Multicultural Science Content and Contexts in Zambian Science Curriculum Materials

Abstract

Efforts to enhance inclusive sense-making learning contexts, in which all students from diverse backgrounds could learn science without cultural and geographic borders, have been driving forces for recent science curriculum reforms worldwide. This chapter was aimed at elucidating the current status of multicultural science content and context integration in Zambia’s high school biology curriculum materials, using Banks’ ((2016a) Multicultural education: characteristics and goals. In: Banks JA, Banks CM (eds) Multicultural education: issues and perspectives, 9th edn. Wiley, Danvers, pp 1–23; (2016b) Approaches to multicultural curriculum reform. In: Banks JA, Banks CA (eds) Multicultural education: issues and perspectives, 9th edn. Wiley, Danvers, pp 151–168) multicultural education dimensions and levels of multicultural content integration. The results revealed the following: (i) multicultural science content/contexts were integrated in these four dimensions of multicultural education in this descending order, Content; Equity Pedagogy; Prejudice Reduction; and Knowledge Construction. (ii) The level(s) of multicultural science content/context integration were in this descending order: Additive; Contributions; Social Action; and Transformation levels. These findings laid a basis for our proposed design matrix for multicultural science activities that would provide opportunities for all learners to apply their cultural knowledge and experiences in order to enhance meaningful sense-making learning contexts. It is anticipated the proposed design matrix will prove useful to science educators and curriculum designers in redesigning the science activities or tasks that can be aligned with current research-informed multicultural science curriculum models.