This book presents the findings of a case study conducted in a Māori medium school where a space was created for Pūtaiao (Western science) teaching and learning from year 1 to 13. Science is currently taught in Te Reo Māori in primary school and in English in secondary school, and evidence suggests that students are engaging in science education, learning to investigate, and achieving in science. In New Zealand, most students attend English medium state schools; however, approximately 15% of indegenous students attend Māori medium schools. These schools are underpinned with Kura Kaupapa Māori philosophy, which is culturally specific to Māori and aims to revitalise the Māori language, and Māori knowledge and culture. Māori students’ engagement and achievement continues to be a challenge for both mainstream and Māori medium schools, teachers and students due to lack of access to science teachers who can teach in Te Reo Māori. School leaders and whanau (families) believed that by year 9 (age 13) their students had developed their identity as Māori, and were proficient in Te Reo Māori. They wanted their students to have the option to learn science, experience success and have the choice to conitnue in science, so they made the difficult decision for science to be taught in English in secondary school. The book discusses how teachers in indigenous schools, who have extensive knowledge of culture and context specific pedagogies, can gain confidence to teach science through collaboration with and support from researchers with whom they have developed strong professional relationships.

This open access book engages with the response-ability of science education to Indigenous ways-of-living-with-Nature. Higgins deconstructs the ways in which the structures of science education—its concepts, categories, policies, and practices—contribute to the exclusion (or problematic inclusion) of Indigenous science while also shaping its ability respond. Herein, he undertakes an unsettling homework to address the ways in which settler colonial logics linger and lurk within sedimented and stratified knowledge-practices, turning the gaze back onto science education. This homework critically inhabits culture, theory, ontology, and history as they relate to the multicultural science education debate, a central curricular location that acts as both a potential entry point and problematic gatekeeping device, in order to (re)open the space of responsiveness towards Indigenous ways-of-knowing-in-being.

This is a handbook prepared for the Saskatoon Public School system (Canada)

This book emphasizes the significance of teaching science in early childhood classrooms, reviews the research on what young children are likely to know about science and provides key points on effectively teaching science to young children. Science education, an integral part of national and state standards for early childhood classrooms, encompasses not only content-based instruction but also process skills, creativity, experimentation and problem-solving. By introducing science in developmentally appropriate ways, we can support young children’s sensory explorations of their world and provide them with foundational knowledge and skills for lifelong science learning, as well as an appreciation of nature. This book emphasizes the significance of teaching science in early childhood classrooms, reviews the research on what young children are likely to know about science, and provides key points on effectively teaching young children science. Common research methods used in the reviewed studies are identified, methodological concerns are discussed and methodological and theoretical advances are suggested.

This state-of-the art research Handbook provides a comprehensive, coherent, current synthesis of the empirical and theoretical research concerning teaching and learning in science and lays down a foundation upon which future research can be built. The contributors, all leading experts in their research areas, represent the international and gender diversity that exists in the science education research community. As a whole, the Handbook of Research on Science Education demonstrates that science education is alive and well and illustrates its vitality. It is an essential resource for the entire science education community, including veteran and emerging researchers, university faculty, graduate students, practitioners in the schools, and science education professionals outside of universities. The National Association for Research in Science Teaching (NARST) endorses the Handbook of Research on Science Education as an important and valuable synthesis of the current knowledge in the field of science education by leading individuals in the field. For more information on NARST, please visit: http://www.narst.org/.

This handbook gathers in one volume the major research and scholarship related to multicultural science education that has developed since the field was named and established by Atwater in 1993. Culture is defined in this handbook as an integrated pattern of shared values, beliefs, languages, worldviews, behaviors, artifacts, knowledge, and social and political relationships of a group of people in a particular place or time that the people use to understand or make meaning of their world, each other, and other groups of people and to transmit these to succeeding generations. The research studies include both different kinds of qualitative and quantitative studies. The chapters in this volume reflect differing ideas about culture and its impact on science learning and teaching in different K-14 contexts and policy issues. Research findings about groups that are underrepresented in STEM in the United States, and in other countries related to language issues and indigenous knowledge are included in this volume.

This dissertation provides a critical analysis of three informal science education partnerships that resulted from a 2003-2006 National Science Foundation grant titled, "Archaeology Pathways for Native Learners" (ESI-0307858), hosted by the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center. This dissertation is designed to contribute to understandings of learning processes that occur within and at the intersection of diverse worldviews and knowledge systems, by drawing upon experiences derived from three disparate contexts: 1) The Navajo Nation Museum in Window Rock, Arizona; 2) The A:shiwi A:wan Museum and Heritage Center on the Zuni Reservation in Zuni, New Mexico; and 3) Science learning camps at the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center for Native youth of southern New England. While informal science education is increasingly moving toward decolonizing and cross-cutting institutional boundaries of learning through critical thinking and real-world applications, the construction of "science" (even within diverse contexts) continues to be framed within a homogenous, predominantly Euro-American perspective. This study analyzes the language of Western science employed in these partnerships, with particular attention to the use of Western/Native binaries that shape perceptions of Native peoples and communities, real or imagined. Connections are drawn to broader nation-state interests in education, science, and the global economy. The role of educational evaluation in these case studies is also critically analyzed, by questioning the ways in which it is constructed, conducted, and evaluated for the purposes of informing future projects and subsequent funding. This study unpacks problems of the dominant language of "expert" knowledge embedded in Western science discourse, and highlights the possibilities of indigenous knowledge systems that can inform Western science frameworks of education and evaluation. Ultimately, this study suggests that research methodologies and epistemologies that acknowledge and integrate indigenous ways of knowing can advance and broaden Western constructions of science, the academy, and educational research and praxis on a national and global scale.