Module 4 Post 2 ~ Reconciling Western and Aboriginal Science

http://www.scidev.net/en/policy-briefs/raising-awareness-of-indigenous-knowledge-in-scien.html

Reflecting on the students in my elective senior science courses that I taught, there were very few if any Aboriginal students in the classes. I never had any conversations with our Aboriginal Support Teacher about students in those classes, not because they weren’t requiring support, but because they weren’t there. I hadn’t really thought about it with the rest of the busy life of a teacher going on I didn’t always reflect on the class makeup. I had many other Aboriginal students in jr science courses that were required or computer courses that were electives. I wonder now if the reason for that is that our western based science classes are terribly disengaging for Aboriginal students?

The SciDev policy brief looks at whether Indigenous Knowledge should be added into western science lessons. It speaks to global sustainability issues, resource rights of Indigenous peoples, globalization, colonization, collaborative partnerships, local validity and accuracy of IK.

After completing our final paper I did look into the inclusion of IK into science courses from a Elementary Science Literature Review (

http://education.alberta.ca/media/571606/elemscilit.pdf) and see quite clearly that this is a direction that education needs to go to to serve the needs of all of our students. While it will certainly serve the needs of our Aboriginal students, it is another way to tell the story of science which helps any learner who is having difficulty. Teaching of science, especially abstract or microscopic kind of concepts requires great story telling. Being able to access another source of stories or analogies would make me a better science teacher for all of my students.