Bridging Culture and Science Education: Implications for Research and Practice

Abstract

Since the 19th century, many studies have claimed the importance of integrating culture in science education, grasping everyone’s experience and background. However, from 2012 to 2015, many recent works within these years describe how standardized curricula have marginalized cultural-based education. Scholars then re-emphasized the role of bridging funds of knowledge (FOK) as a conceptual framework to counter the deficit of marginalized groups and advance social justice in science education. However, up to this point, the extent and pattern of the growing body of literature on cultural-science integration is still less explored. Hence, in this review, we sought new and current inquiries that connect FOK or cultures with science education reform discourse to identify and understand the current trends of the integration phenomena by doing a systematic literature review. After constantly comparing the articles, we found three trends of the integration, which are (1) cultural-based lesson plan for equity in science educational opportunities, (2) effectiveness of integrating culture in science education, and (3) cultural-based science education as a voice of multidimensional perspectives. We hope that this review of research could reshape the future direction of research on equity and social justice issues in education and reshape the practice of education, particularly science education.