Page 443 - Cultural Studies of Science Education

418 P. Chigeza and H. Whitehouse

Philemon and Hilary (“we”) rely on each other to interpret what the other does not
understand. To give one example: Hilary is direct while Philemon is circumspect.
To be direct is considered rude in the mind of a Shona-thinking person. Hilary, still
thinking like a Californian, thinks writing and speaking around a point, without
getting to or making the point, appears impolite. Consequently, we have held many
illuminating conversations while working together that led to “us” adopting the
position of thinking and writing in dialectic. What we present here is a narrative of
our continuing conversations and recursive investigations into Philemon’s class-
room practice: how his students negotiated learning formal school science, and how
we thought about and analysed his research findings.

Classroom Research with Torres Strait Islander Students

Philemon taught and conducted classroom research with 44 grade 9 Torres Strait
Islander student participants for his doctoral research project. Australian indige-
nous people include Aboriginal people, from all across the Australia continent,
and Torres Strait Islander people who originate from the Torres Strait Islands and
from Cape York in far north Queensland. There were Aboriginal students in
Philemon’s research classrooms, but after much agonising, these students were not
included in this particular study for one practical reason, that of irregular school
attendance. All the Torres Strait Islander students who participated in this study
were boarders at Djarragun College. Many parents from remote communities
make the decision to educate their children at boarding schools as this means their
children will attend school every day and have access to sports and the general
social advantages of being a boarder. Djarragun College has been a boarding
college since its inception in 2001 and its students are a mix of boarders and day
students. Many of Philemon’s Aboriginal students were day students and conse-
quently their attendance was not as regular as the Torres Strait Islander group.
Philemon made the decision to try to eliminate school attendance as a confounding
variable in this research for the reason that school attendance is shown to strongly
influence indigenous educational attainment in Australia. Additionally, Philemon
wished to investigate practices other than attendance when researching with his
students. All year 9 students participated in the classroom learning activities; how-
ever. formal data were collected only with Torres Strait Islander boarders who had
their parents’ and guardians’ permissions to be included in the study during the
research cycles in 2006, 2007 and 2008. This was a very personal project for both
of us. For Philemon, it was a matter of desire to teach his students well. For Hilary,
it was a matter of desire to support Philemon as her Ph.D. student. It became a
journey into the epistemology and ontology of the students and our own as the
students, initially positioned as subjects of research, taught us a very great
deal about the socio-cultural praxis of science education in Australia. Our thoughts
about the nature of science education, language, place and culture are what we
discuss with you in this chapter.