali-
zation reaches its peak when a new model for the activity is designed and implemented.
(pp. 33–34)
Working within CHAT, Stetsenko and Arievitch (2004) extended Leont’ev’s theo-
rizing of human subjectivity with the notion of an embodied, socially situated self
able to learn and consider new activities:
These processes of ‘doing’ the self … include the ways by which people respond to chal-
lenges and conflicts in their lives, how they internalize, interpret and also further develop
the sociocultural rules and standards of what it takes to be a human being. Thus, the self is
highly dependent on the existing array and accessibility of cultural resources as well as
highly susceptible to issues of power and contestation. (p. 494)