Page 403 - Cultural Studies of Science Education

378 C. Buxton and E.F. Provenzo

education in the Malawian context challenge us to rethink our ideas about the roles
of critical thinking and indigenous knowledge in teacher education.
Perhaps part of the way forward in reconsidering our own roles as teacher
educators in economically advantaged nations can arise from closer collabora-
tions between content area educators and foundations educators in our teacher
preparation programs. The two of us (Buxton, a science educator with an interest
in multicultural and multilingual learning contexts, and Provenzo, a social critic
with an interest in the history of science) have been engaged in fruitful writing
and teaching projects together for several years. We have experienced firsthand
how our different training and backgrounds can be brought together in ways that
push both our thinking and that of our students in new directions. Below, each
of us shares our thoughts on ways that we might better support our teachers in
becoming critical science educators.

Cory’s Perspective

While I wholeheartedly agree with Stonebanks’ critique of our shortcomings in
teacher education when it comes to supporting our preservice teachers in devel-
oping critical thinking and leveraging their students’ nonmainstream or indigenous
knowledge, I will also confess to remaining more optimistic about the current
generation of preservice teachers than some. It is true that they are the Web 2.0 genera-
tion who want to share the minutia of their lives with friends and perhaps even with
total strangers via Facebook posts, Twitter tweets, and text messages, yet they may
be even more isolated than past generations from direct contact with people from
different socioeconomic, ethnic, racial, and religious backgrounds. They are also
the first generation of teachers who have, themselves, come through school expe-
riencing the new standards and accountability-driven teaching and learning as
students. At times I feel that this has led to a degree of anti-intellectualism in many
of these students, especially when they are asked to struggle with ambiguous
topics. One of my biggest concerns about our current model of standards-based
instruction is that it seems to promote uniformity of thinking and reaffirm the
tendency students already have to focus on the “right answer” – what the teacher
or test developer wants to hear – rather than promoting intellectual curiosity.
Despite these concerns, I also find this current generation of preservice teachers to
be idealistic and justice oriented, though perhaps in a somewhat different way than
my generation.
This current generation of students has been required to do considerably more
community service and service learning than past generations. While my generation
may be more intellectually critical, this generation seems more comfortable taking
action to directly improve individual’s lives. We were more likely to protest policies,
by building shantytowns and holding sit-ins to argue against institutional invest-
ments in Apartheid-era South Africa. They are more likely to do direct service, such
as spending time volunteering in a soup kitchen, shelter, or after-school program.