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Dialogue between cultures in Tzeltal teachers' cultural discourse: Coconstruction of an intercultural proposal for science education Article in Journal of Multicultural Discourses ¡ July 2013 DOI: 10.1080/17447143.2012.756492
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Dialogue between cultures in Tzeltal teachers' cultural discourse: coconstruction of an intercultural proposal for science education Antonia Candela
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Department of Educational Research, Center of Research and Advanced Studies, Mexico City, Mexico Version of record first published: 23 Jan 2013. To cite this article: Antonia Candela (2013): Dialogue between cultures in Tzeltal teachers' cultural discourse: co-construction of an intercultural proposal for science education, Journal of Multicultural Discourses, DOI:10.1080/17447143.2012.756492 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17447143.2012.756492
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Journal of Multicultural Discourses, 2013 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17447143.2012.756492
Dialogue between cultures in Tzeltal teachers’ cultural discourse: co-construction of an intercultural proposal for science education
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Antonia Candela* Department of Educational Research, Center of Research and Advanced Studies, Mexico City, Mexico (Received 22 May 2012; final version received 1 December 2012) The cultural discourse of native Tzeltal teachers who put into practice an intercultural proposal to teach physics at high school level in native communities in Me´xico is analyzed in this ethnographic investigation. A theoretical pedagogical approach is developed with regard to the idea of initiating a dialogue between cultures, which will serve to develop the actual open curriculum in the school context. This research shows how the indigenous teachers co-construct an intercultural curriculum dealing with a science proposal, when they are allowed to introduce their cultural perspectives within it. These intercultural curriculums are important advances in order to enrich the scientific education for all the population. We identify the complexities of this dialogue showing how teachers contextualize and apparently dispel the myth of the universality of scientific knowledge and enrich the teaching perspective by appropriating the proposal through autonomous enculturation of science. The teachers use social criteria in order to incorporate those aspects of science that fit their own culture and are beneficial for their community. Keywords: intercultural education; science education; high school; cultural dialogue
Introduction The global world in which we live generates a growing inequality that leads to the migration of large human groups, who leave their cultural context of origin. This situation contributes to a great presence of multicultural classrooms in schools in most countries around the world. In the Latin American region, 50 million native individuals and more than 400 peoples of diverse cultural origins co-exist with a Western milieu (Lo´pez 1996), generally in marginalized conditions. The variety of cultures in classrooms, the increased awareness of respect for diversity, and the promotion of educational equality, as well as challenges to the imposition of Western science as the only legitimate explanation for natural phenomena (Golinski 1998; May 1999), have contributed to putting intercultural approaches, particularly for science education, on the international agenda. Many authors from all continents have proposed the need for intercultural education for the entire population in order to promote a democratic, tolerant, and antiracist upbringing (Godenzzi, 1996; Iba´n˜ez and Marco 1996; May 1999; Ogawa 1995; Semali and Kincheloe 1999) in an attempt to face conflicts and power *Email: acandela@cinvestav.mx # 2013 Taylor & Francis
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domination against the indigenous population (Bertely 2008; Mun˜ oz 2002). This paper analyzes the relevance of an intercultural perspective for science education in a multi-cultural country, such as Mexico, as a means to reinforce our cultural identity and contribute to the recognition and respect for the cultures of different national ethnic groups, thus enriching the culture of the entire population. This paper also provides a description of the characteristics of an intercultural education proposal for teaching science at high level in Mexico. This proposal is open to dialogue among cultures and takes into consideration the actual variety of international perspectives on intercultural education, and particularly on intercultural science education, as well as the rich history around indigenous education in Mexico and the present debates and proposals on the topic in our country. This proposal was developed as part of a task force for the General Coordination for Bilingual Intercultural Education1 at Mexico’s Ministry of Public Education in which I participated as the specialist in the design of the open physics program. This work is a contribution to the debates where top-down proposals from the official institutions to the indigenous groups are usually confronted with important bottom-up curriculums developed from the indigenous contexts in a collaborative task between the local population and non-indigenous academic participants (Bertely 2008; Hamel 2010; Mora´ n Pe´ rez 2010). The relevance of the present paper is to present a different approach that takes advantage of opportunities at the official educational institutions, in order to develop a changing and contextual intercultural curriculum for science education that looks for cultural contributions of the local indigenous participants (teachers as well as students) to the curricular content. This approach recognizes the rich history of experiences and knowledge developed in Mexico by the top-down and the bottom-up perspectives, presenting a curriculum design from a governmental position, but trying to develop a democratic alternative that challenges the impositions to the local communities. The purpose of this paper is to present general curricular orientations on some scientific topics to several indigenous regions of Mexico, with the intention of defining the actual curriculum through educational practices at the school community (Aikenhead 2006), asking the teachers and students to develop those topics through their indigenous conceptualizations and cosmovision. However, the most specific contribution of the article is a cultural discourse analysis of two interviews to Tzeltal teachers during their high school course in their indigenous region, which followed this proposal. The analysis of these interviews attempts to bring understanding of the teachers’ ways to deal with cultural and scientific knowledge in a co-constructive process of the local curriculums. The intention is to learn how to deal with the indigenous cultural knowledge, as well as with their emotions, relationships, and actions towards scientific knowledge, in an intercultural curriculum. With this understanding and the co-construction of these intercultural curriculums, they can be implemented the rest of the population in order to enrich their scientific education. In order to study this experience, the theoretical foundations of the adopted perspective on intercultural science education are described, beginning with some considerations that have been formulated from psychological, sociological, and anthropological research about science learning. There is discussion about discourse analysis perspective that allows the description of cultural knowledge of indigenous teachers without imposing external categories to the analysis that can orient the conclusions to a predefined position. Thus, the paper intends to go beyond the
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theoretical-pedagogical strategies of an intercultural approach to science education and intends to get closer to the teachers’ ideas as a relevant component in the process of developing a local curriculum.
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Intercultural education: assimilation, autonomous enculturation, anthropological learning, and dialogue among cultures At the foundation of the proposals for intercultural science education, it is the need to challenge the idea that science is the only legitimate way to construct knowledge about nature and, therefore, resist the imposition of only one version of the world that attempts to integrate diverse ethnic groups into ‘modernity’ through an ethnocentric education. Nevertheless, there is a debate regarding what should be considered and how to establish this conceptual diversity. Pomeroy (1992) summarizes this debate by postulating nine research agendas for the intercultural teaching of science that can be grouped into two different perspectives: (1) assimilationist: all those proposals that take into account indigenous themes, explanations, and/or languages in order to include them in a scientific approach by trying to explain them from a scientific perspective and that, by emphasizing Western science’s power to explain and predict as opposed to other explanations, produces cultural fertilization and (2) anthropological: proposals that compare, build bridges, and analyze epistemological conceptions and explanations of the physical world contributed by Western science as well as students’ everyday knowledge or culture from the personal logic of each, with no attempt to subordinate one to the other. Colbern and Aikenhead (2003) believe that the latter perspectives are an alternative to assimilation, since they can lead to what they refer to as autonomous enculturation (revisiting specific content from another culture, such as science, in order to incorporate some of it as one’s own or vice versa) or anthropological learning (understanding scientific culture without modifying one’s own, which is what anthropologists do when they study a culture different from their own). There are educational research results that make scientific learning plausible without assimilation, that is, without excluding non-scientific ideas. On the one hand, it has been shown that a subject’s conceptions depend on the social and cultural context in which they manifest themselves (Bruner 1984; Cicourel 1974; Coll 1984) and that knowledge is situated as a product of activity, context, and culture (Lave 2011). What this means is that the same subject may display different conceptions depending on the contextual situation in which he finds himself. But in addition, these different conceptions are not necessarily coherent among each other and can be held without necessarily generating personal conflicts (Hodson 1999). We actually recognize that everyday or ‘common sense’ conceptions or representations, and other cultural concepts that are alternatives to science explanations, continue to be used in everyday contexts where their use is pertinent or relevant in some sense, not only by children, but also by educated adults and scientists themselves. This is what happens with religious conceptions and even some more or less explicit magical representations that are held because they are useful on practical everyday psychological or emotional levels. This is why advanced developments of science teaching propose the need to help develop the students’ ability to analyze different conceptions of the world and to teach them to make decisions regarding the most adequate perspective and explanation to use in each
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concrete situation. Jegede (1999) speaks of ‘collateral learning’ as the process by which a learner constructs, with a minimum of interference, Western and nonWestern meanings for the same concept, with the ability to use them alternatively depending on the requirements of each context. Hodson (1999) believes that an intercultural science curriculum should aim for the enculturation of students in science understood as a culture (Elkana 1983), but with no attempt at assimilation, that is, without demanding that they eliminate their worldview beliefs of origin. While practically all positions regarding intercultural education reject the ethnocentrism that has been imposed in Western education (Helberg 2001), and many question the assimilation of native conceptions with those of science, some positions slide toward a fundamentalist conception that limits education to the local needs of ethnic groups according to their own world view and that attempts to preserve, with no modifications, the purity of the cultures of origin. Juan Godenzzi’s (1996) proposals, which I share, question this fundamentalism and consider it important that interculturality respond not only to a new paradigm that rejects the universality proposed by science’s positivist outlook, but also to the cultural particularism that considers native conceptions as immutable. If we understand cultures as creations in a state of flux or as networks of meanings in constant reconstruction (Geertz 1973) and if we assume that civilizations are not fortresses, but rather crossroads, as Octavio Paz writes, then cultural diversity may be understood as the possibility of enriching mutual perspectives and conceptions. Even Western science is the product of a construction that incorporates knowledge from different cultures, such as the Chinese, the Arabian, and the Mesoamerican. This conception of interculturality allows us to perceive the presence of different cultures as the potential for mutual enrichment, and not solely as a confrontation to preserve one’s own, closing it off to the influence of the other, the new, and the different. In order for this to happen, a new rationality based on reciprocal respect is needed. Presently, interculturality is not a concept, neither is it an articulation of content, but rather, according to Godenzzi (1996), fundamentally a task. Interculturality is the task of constructing new relationships between cultures that go beyond the conflict, domination, and asymmetrical relations to establishing equitable relationships based on dialogue, within a context of equality and mutual respect, where there is openness toward different viewpoints without renouncing one’s own, but where both can transform themselves through mutual enrichment. For this reason, the new paradigm that Godenzzi proposes for interculturality is not based on content, but rather on a new form of relationship between subjects, in a dialogue between cultures based on a relationship of respect. However, it is important to be careful about romantic positions that forget the real difficulties to address dominant, racist, and power impositions to indigenous population. In today’s world, science is one of the most important forms of imposing an ethnocentric system of epistemology that hinders the relationship between cultures on an equal level. This is why it is important to dispell the myths about science in order to recognize that science is a construct, among many other possible, that has a reach and limitations like the other constructs, and which is culturally and historically conditioned. From the social studies of science (Golinski 1998; Latour 1987; Latour and Woolgar 1979; Phillips 1985; Shapir and Schaffer 2005), it has been shown that most of the pillars on which science’s positivist vision is based cannot stand when its
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practices of development are subjected to a socio-historical analysis. The results of these studies destroy the myths of science’s neutrality, of the objectivity of observation, of experimentation as an irrefutable form of validation of hypotheses and scientific theories, and of the universality of scientific proposals. Siegel (1997) considers that Western science is biased because it is based on epistemological assumptions that are cultural artifacts, but warns that this bias is only harmful when science presents itself as the absolute truth or as the only legitimate way to gain knowledge. To destroy the myths about science, it is essential to place scientific perspectives, conceptions, theories, and forms of application of scientific content in a historical, philosophical, social, ideological, and even political context, showing how the interests, ideology, and experience of those who develop knowledge are reflected (Banks 1993). The study of the historical, humanistic, and environmental impacts that science and technology have on some sectors of the society, both positive as well as negative, as the approaches of Science-Technology-Society (Aikenhead 1997) do, also contribute to destroying these myths. To contribute to mutual respect, it is important to study and legitimize other conceptions regarding natural phenomena, and especially those from our own traditional cultures that have contributed important knowledge to mankind and have demonstrated their validity over the millennia, while placing them at the same time in their historical, ideological, and cultural relativity. That is why Hodson (1999) postulates that intercultural teaching of science requires the metacognition that leads to reflecting on one’s own representations in relation to others and allows one to understand them and develop control over both, lessening the risks of irreflexive assimilation. Even though the relativization of all conceptions is assumed, according to the context, from my point of view we must avoid the risk of assuming an extreme position, akin to anarchism, that declares that any conception is equally valid. I conceive a conditional relativism not only for the cultural postulates of origin (within which developments are comparable), but also for the context in which they are applied, where the relative validity of a position or an explanation depends on the problem situation for which it is construed, its purpose, use, and application in a defined historical-cultural context.
Bilingual intercultural education in Mexico Mexico possesses a rich cultural history of more than 3000 years that is part of our innermost identity, even today (Bonfil 1990). Mexico’s pre-Hispanic cultures have made relevant contributions to universal knowledge in fields such as astronomy (the Mayan calendar is today’s most exact calendar), mathematics (the discovery of the concept of zero in Mayan culture), engineering and architectural construction (multiple cities and constructions with different functions), agriculture, and herbal medicine, among other fields of knowledge. All of these contributions to knowledge were developed maintaining human respect for nature. Today we still have more than 68 ethnic groups that keep their culture alive through their language and traditions (INALI2), which constitutes 6.5% of the Mexican population (2010 National Census). Unfortunately, these groups are the most marginalized in the country and are constantly interacting with modernity, oppression, and racism.
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Bertely’s (2008) works show that since the early XX century an important discussion has been held about indigenous education between liberals, who defend the need to incorporate the indigenous to modernity (Lewis 1951), and comunitarists, who try to maintain the communities as isolate islands with their own pure traditions (Redfield 1930). These different positions have been held to some degree up to the present as a background of multiple institutional programs for indigenous education. In the 1960s and 1970s, the dominant politics of the government, particularly in relation to science education, was the imposition of scientific theories against the ‘magic’ and ‘primitive’ ideas of the indigenous (Aguirre Beltra´ n 1976). More recently, national institutions (SEP, DGEI, INI) as well as international agencies (UNESCO, OIT, UNICEF) have a new intercultural discourse regarding respect for the indigenous identity. However, they still maintain a possible assimilationist perspective represented by romantic conceptions of pacific coexistence of different cultures in the global world. This perspective disregards the racism relations, the conflicts, and the power dominance against the indigenous population (Bertely 2008; Mun˜ oz 2002). Currently, there are several efforts of researchers working with the indigenous communities in order to construct educational proposals from the local needs and perspectives, from their ideology, worldviews, and interests (Bertely 2008, Gonza´ lez 2009; Hamel 2010; Mun˜ oz 2002; Mora´ n Pe´ rez 2010). These efforts have developed important knowledge about indigenous perspectives on education and the relationship of local and Western knowledge. In this effort, researchers are trying to face the conflicts these communities face with the national institutions. However, it is not easy to generalize these experiences to the rest of the indigenous communities as well as to the rest of the national population. In the 1990s, the Zapatista indigenous movement, which originated in the state of Chiapas, raised national and international demand for justice for native people, as well as the autonomy to preserve their language and culture. The impact of this movement was getting the State to open a space during the first years of this century in the Ministry of Public Education (the General Coordination for Intercultural Bilingual Education with Silvia Schmelkes as its leader and Director) to develop an intercultural bilingual approach to education. As a result of this initiative, initially four native universities, and currently ten universities, and an intercultural bilingual high school degree programs were created in various indigenous regions in the country. However, the continuity of the high school efforts has not been clear. This initiative began with experiences in indigenous areas with the intention of later spreading to the rest of the population that does not live between two cultures, as ethnic minority groups do. As Mun˜ oz (2002) states, efforts must continue from updown and down-up proposals that are trying to analyze and complement all the efforts.
Science learning as an intercultural task: psycho-pedagogical perspective Sociocultural psychology, which originated in the work of Vygotsky (1984), poses that children construct their knowledge not only through individual interaction with the natural environment, as Piagetian perspectives state, but also through social interaction and through internalized conceptualizations of their cultural surroundings. If we start out by recognizing that human beings are biologically similar, but
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culturally diverse, we may assume that different conceptions regarding the natural world arise from this cultural diversity. Anthropological perspectives (Maddock 1981), also referred to as ‘pluralists’ by some researchers (McKinley 2007), have contributed to this new look at science teaching by contextualizing learning in the cultural milieu and taking into account that different cultures and languages have different ways of naming and thinking about the world, which they use as reference points to construct different representations of the natural environment. In summary of the research on science teaching that takes into consideration the students’ sociocultural diversity, it is shown that learning is mediated by cultural, linguistic, and social factors (Lee and Luykx 2006). For Yehura Elkana (1983, 66), science, religion, art, philosophy, sense of humor, and music are different cultural dimensions. He adds that our culture (Western) ‘is today, above all, a culture of science and has been more and more so in the last centuries.’ Additionally, science uses a language to interpret, describe, and explain the ‘evidence’ from the scientific community’s perspectives (Lemke 1990; Sutton 1992), which is different from other ethnic groups and even from the everyday or ‘common sense’ ones. Learning science involves learning this new language. If we assume that science is a culture with a specific language, assumptions, and ways of interpreting reality, the learning of science must be understood as an intercultural task, since it involves bringing the students, who have developed different conceptions, closer to a new culture. We find that this task of cultural enculturation generates greater or less cross-cultural conflict depending on the students’ sociocultural origin. The cross-cultural conflict is greater for those who come from ethnic groups that have languages and views of the world that are different from those of the West (Colbern and Aikenhead 2003). This places indigenous individuals in a position of disadvantage by forcing them to modify or reject their forms of learning and cultural conceptions, which are normally labeled as deficient, erroneous, magical, or naı¨ve, and are therefore scorned at school, with a racist attitude. Within the framework of this receptiveness, a proposal was made to open a dialogue between different cultural systems of interpretation and develop respect for cultural diversity. The starting point for a respectful dialogue is allowing every classroom and every school to decide the language in which pedagogical interaction is to be established and the way in which this flexible curricular proposal is to be fulfilled. It is assumed from the beginning that it is important for indigenous groups that their youngest members learn Western science in order to be able to act as global citizens, while at the same time acting as members of their culture and society (McKinley 2007). It is not a matter of assimilating different world views into one perspective, but rather of recognizing that different interpretations of reality can and have coexisted throughout history, given their relative validity in explaining the world. These conceptions can be comparable or complementary in certain aspects, but in others they have a different epistemological structural logic that makes them incompatible (George 1999). While the goal is to include the best contributions to universal knowledge regarding natural phenomena from our traditional cultures, the systemization of that knowledge, because of the degree of discrimination experienced by indigenous communities, is a pending task in many theme areas. Native knowledge is transmitted from generation to generation by example, imitation, and orally (George
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1999; Maurial 1999), so it is not easily accessible outside the community. Nonetheless, there are numerous studies in Mexico that have advanced the analysis of different cultural world views (Lenderdorf 2004; Lo´ pez Austin 1996, among others). These studies should be taken into account for creating an intercultural science curriculum. It is also necessary to evaluate and learn from those intercultural educational experiences, that in different parts of the world, but especially in Latin America, have attempted to build a cuuriculum from a relationship with indigenous communities (Gasche´ 1995; Godenzzi 1996; Lo´ pez 1996). Following, as an example of the process that has been implemented for the development of an intercultural bilingual science curriculum at the high school level, we develop an open curriculum for scientific enculturation without assimilation for the first physics course implemented in Mexico for the intercultural bilingual high schools for indigenous populations. The main idea is to state some lines of a very flexible curriculum, to open dialogue between different cultural perspectives that can mutually influence each other (autonomous enculturation, according to Colbern and Aikenhead, 2003), as the beginning of a collective development process in which teachers, students, and researchers systematize and theorize this respectful dialogue regarding content, perspectives on epistemology, and educational practices, comparing alternative world views and accepting reciprocal influences in order to then generalize these proposals for the entire population including the non-indigenous students. The curricular content of science (Biology, Physics, and Chemistry courses) is organized around three thematic axes that are relevant for the holistic view of indigenous knowledge: ecology, work, and health and food. For the first physics course, content was organized around three large themes associated with ecology: the sun and life, water and life, and energy in the universe. A dialogue regarding these themes was proposed between native and scientific conceptions on topics of astronomy, the origin of the universe, the theory of heat, the energy cycle on Earth, the theory of light, the structure of matter, the transformation and conservation of energy, energy resources and their social distribution, the use and social distribution of water, applications of different knowledge, and social and environmental impacts. The convenience of initiating the course work with a project centered on a relevant problem for the community where the indigenous cultural approach is taken as a start point is also posed. At the end of each topic, a meta-reflection is done on what was learned, both with regard to content as well as the process, and its contribution to the problem postulated in the initial project. The main idea is to develop the students’ critical thinking in order to make decisions about the kind of knowledge and explanations most adequate for each situation and context, taking into account both the positive as well as the negative impact of each one. Teachers’ cultural discourse In order to reach a better understanding of the impact of this proposal, as well as the teachers’ cultural contribution to its development, in-depth interviews were conducted with those who taught the course and their discourse was then analyzed. A discourse analysis was conducted according to the discourse psychology approach proposed by Edwards and Potter (1992). This discursive approach analyzes spontaneous speech as a social action that creates realities, identities, culture, and cognition itself. In this analysis, it is possible to study the discourse’s relationship with action, creation, and variability, so as to examine how such topics as knowledge
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and belief, fact and error, truth and explanation, and argumentation and narrative are negotiated. Important references for this approach are conversation analysis (Atkinson and Heritage 1984; Sacks, Shegloff, and Jefferson 1974), which takes into account the details of language and social life and reveals the highly organized nature of ordinary speech as a sequential social action, and the sociology of scientific knowledge (Gilbert and Mulkay 1984; Latour and Woolgar 1979) with its applications in social psychology. In order to study the dialogue among cultures, it is important to highlight the cultural features of discourse. The descriptive potential provided by conversation analysis for checking details and placing the culture ‘in situ’ is emphasized in Michael Moerman’s text: conversation analysis transcripts are tracings of social events, analogous to the cloud chamber photographs that record physical events . . . . It is through the dry bones of talk with which roles, passions, institutions, and private strategies are embodied and lived . . . . Every moment of talk people are experiencing and producing their cultures, their roles, their personalities. (1988, xi)
However, there is a debate among different conceptions of discourse analysis in order to study culture. Shi-xu deconstructs the universalism character of discourse analysis and especially of Critical Discourse Analysis with the argument that researchers ‘blindly apply CDA’s concepts, values and models to their chosen phenomena and questions’ (2009, 33) and impose Westcentric definitions and judgments to nonWestern cultural settings. That is why he calls for a different cultural approach of discourse to analyze Eastern situations. Derek Edwards’ ethnomethodological perspective can be seen as an answer to these worries because it emphasizes that discourse psychology is focused on participant’s categories: ‘beginning with whatever categories and distinctions people appear to use within some practice, rather than with those that the analyst has hypothesized’ (1995, 59). This orientation is shared with ethnographic studies as they approach the descriptions from the actors’ perspectives where the researcher has to take care to not impose his/her categories, ideology, or worries. Carbaugh (2007) also adopts ethnographic studies of intercultural and social interaction in order to see how cultural lives are active in conversation and states that conversation is the principal medium for coding the selves, social relations, and societies. For him cultural discourse is a systematic way to understand how culture is an integral part and a product of discourse systems. For Edwards (1995, 60) ‘people are likely to have as part of their cultural practices, ways of describing, explaining and accounting for their place in the universe, in social institutions, in patterns of social interactions, using distinctions such as natural and artificial, human and non-human, together with some kind of indigenous psychology (Heelas and Lock 1981). Discursive psychology investigates how these (or other) cultural categories are used in social practices to perform social actions.’ Then, taking Edwards’ perspective I analyze the teacher’s discourse in order to find the cultural features they use to describe the way they have worked with the science and cultural concepts. However, I also look at what they say ‘explicitly and implicitly about who they are, how they are related to each other, how they feel, what they are doing, and how they are situated in the nature of things. These latter
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concerns about identity, relationships, emotions, actions, and dwellings, respectively, are central concepts in cultural discourse analysis’ (Carbaugh 2007, 168).
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Analysis of the empirical data A group of 12 native science teachers from five different indigenous regions in Mexico, with different languages and cultures, received three days of training oriented toward defining the characteristics of this intercultural science proposal. The main idea of the training was to promote, for the first time at this educational level in Mexico, the inclusion of indigenous conceptions in a science curriculum and to debate their relative relevance in concrete situations compared to the conceptions of science. From the start it was assumed that teacher training is a basic aspect of a proposal such as this one and that the training undertaken was very insufficient. However, it is important to analyze, even under these limitations, the teachers’ attitudes with regard to the proposal, taking into account that they are natives who have personally experienced marginalization. Interviews with the teacher from one of the regions were conducted. The goal was to find information about their attitudes towards this proposal, but more importantly an attempt at getting closer to their way of dealing with the relationship between science and their own cultural concepts. In order to accomplish that, the ethnographic interviews were conducted in a trusting environment in which the participants did not feel judged and were more likely to share information spontaneously (Briggs 1986; Woods 1986). The interviews were semi-structured and were done with the teachers who volunteered to share information about their work in the classroom. These teachers had previously met the interviewer; the teachers freely chose the location and the time to conduct the interviews. Special attention was given to not guide the answers with the questions and to not disclose opinions about their answers. By doing this, the interviewees were allowed to talk freely about their experience while trying to integrate local cultural concepts in their physics class. In the excerpts, the interviewers’ interventions are included. This is with the purpose of sharing with the readers as much contextual information in which the answers and opinions were given. The interviews were carried out in Nuevo Progreso, in Chilo´ n, Chiapas, in southwestern Mexico, with two high school teachers who have taught the physics course to two groups in this Tzeltal community. These teachers have previously taken the training, where the main ideas of the proposal have been described. The community has 395 inhabitants, 84 of who are monolingual in Tzeltal and the rest speak Tzeltal and Spanish. Almost the entire population works in the agricultural sector and has a low socioeconomic level. The community has one native preschool, one native primary school, and an intercultural bilingual high school. The teachers who were interviewed are between 25 and 30 years of age, with an initial training of four years and six years of experience teaching at high school level. At the time of the interview, they had been working for four months on this proposal. They come from a Tzeltal community near Chilo´ n, so they share the culture and language with the 20 students who each has in his class. The following excerpt was obtained from the half-hour interview conducted with the teacher whom we will call Juan for confidentiality reasons:
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Excerpt 1: Status of ‘truth’ I- how were you able to incorporate traditional knowledge in the physics classes? T- hmmm, well, very well. I did it in relation to the seasons, regarding the position of the moon, the full moon, the young moon, as they say here (.2) we observe that there are things to which science says no, that is not correct but here, from the point of view of our culture it is true, such as, for example . . . science says that you can sow at any time, but our mother culture says that if you sow when the moon is young the tree may grow tall, but it will not give fruit, over there they call it blessings, or it will give very little, and if you sow when the moon is full even from a small tree you will obtain good fruit Extracto 1: El estatus de ‘‘verdad’’ E- ¿co´ mo pudo usted incorporar el conocimiento tradicional a las clases de fı´sica? Mo- humm, pues muy bien, yo lo hice a propo´ sito de las estaciones del an˜ o, sobre la posicio´ n de la Luna, la luna llena, la luna tierna, como le dicen por aquı´ (.2), nosotros observamos que hay cosas a las que la ciencia dice no, eso no es lo correcto sin embargo, aquı´, desde nuestra cultura si se cumple, como por ejemplo . . . la ciencia dice que tu puedes sembrar en cualquier tiempo, pero la cultura materna dice que si siembras en luna tierna el a´ rbol puede crecer alto pero no da frutas, alla´ le llaman bendiciones, o da muy pocas, y si siembras en luna llena au´ n de un a´ rbol pequen˜ o, tendra´ s buenas frutas
The teacher’s answer speaks independently of his knowledge about science and the knowledge that comes from his culture, despite the fact that the question could be interpreted as assimilationist because the question is how traditional knowledge is ‘incorporated’ or integrated into physics classes. The comment about being able to incorporate traditional knowledge ‘very well’ is noteworthy. This could have been considered as something complicated, since a science high school teacher is used to transmitting a very stereotyped view of school physics, like what is taught in teacher training schools, with no relationship to the native world view regarding content. As if to reaffirm that he worked with indigenous content and how he did it, Juan gives examples without the interviewer requesting them. He talks about the phases of the moon and the names they are given locally. He mentions ‘young moon’ and clarifies ‘as they say here,’ in third person. However, he includes himself immediately afterward as one of the actors with ‘we observe’ in a comment that distances itself from the scientific conception: ‘we observe that there are things to which science says no, that is not correct, but from the point of view of our culture it is true.’ Part of the teacher’s comment proposes what science says and then he contextualizes the situation he is referring to ‘here,’ and then immediately goes on to affirm that, contrary to what science states, ‘from the point of view of our culture it is true.’ At no time does he speak of ‘the truth’ or of local knowledge that excludes scientific
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knowledge, but rather he places local knowledge in context and questions the universality of the scientific conception. In this statement, the teacher not only considers himself part of the local culture, defining in this way his identity, but also situates science as something external, which he seems not to assume (‘it is said’). In addition, he does not offer empirical criteria to validate science, but rather does so with regard to local knowledge. He says, ‘we observe’ and ‘here, from the point of view of our culture, it is true.’ This way, he contextualizes and relativizes scientific knowledge taking local knowledge and his empirical experience as the reference. He places the universal validity of scientific knowledge in doubt. However, at the same time he does not attribute a universal, impersonal, and objective nature to indigenous knowledge, since he always qualifies it as ‘we’ and ‘from the point of view of our culture.’ The teacher continues to explain what occurs in his culture and from the point of view of his observation: ‘good fruit’ is obtained if one sows when the moon is full and not when it is young. It is interesting that when there is content where scientific knowledge is contrary to that of his ‘maternal culture,’ and despite the fact that he teaches science, he adopts his cultural conceptualization, legitimating it not only based on beliefs, but also based on ‘evidence’ (‘it is true’). With this participation, the Tzeltal teacher implicitly posits that indigenous knowledge is also validated through empirical experience, a practice that is not exclusive to science. In the following excerpt, Juan continues to reinforce his position by justifying his adherence to the cultural position by attempting to minimize the conflicts with science: Excerpt 2: From the mother culture to science T- we do not forget that science arises from nature, from the maternal . . . so we say that we start out from our culture in order to arrive to science . . . Extracto 2: De la cultura materna a la ciencia Mo- no olvidamos que lo cientı´fico nace de lo natural, de lo maternal . . . entonces decimos que partimos de nuestra cultura para llegar a lo cientı´fico . . .
Here, the teacher proposes a relationship between science and his Tzeltal culture. The way he describes it is remarkable when he establishes emphatically (‘we do not forget’) that scientific knowledge develops from nature and then establishes a relationship between nature and the mother culture. In other words, for him nature is the origin of our knowledge and it is linked to his mother culture. Thus, through his discourse, he shows that if contradictions exist between different bodies of knowledge, he adopts his culture as the point of reference used to analyze the others. Without any prompting from the interviewer, the teacher adds the following: Excerpt 3: What is a valid knowledge? T- somehow, science and the maternal culture are interacting we cannot forget the mother culture but neither do we have to accept everything from scientific culture . . . there are things that make things easier but also things that affect us . . .
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I- mmhmm T- if we use wood, it doesn’t affect us very much but if we use oil, it affects us more because of the smell and all the waste products . . . there are things we can accept and others that we don’t Extracto 3: ¿Cua´ l es un conocimiento va´ lido? Mo- de alguna manera la ciencia y la cultura materna esta´ n interactuando no podemos olvidar la cultura materna pero tampoco tenemos que aceptar to::::do lo de la cultura cientı´fica . . . hay cosas que nos facilitan pero tambie´ n hay cosas que nos afectan . . . Emjm Mo- si usamos madera no nos afecta mucho pero si usamos petro´ leo sı´ nos afecta ma´ s por el olor y por todos los productos de desecho . . . hay cosas que podemos tomar y otras que no tomamos
In this third excerpt, the teacher continues with the dialogue between the two conceptualizations. He is more explicit in clarifying that science and his mother culture are interacting, that is, they are not isolated from each other or immutable, and he returns to the expression ‘we cannot forget’ referring to the mother culture. And, as if he was going to postulate something similar for science, he adds that not everything proposed by science should be accepted. The emphasis on ‘everything’ may be interpreted in the sense that there are some things that can be accepted. That is, his adherence to the ‘mother’ culture is apparently unconditional, while science’s contributions are conditioned to their impact on daily life, using as the criterion for appropriation (what ‘we can accept’) that it facilitates life, but does not affect people. It is noteworthy that his reference to science is always in relation to its practical effects and not its ability to explain and create theories or some other theoretical or academic element. This is coherent with the content of excerpt 2, since his opinions always seem to take as a reference points the well-being and experiences of the indigenous community. It is interesting to note that at the beginning of the first excerpt, he refers in second person to the names of the phases of the moon as those given by the people of the community; however for the rest of the interview this teacher identify himself as a member of the Tzeltal culture, to which he adheres by speaking always in the first person plural, that is, he adopts a native identity from which he views science. In addition, the teacher seems to establish in his discourse that indigenous culture can accept certain scientific explanations, but only those they consider convenient from their cultural criteria. Nonetheless, at no time does he speak of incorporating indigenous knowledge into science, as if he considers it as something finished and unchangeable. Later, in the same interview, this teacher contributes other criteria for recognizing indigenous culture: Excerpt 4: Values T- we have to know about our history, our culture our elders, so that we know what we have, and appreciate who we are . . . its a matter of raising awareness
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A. Candela of acting conscientiously so that we recognize and don’t forget that we have knowledge, not only knowledge, but also values and that these values can also be transmitted through the topics of these disciplines . . . Extracto 4: Valores Mo- tenemos que conocer sobre nuestra historia, nuestra cultura, de nuestros mayores, para conocer lo que tenemos, y valorar quie´ nes somos . . . es un asunto de concientizacio´ n de actuar con conciencia para reconocer y no olvidar que nosotros tenemos conocimiento, pero no so´ lo conocimiento sino valores y que esos valores tambie´ n se pueden transmitir a trave´ s de los temas de estas disciplinas . . .
In this fragment, teacher Juan goes on to speak directly about his culture and his ethical position with regard to it. He mentions that they, referring to himself and the members of this ethnic group, need to know and appreciate what they have and what they are: their own history and culture. In this declaration of identity, he also identifies ‘the elders’ of the community as the source of this knowledge about history and culture. In this phrase, he also assumes a position of principle when referring to the fact that appreciating what they are and what they have is a matter of conscience and mentioning again, almost as a slogan or a statement for somebody external to his culture, that it is important not to ‘forget’ that they not only have knowledge, but also have values. When he says ‘not only,’ he seems to be saying implicitly that science has knowledge, but not values. Afterward, he revisits the science theme by mentioning that these values from his culture can be transmitted ‘through the topics of these disciplines,’ such as the scientific ones that are being discussed. Although he links the matter of values with science, he appears to propose that the values come from his traditional culture, but they could be a way to introduce modifications from indigenous culture into scientific knowledge. Finally, we will analyze part of the interview with the other teacher, whom we will call Pedro. Pedro expresses considerations similar to Juan’s, although not as clearly, so we do not analyze these aspects in his interview. However, it is useful to reflect on what Pedro says when the interviewer asks him about the students’ reaction when he asks them to talk about their traditional knowledge: Excerpt 5: Pedagogical relevance I- what is the reaction of your students when you invite them to talk about their traditional knowledge? T- first, that helps me because it facilitates their participation. They pay more attention in class, more spaces are opened for discussion. So, if their dad or grandfather say when to sow and how to do it in the traditional way, that allows me to learn a little more about their habits, about what I have to respect, and about what is not a valid concept for them, and then I realize that I shouldn’t force them to think the way I do, but that I have to understand their way of
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Thinking . . . and through these discussions the students have accepted the classes well and then I ask them to write their work in Spanish and Tzeltal. Extracto 5: Relevancia dida´ ctica E- ¿cua´ l es la reaccio´ n de sus alumnos cuando los invita a hablar de su conocimiento tradicional? Mo- en primer lugar, eso me ayuda a mi porque se facilita su participacio´ n, ponen ma´ s atencio´ n en las clases, se abren ma´ s espacios para la discusio´ n ası´ si su papa o su abuelo dicen cua´ ndo sembrar y co´ mo hacerlo de manera tradicional, eso me permite conocer un poco ma´ s sobre sus ha´ bitos, sobre lo que yo tengo que respetar y sobre lo que no es una concepcio´ n va´ lida para ellos, y entonces lo que yo me doy cuenta es que no los debo forzar para que piensen como yo sino que tengo que entender su manera de pensar . . . y con estas discusiones los alumnos han tenido una buena aceptacio´ n de las clases y luego les pido que escriban sus trabajos en espan˜ ol y en tzeltal
In this fifth excerpt, it is worth noting that Pedro’s attitude of inviting the students to talk about their traditional knowledge facilitates his own work, because it encourages the students’ participation and attention. That is, he uses indigenous knowledge more to motivate the students’ participation than as a worldview to be debated. On the one hand, he establishes, in a clear acceptance of the respect for others that is postulated in indigenous cultures, that opening spaces allowed him to learn their customs and what he must respect. In this attitude of respect, the teacher adds that his intention is not to lead students toward a conception that is not valid for them. In this case, the teacher seems to adopt a position similar to what Godenzzi (1996) calls fundamentalist, because while it destroys the myths surrounding science by not considering it as the only legitimate knowledge, with the declaration ‘I shouldn’t force them to think the way I do’ it would appear that he would not be able to communicate science conceptions with them even if there were contradictions with the cultural version. This statement also reflects that for Pedro, if the students assume traditional knowledge, they cannot understand other knowledge, unless they reject the former. Thus, it may be inferred that the teacher does not consider that the ‘collateral learning’ mentioned by Jegede (1999) is possible. Finally, and as an example of a form of respect toward the students’ culture, he mentions that he asks them to use Spanish and Tzeltal to write their work.
Reflections Through these interviews, certain teachers’ conceptions may be analyzed that, while are not necessarily those that are communicated in the classroom, probably have a certain influence on how they teach following this intercultural proposal. The first thing that stands out is the teachers’ willingness to incorporate traditional knowledge from the culture that they share with their students into the physics course. They do this as if this were the opportunity they had waited for to show the pride they feel for their cultural knowledge. The repetition (three times in these brief fragments) of the phrases alluding to ‘we shouldn’t forget’ is characteristic
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of minority ethnic cultures that are transmitted orally and that have resisted assimilation by the dominant system for more than 500 years, in great measure through a commitment to keep alive the memory of who they are, the pride for what they know and think, and their values. In this interview, we can see the strength that indigenous cultures maintain to this day in Mexico, and infer what it must have been in the past, before the Spanish conquest. They use the school’s acceptance of cultural knowledge to evaluate it in the face of science, even using it as a point of reference to judge the validity of universal scientific claims, despite the fact that these teachers have gone through a schooling process that emphasizes the legitimacy of science above other conceptions. The students seem to share the recognition of their cultural knowledge, since, according to teacher Pedro, they exhibit increased interest and participation in science classes when indigenous knowledge is taken into account and there is dialogue with it. In the case of Juan, his dialogue between cultural and scientific conceptions is interesting, showing certain complexities of the relationship between cultures. He shows that when the two conceptions are put into play, contradictions may emerge in the face of which it is natural to take a position. He explains his criteria for taking a position. One is testing of a claim through everyday experience and the other is closeness to ‘mother’ nature. His way of validating the indigenous conception in practice is a good example that both perspectives have an empirical basis (Roberts 1996), but that what is observed and interpreted seems to be different from each point of view, for example, in relation to the time to sow and reap. This leads not only to the recognition of similarities and differences, but also to a relativization of scientific knowledge eliminating the myth of being the only one that comes from observation and experimentation. The objectivity of the evidence used by science is questioned (Golinski 1998; Phillips 1985) by showing that what is ‘observed’ depends on the a priori conceptions held. Juan questions the myth of universality of scientific knowledge, of its nature as general truth, by postulating that in his context certain scientific claims are not fulfilled. However, he does not posit the universality of indigenous knowledge or local observation through impersonal claims, such as ‘it is observed’ or ‘it occurs.’ In these cases, Juan includes a reference point from which one arrives at what ‘they’ observe: ‘from the point of view of our culture,’ thus relativizing its claims. In addition, the teacher also contextualizes scientific knowledge by attempting to situate it at its origin, in its relationship to nature, and in that sense he links it to indigenous knowledge. He contextualizes knowledge both spatially as well as in terms of cultural and personal references, which is the starting point for its creation, and therefore makes it a social practice. Pedro also questions the universality of science implicitly by postulating that he must listen to and respect his students’ positions, especially those positions that come from their elders, which is a common criterion in ethnic cultures that value the accumulation of personal experience. The characteristics of being contextualized, situated, and linked to the subjects and their cultural practices coincides with what some authors, such as Jean Lave (2011), postulate as indigenous knowledge, such as the everyday and, in general, what has been called ‘informal.’ It is therefore not an impersonal, atemporal, and universal knowledge, such as that which is considered by positivist conceptions of science (Gilbert and Mulkay 1984). It is also important to stress that the teachers reach these considerations by adopting an ethical position, which preserves their culture, and not through
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theoretical reflection. They speak to us of a science teaching that goes through the sieve of local culture and that is analyzed through its values, placing the preservation of the culture and not affecting the well-being of its people first. Furthermore, the incorporation of values in a body of knowledge that has been considered objective opens the door to the inclusion of affective and subjective aspects that historically have not been taken into account by positivist views. This is a way of conceiving science teaching from an intercultural perspective in which a respectful dialogue between two cultures (Godenzzi 1996) contributes to an education in diversity. In Pedro’s case, this dialogue remains at the level of mutual respect. In Juan’s case, it contributes to enriching both cultures, since this dialogue can lead to a modification of certain aspects of indigenous culture by incorporating scientific elements that benefit the community as well as change scientific conceptions by including values that come from the indigenous culture. We speak, then, of a joint creation of new meanings and new realities, without giving up traditions linked to cultural identities. This is similar to what Colbern and Aikenhead (2003) have called autonomous enculturation, which they arrive at through a metareflection on the validity of certain ideas in each context and that through a profound acceptance of one’s own culture one can achieve universality and the ability to incorporate the best of others’ thought. As Maurial (1999) postulates, indigenous teachers who adopt this approach may thus reduce the risk of over valuating Western knowledge and of devaluating the ways of indigenous knowing. Reviewing what is beneficial and does not harm people is a criterion that begins to be considered by Science, Technology and Society approaches, but which has not been frequently taken into account in proposals regarding science education. This type of experience can operate as the beginning of the co-construction of a curriculum that communities can create over time with relative autonomy from national proposals. We can call these processes autonomous enculturation, both of science through indigenous culture as well as of indigenous culture through science, giving priority always to benefiting the community and the natural environment. These results are examples of the contributions of an intercultural science approach to science education for the whole population. First, they allow taking into account perspectives from other cultures and they dispel the myth of science as the only historically valid explanation to natural phenomena. Therefore, it is easier to comprehend that science does not give us absolute truths but possible explanations that change with time. On the other hand, it is an expectation that the intercultural perspective will help to understand natural phenomena since it compares different points of view. It also helps to avoid racism and indigenous segregation. Notes 1. 2.
CGEBI, Coordinacio´ n General de Educacio´ n Bilingu¨ e Intercultural. INALI, Instituto Nacional de Lenguas indı´genas de Me´ xico (National Institute of Indigenous Languages of Me´ xico).
Notes on contributor Antonia Candela is a professor in the Educational Research Department of the Center for Research and Advanced Studies at Me´ xico, with an undergraduate degree in Physics and a PhD in discourse analysis. Dr. Candela works on ethnographies and discourse analyses of science classes focusing on students’ participation. She has published more than 30 articles, 28
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chapters, and has participated in five national reforms as an author of science programs and science textbooks. She has published two books on her research work: ‘La necesidad de entender, explicar y argumentar: Los alumnos de primaria en la actividad experimental’ Me´ xico: Cinvestav-SEP, 1997 and ‘Ciencia en el aula: Los alumnos entre la argumentacio´ n y el consenso’ Me´ xico: Paido´ s, 1999.
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