Science teachers, Indigenous knowledges: The influence of epistemology, pedagogy and politics

Abstract

This paper reports on a Participatory Action Research project with a group of non-Indigenous science teachers seeking to engage with Indigenous knowledges in their teaching. Located within the context of the implementation of the Australian Curriculum and the cross-curriculum priority – Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures, the research raises a number of key pedagogical, political and epistemological matters regarding teaching style, the critical understanding of the power structures of knowledge, political concerns for equity, school-based politics and the purpose of education. These important factors were linked to teachers’ success or otherwise with classroom implementation. These concerns are critical and make the curriculum a contested site and its Indigenous Knowledge practitioners vulnerable to a politics of ‘knowledge’ equity that in turn informs what counts as teacher’s success. This presentation speaks to the findings of the project and the complexities apparent that informed the various positionalities taken up by the non-Indigenous science teacher of Indigenous knowledges. It became clear that teachers’ epistemologies, pedagogies and politics acted in interconnected ways to result in different approaches to teaching.