Page 290 - Cultural Studies of Science Education

264 S.N. Martin

The conflict around human migration resides not in the movement itself, but in the
tendency, as Gruenewald (2003b) suggests, for people to fail “to consider places as
products of human decisions” and in doing so, begin to “accept their existence as non-
controversial and inevitable” (p. 627). He argues that “by not challenging unconscious
assumptions about the cultural formations of places,” we “obscure the connections
between education, culture and place,” and in doing so, we “release people from their
responsibility as place makers” (Greenwood 2009, p.11). As in the Hawaiian public
schools, teachers in Philadelphia urban schools are responsible for educating “other
people’s children” and they are being asked to do so without themselves having been
educated about the history of the place (the land around them) or the people, including
the original settlers or the newcomers. This is true because current curricula trends in
US schools, and indeed, around the world, ignore the significance of place in educa-
tion. Students everywhere are learning the same information regardless of the different
places they inhabit, including generations of current and future K-12 educators.
By failing to educate our students/citizens about their relationship to place, we
forfeit any power we have as science teachers, and as community members and
leaders, to acknowledge and validate the knowledge our students bring with them
from their lived experiences. In doing so, Joe Kincheloe (2006) argues, science
educators implicitly deny the “notion that any science is socially constructed”
(p. 155). As well, these practices negate any opportunities for teachers and students
to engage in critical dialogue about the nature of science knowledge or even the
purpose of science education.
In this chapter, I have advocated the need for paying attention to the personal
narratives of the individual students and teachers in a classroom, a school, and com-
munity. Learning about and sharing the histories of groups of peoples who inhabit
physical places and social spaces enables educators and students to challenge
assumptions of cultural colonization. Such a perspective seeks not to minimize the
struggles and conflicts associated with the history of human migration, but to help
individuals understand their experiences within the historical context of ever-changing
people and places. From this perspective, it becomes important to reconsider the
purpose of education in relationship to the places and social spaces we inhabit, both
as individuals and collective groups of people in shared communities.
Greenwood asserts that if educators have the goal of having students interrogate
place as part of the school curricula, they should be inquiring, “what has happened
in this place and what needs to be remembered, restored, or conserved?” (2009, p. 3).
While many educators and policy makers insist that current pedagogical practice
focusing on standardization of curricula promotes equitable learning opportunities,
critical place-based science educators argue these practices limit individuals’ not only
from asking what has happened, but more importantly, what could/should happen in
this place and what role could/should I or my community play in deciding what
happens in this place? A science curriculum that promotes an understanding of the
socio-ecological relationships between people and place aims to empower individuals
in communities. Critical reflection on each individual’s situation within a community
can enable teachers and students to engage in the decolonization of school and science,
followed by the collective reinhabitation of shared places and spaces.