Indigenous Knowledges and Science Education: Complexities, Considerations and Praxis

Indigenous Knowledges and Science Education: Complexities, Considerations and Praxis

The push to teach Indigenous knowledges and ways of knowing through school curricula is not new. Many colonizer countries have government-based initiatives to purportedly better cater for Indigenous students through including Indigenous knowledges and perspectives in curriculum and pedagogy or to promote more understanding relationships between non-Indigenous and Indigenous populations. In particular, New Zealand, some jurisdictions in the United States, Australia and Canada have official initiatives that include Indigenous knowledges in the science curriculum (Aikenhead and Michell, 2011). These initiatives may receive large rhetorical support but little action and implementation in classrooms, particularly in ‘Whitestream’ (Grande, 2000) classrooms catering largely for non-Indigenous student populations.