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In this careful articulation of science, the editors provide an intellectual marriage of Indigenous science and science education in the African context as a way of revising schooling and education. They define science broadly to include both the science of the natural/physical/biological and the ‘science of the social’. It is noted that the current policy direction of African education continues to be a subject of intense intellectual discussion. Science education is very much at the heart of much current debates about reforming African schooling. Among the ways to counter-vision contemporary African education this book points to how we promote Indigenous science education to improve upon African science and technology development in general. The book also notes a long-standing push to re-examine local cultural resource knowings in order to appreciate and understand the nature, content and context of Indigenous knowledge science as a starting foundation for promoting African science and technology studies in general. It is argued that these interests and concerns are not mutually exclusive of each other but as a matter of fact interwoven and interdependent. The breadth of coverage of the collection reflect papers in science, Indigeneity, identity and knowledge production and the possibilities of creating a truly African-centred education. It is argued that such extensive coverage will engage and excite readers on the path of what has been termed ‘African educational recovery’. While the book is careful in avoiding stale debates about the ‘Eurocentricity of Western scientific knowledge’ and the positing of ‘Eurocentric science’ as the only science worthy of engagement, it nonetheless caution against constructing a binary between Indigenous/local science and knowledges and Western ‘scientific’ knowledge. After all, Western scientific knowledge is itself a form of local knowledge, born out of a particular social and historical context. Engaging science in a more global context will bring to the fore critical questions of how we create spaces for the study of Indigenous science knowledge in our schools. How is Indigenous science to be read, understood and theorized? And, how do educators gather/collect and interpret Indigenous science knowledges for the purposes of teaching young learners. These are critical questions for contemporary African education?
There is no term so heavily contested in social science literature/nomenclature than ‘Development’. This book brings Indigenous perspectives to African develop¬ment. It is argued that contrary to development as we know it not working, a greater part of the problem is that conventional development approaches that work have in fact not truly been followed to the letter and hence the quagmire. All this is ironic since everything we do about our world is development. So, how come there is “difficult knowledge” when it comes to learning from what we know, i.e., what local peoples do and have done for centuries as a starting point to recon¬structing and reframing ‘development’? In getting our heads around this paradox, we are tempted to ask more questions. How do we as African scholars and research¬ers begin to develop “home-grown solutions” to our problems? How do we pioneer new analytical systems for understanding our communities and offer a pathway to genuine African development, i.e., Indigenist African development? (see also Yankah, 2004). How do we speak of Indigenist development mindful of global developments and entanglements around us? Can we afford to pursue development still mired in a “catch up” scenario? Are we in a race with the development world and where do we see this race ending or where do we define as the ‘finishing line’? A Publication of the Centre for School and Community Science and Technology Studies [SACOST], University of Education, Winneba, Ghana
Based on interrogation and review of historical and current cultural and indigenous knowledge combined with extensive curriculum and classroom analysis, this book identifies how indigenous science gender roles may be utilized to provide a more gender balanced and indigenous centered learning experience. The book argues for the integration of African indigenous science into the secondary school curriculum as a way to strengthen students’ science comprehension by affirming their society’s science contributions, making clear connections between Indigenous and Western science, and also as a way to promote female representation in the sciences. This book will be of interest to scholars and practitioners of science education, African education, and indigenous knowledge.
This book is an intellectual journey into epistemology, pedagogy, physics, architecture, medicine and metallurgy. The focus is on various dimensions of African Indigenous Knowledge (AIK) with an emphasis on the sciences, an area that has been neglected in AIK discourse. The authors provide diverse views and perspectives on African indigenous scientific and technological knowledge that can benefit a wide spectrum of academics, scholars, students, development agents, and policy makers, in both governmental and non-governmental organizations, and enable critical and alternative analyses and possibilities for understanding science and technology in an African historical and contemporary context.
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.
African social development is often explained from outsider perspectives that are mainly European and Euro-American, leaving African indigenous discourses and ways of knowing and doing absent from discussions and debates on knowledge and development. This book is intended to present Africanist indigenous voices in current debates on economic, educational, political and social development in Africa. The authors and contributors to the volume present bold and timely ideas and scholarship for defining Africa through its challenges, possible policy formations, planning and implementation at the local, regional, and national levels. The book also reveals insightful examinations of the hype, the myths and the realities of many topics of concern with respect to dominant development discourses, and challenges the misconceptions and misrepresentations of indigenous perspectives on knowledge productions and overall social well-being or lack thereof. The volume brings together researchers who are concerned with comparative education, international development, and African development, research and practice in particular. Policy makers, institutional planners, education specialists, governmental and non-governmental managers and the wider public should all benefit from the contents and analyses of this book.
This volume explores the challenges of teaching and learning Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) subjects in local languages and local contexts in a range of countries around the world. Many countries around the world, including African countries, have been largely excluded from the transformation that is going on in STEM pedagogy in the USA, where the emphasis is on the importance of language choice and the development of English Language Learner (ELL). STEM subjects in many parts of the world have been taught in a global language, mainly English, rather than using a local language and local curriculum. This creates pedagogical challenges to the teaching of STEM. The contributions to this book review evidence and arguments for the teaching of STEM subjects in local languages and several chapters make this case that this should be considered a human right, both in national educational programs and in development aid. Working across disciplines and domains has the potential to lead to new understanding and the removal of barriers to progress with the ultimate goal of creating solutions to persistent problems in education. Cross-disciplinary work in science, language and literacy has shown much promise and demonstrated the importance of developing language along with disciplinary knowledge. This volume provides a deep dive into this topic, with articles by several scholars in the field of language in STEM.” – Jaqueline Barber, Director of the Learning Design Group at the Lawrence Hall of Science, University of California-Berkeley, USA “In an increasingly technological world, STEM Education has become a priority on national agendas and in educational institutions. Meaningful access to STEM education can enable or hinder young people from gaining entry into the world of work. It is against this backdrop that the edited collection, Human Rights and Language in STEM Education, needs to be welcomed. The various chapters tackle the big questions of access and many others. This edited collection is required reading for all those working in STEM and for policy makers who tend to see language and STEM as binaries, rather than as interdependent.” – Zubeida Desai, Professor and Dean of Education, University of the Western Cape, South Africa This volume by researchers from 10 countries provides a thought-and-action provoking multidimensional analysis of issues on the dignity of the use of STEM subjects in local education in the perspective of human rights. This book is especially recommended to researchers and education policy makers in such areas as STEM Educational Theory and Praxis, Human Rights, Future/sustainable Development, Science and Technology Literacy. May it inspire similar volumes in today’s politically ebullient world.” – Francisco Gomes de Matos, Professor Emeritus of Linguistics, human linguistic rights scholar, Federal University of Pernambuco, Recife, Brazil.
A collection of essays which critically examines education in the African context and presents possible courses of action to reinvent its future.
This text explores the multidisciplinary context of African Indigenous Knowledge Systems from scholars and scholar activists committed to the interrogation, production, articulation, dissemination and general development of endogenous and indigenous modes of intellectual activity and praxis. The work reinforces the demand for the decolonization of the academy and makes the case for a paradigmatic shift in content, subject matter and curriculum in institutions in Africa and elsewhere – with a view to challenging and rejecting disinformation and intellectual servitude. Indigenous intellectual discourses related to diverse disciplines take center stage in this volume with a focus on education, mathematics, medicine, chemistry and engineering in their historical and contemporary context.
This book argues that integrating artistic contributions – with an emphasis on culture and language – can make Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) subjects more accessible, and therefore promote creativity and innovation in teaching and learning at all levels of education. It provides tools and strategies for managing interdisciplinary learning and teaching based on successful collaborations between researchers, practitioners and artists in the fields of the Arts and STEM subjects. Based on contributions by educators, scientists, scholars, linguists and artists from around the globe, the book highlights how we can demonstrate teamwork and collaboration for innovation and creativity in STEAM subjects in the classroom and beyond. The book reflects the core of human rights education, using local languages and local knowledge through art as a tool for teaching human rights at school, and bringing to light questions on diversity, ecology, climate change, environmental issues, health and the future of human beings, as well as power relations between non-dominant (minorities) and dominant (the majority) groups in society.