Page 452 - Cultural Studies of Science Education

35 Australian Torres Strait Islander Students 427

Table 3 Combined TSI Student Categories (n = 44)
Main Structural Features of
Competence in English and
Percentage of Study Observed Participation in
Categories Number of Students Group (%) Learning Science
A1 5 11 Competent in English,
able to demonstrate
understandings, active
learners
A2 4 9 Competent in English, able
to demonstrate some
understandings, passive
learners
B2 15 34 Limited competence
in English, able to
demonstrate some
understandings, passive
learners
C3 20 45 Not competent in English,
demonstrated very
limited understandings,
minimal participation in
any classroom activity

and technologies; conduct and apply safety audits; draw conclusions and explain
patterns; communicate scientific ideas using scientific terminology in appropriate
formats; and reflect on learning and reflect on different perspectives and evaluate
the influence of people’s values and culture on the application of science (QSA
2004, italics ours).
Constructivism (in all its many promulgations) holds that, given the appropriate mix
of teaching strategies and pedagogical approaches, students learning science will con-
struct their own understandings from what they already know of the world and from
what they are invited to know in the classroom. Skamp (1998, p. 6) describes how many
science educators view constructivism not only as a theory of learning but as a “way of
knowing … a theory about what knowledge is and how it is generated.” When students
construct knowledge in non-western languages, it reproduces ontologically different
ways of being in the world. This leads us to ask, can Australian formal education rec-
ognise this form of constructivism? We struggle to understand how constructivist
approaches can work justly and equitably in indigenous classrooms. For forty-five
percent of Philemon’s students, a limited facility in English proved a barrier to active
learning participation. This group relied on the language capital they brought to the
classroom to negotiate learning. They used Torres Strait Creole to discuss physical sci-
ence concepts in class and were either unable or unwilling to actively construct their
understandings in written or spoken English. A teacher who must teach in Standard
Australian English cannot judge the extent of formal science learning when adolescents
call on non-English languages to construct their understandings. And yet to work only
in English is, for Malcolm (1998, p. 131), indicative of “symbolic exclusion” in that: