The giant, the wintermaker, and the hunter: contextual ethnoastronomy towards cultivating empathy

Abstract

‘It is the belt!’ This is how middle school teachers in a science teaching professional development program rationalized why they believe Orion is the most recognizable of all constellations in the night sky. It was from this foundation that we chose Orion to be the focus of a four-phase ethnoastronomy-based project reported here. Ethnoastronomy, within this context, can be described as the study of myths as bearers of cultural knowledge from oral traditional societies (Lankford 2007 Reachable Stars: Patterns in the Ethnoastronomy of Eastern North America (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press)). After identifying the stars comprising the ‘belt’, and the greater asterism through the singular and oversimplified lens of the Greek mythology that dominates our astronomy curricular learning objectives, we explored deeper through Ojibwe, Arab, and Jewish perspectives as these cultures and religions were represented in our group. The purpose of this paper is to share insights emanating from emergent critical questions generated in our professional development program regarding where, how, and why we should introduce traditional cultural knowledge that complements Western skylore into our classrooms towards helping to cultivate empathy for others in our community.