Indigenous artefacts and physics curriculum: teaching science as a cultural way of knowing

Abstract

This article considers science teaching and learning as may be understood through the integration of indigenous artefacts into physics curriculum in Zimbabwean schools. It comments significance of and elaborates on the issues raised in Nadaraj Govender and Edson Mudzamiri’s paper entitled: Incorporating indigenous artefacts in developing an integrated indigenous-pedagogical model in high school physics curriculum: views of elders, teachers and learners. At the outset, I examine the study’s conceptualisation of the terms indigenous knowledge (IK) and school science. Then, I offer an alternative view on the findings in light of the ubuntu theoretical framework, as used in other studies. The article foregrounds theoretical and methodological arguments put forward by Govender and Mudzamiri for the incorporation of IK artefacts with physics education in schools. After that, I analyse the applicability of the article’s proposed integrated indigenous physics pedagogical model in the school curriculum. The paper ends with the contention that school science should be taught as a cultural way of knowing rather mere facts divorced from learners’ culture.