Page 262 - Cultural Studies of Science Education

236 P.W.U. Chinn and D.D.M. Hana‘ike

include numerous face-to-face, telephone, and e-mail interviews with David
spanning nearly a decade, videotapes of classroom lessons, a student teacher’s com-
ments from his observation/participation in David’s class, David’s writings about his
teaching philosophy and practices, and measures of 9th grade student academic achieve-
ment, attitudes, and science learning from his master’s degree (Hana‘ike 2000).
David’s personal voice appears in extensive quotes from e-mail and personal
interviews while his activities as an educator and researcher are based on video-
taped activities, peer observations, and the coauthor’s familiarity with his setting,
colleagues, and students as a former teacher in David’s school. Since the first ver-
sion of the paper was written several years ago when David was in his administrator
preparation program, our informal interviews have explored questions that lay out-
side our 20-year relationship. Who were the sources of his cultural practices and
values? When and why did he begin to integrate his cultural knowledge into his
teaching? Our conversations focus on the idiosyncrasies of human development, the
agentic self, and contradictions and tensions within and across activity systems that
may impede or provide opportunities for learning and change.

Results

Genealogy of Learning

David grew up in an ethnically diverse, semi-rural community on windward Oahu,
graduated from a private school for students of Hawaiian ethnicity, and majored in
biology at a West Coast college. His story shows the importance of genealogy, a
remembering and honoring of key persons and relationships that is fundamental in
Hawaiian culture. Despite knowing David for over 20 years, I did not know how
significant genealogy in all its forms was until he mentioned in an e-mail that he
provided his personal genealogy of learning to use computers in applying success-
fully to a Hawaiian foundation for a computer for his aunt’s research. This was a
practical outcome of his statement “if you did not know your genealogy, you don’t
have rights.” In the section below, David explores the role of family members, men-
tors, and key experiences in learning and professional growth.
My name is David D. Maika‘i Hana‘ike. I am the fourth child of six children. My parents
are both college educated and attended the University of Oregon. My mother majored in
mathematics and my father in psychology and English. My father was in graduate school
when he married my mother. They lived in Oregon close to family (my mother’s side,
French, English), where two of my siblings were born. With the death of his mother, my
dad brought his family back to Hawai‘i to live with his father to watch over him. Our family
settled in Kane’ohe on the Windward side of O’ahu where we were often in the bay fishing,
crabbing, swimming and kayaking. We were too far from the recreation centers, and the
ocean afforded much of our entertainment and natural history.
Our educational heritage came from my mother and my father. My maternal grandmother
was a teacher and a principal in small schools in Oregon. My paternal grandmother went
through normal school and taught for a while. My paternal grandfather was a minister and