Page 388 - Cultural Studies of Science Education

31 On Critical Thinking, Indigenous Knowledge and Raisins Floating in Soda Water 363

I have attached some photos for you and your students. I hope you find this
information useful and I look forward to doing work with you.
Sincerely,
Dr. Robert Murray
Department of Micro & Marine Biology
Distinguished Professor of Caveat Emptor
University of St Barbara
Montgomery, Alabama, USA

As a student reads the letter, I place some jars on a table at the head of the class
and hand out an “observation sheet” for the students to fill in. The screen at the
front of the class has an endless looping of images showing highly magnified insect
eggs, insect larvae, a close-up of an intimidating looking water insect with a series
of menacing-looking mandibles behind a suction-cup like mouth, along with a
photo of Mike Rowe from the Discovery Channel network’s show, “Dirty Jobs”
where he is holding up a jar filled with dirty water. The students get close to the
jars, some staring intensively at the contents, and others giving a quick look and
then shuddering due to some degree of entomophobia. All of the students work
intently on filling in the handout. I watch and observe, and I wait to see what my
many brilliant students who have demonstrated a working knowledge of critical
thinking in the past, high regard for multiple ways of knowing and a commitment
to individual perspectives, will do. After all, I have been assured so often by these
students that they “get it”: understand the nature of power, constructivism, and critical
thinking. The preservice teachers are energetic, earnest, and they have no idea what
will soon be revealed to them.
Writing this chapter and reflecting on explaining this lesson to Joe, I cannot
help but think of what we have lost in Joe. Of course, the loss of Joe as a
husband, father, brother, friend, mentor is overwhelming, but the academic
world will also not be the same without his exhaustive energy, his genius, and
his deep dedication to social justice. With Joe’s unexpected and tragic death in
2009, we are left to continue the many research projects to which he was so
strongly committed. In Mistissini, we were working on the development of a
participant action research project that would examine the all-too-common dis-
connect between eurowestern/dominant knowledge and indigenous knowledge.
But our research was not to end in this community. Our hope was to establish
research connections between indigenous communities, taking the all-too-famil-
iar problem of decolonizing schools and creating truly inclusive environments
for those students in which schools have never really served. From the geo-
graphical location of Mistissini to other indigenous communities, our discus-
sions included interconnectedness with the indigenous communities in the
United States, Australia, New Zealand, and so forth. My recent trip to Malawi
to establish research connections for critical pedagogy and indigenous knowl-
edge in public schooling is an extension of that work, and I often thought about
the discussion I had with Joe during that time in Malawi.