Page 385 - Cultural Studies of Science Education

360 C.D. Stonebanks

Ever intrigued and fascinated (as he would often say) with the manner in which
people taught and what they taught, Joe broadly smiled and said, “tell me”, and so
I did.
A central theme of Teachers as Researchers involves (…) the ability to identify and trace
the effects of ethnocentrism within the Cartesian-Newtonian-Baconian tradition. Over the
last few centuries, the western belief in the superiority of such frameworks of knowing has
been assumed and widely accepted in western societies (…) Knowledge producers who
operated outside of the boundaries of Cartesian science were viewed not only as inferior
but uncivilized. (…) In this ethnocentric view, ‘true knowledge’ can only be produced by
a detached, disinterested, external observer who works to ignore background (contextual)
information by developing objective research techniques. (Kincheloe 2003, p. 11)
Despite multiculturalism courses and their cross curricular applications into
areas like science education being touted as “par for the course” in many depart-
ments of education across Canada and in the United States, we are still left with the
realities of a field that has a deep impact on minorities and indigenous knowledge.
One of these significant realities is that an 80% White (Clark and O’Donnell, 1999)
preservice teaching population (in my own local anecdotal observation, much
higher) remains consistent, coupled with a prevailing sense that the role of teachers
is to reproduce their own culture and knowledge (Semali and Kincheloe 1999)
while civilizing others (Cavanagh and Harper 1994). This ideology creates a barrier
for any real meaningful inclusion and does much to safeguard the powerbloc
(Kincheloe and Steinberg 1997).
Stemming from Fiske’s (1993) use of the term, Kincheloe and Steinberg (1997)
define the “powerbloc” as power wielders who hold access to valued resources
(information, truth, cultural capital, wealth, media, etc.). To maintain power, educa-
tion needs to be controlled to guarantee that children are schooled to accept existing
societal structures, including the continued subjugation of indigenous people (both
mind and body), locally and abroad. There is privilege associated with these systems
of powerbloc, which is considered universal and not exclusive to indigenous
people. While teaching in McGill University’s Office of First Nations and Inuit
Education, which is a teacher education program serving (and often taught within)
indigenous communities, it was common for students to ask if I taught courses to
them, with the same rigor and expectations that I did in the “regular” teacher educa-
tion program, delivered on McGill’s campus, in the Department of Integrated
Studies in Education. My answer was always an emphatic “yes!” Inevitably, my
students would follow with the ensuing question: why then, are their teaching
certificates only valid in First Nation and Inuit schools? In a course that I taught in
Cree territory, students were asked to search the internet for natural science lesson
plan resources, and analyze them for their potential use. Then, they were directed
to modify them for teaching in their particular context. One student inquired if
students in McGill’s “regular” program had to do the same. When I responded with
a “yes,” the following question was somewhat rhetorical as to whether other
instructors did the same. If so, then why did non-Native teachers in the community
do so little to modify their comprehension of subjects to the Cree context? Are
their “ways of knowing” so inferior, compared with non-Native counterparts, that