Incorporation Of Indigenous Knowledge Research Articles

Condescension or collaboration? Local people’s perspectives on the incorporation of indigenous knowledge in tourism development, Manicaland Province, Zimbabwe

The incorporation of indigenous knowledge in development projects has been promoted worldwide as a way of preserving the knowledge of indigenous people. Yet, there is a dearth of research on the perspectives of indigenous people on the incorporation of indigenous knowledge in tourism development. This study examines the potential of tourism incorporating indigenous knowledge systems in the rural communities of Manicaland Province, Zimbabwe. In-depth interviews were conducted with 43 local people in the four districts of the case study area as well as 22 key informants from different government departments involved with community-based tourism development in the country to enrich the data. Other qualitative research methods, including observations and informal conversations, were also used to collect data. Data was analysed through a six-phase thematic analysis. Based on the results of this study, it is concluded that tourism development does incorporate indigenous knowledge systems in rural communities of Manicaland Province, Zimbabwe. The results indicate that traditional leaders are recognized while local traditions and protocols are followed, and sacred sites are respected. Recommendations are given and areas for future research are suggested.

The socioeconomic impact of health problems of working equids in low- and middle-income countries: A scoping review on the female-gender perspectives

Abstract Working equids provide a crucial contribution to reduce the work burden on women and they protect the livelihoods and food security of female-headed households in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Nevertheless, they remain a neglected category within animal health policies and interventions, including those aimed at supporting women, that focus mostly on food production animals. This scoping review aims to assess the existing knowledge on the socioeconomic impact of health problems of working equids in LMICs under a female-gender perspective and to identify research gaps on the subject. The review intends to provide orientation for future research that is required to sensitise policymakers within governments and international organisations in LMICs on the importance of developing programmes for protecting working equids’ health and to incorporate such programmes within interventions supporting women’s empowerment. Six relevant publications were identified through the search of five databases (CAB Abstracts, Web of Science Core Collection, BIOSIS, EMBASE and Scopus), backward citation searching and screening of indexes of proceedings and special issues retrieved from the database search. No limits were applied to the search strategy. Publications set in LMICs were considered eligible for the review if they included considerations regarding the female-gender perspective on the socioeconomic impact of infectious and non-infectious diseases of working equids or if female participants were included within the study population. The review findings show that this subject is dramatically under-researched and only one article broadly studied the socioeconomic effects of health problems of working equids on women, while most of the publications included an exiguous number of female participants and made limited considerations on the matter. Considering the complexity of the subject, future research would benefit from the application of the One Health approach that represents an opportunity to clarify the link between equid health, women’s wellbeing and livelihoods, facilitating the translation of research into policy. Further research should focus on the socioeconomic impact of diseases with high morbidity and mortality, especially zoonoses. A participatory approach is recommended to ensure that the community viewpoint is acquired in detail, including indigenous women’s perspectives. The presence of female researchers can ensure that women’s voices are captured thoroughly. One Health impact statement By highlighting the implications of working equid diseases on women’s health and wellbeing, animal welfare and environmental health, this study demonstrates that future research on the subject would benefit from the application of a One Health approach. The engagement of a transdisciplinary team of veterinarians, epidemiologists, social scientists and public health specialists besides the incorporation of indigenous knowledge could effectively capture the multiplicity of consequences of the impaired health of working equids on women. This may facilitate the translation of research into policy, resulting potentially in the inclusion of women among beneficiaries of programmes targeting working equids, in an improved consideration of working equids within animal health interventions and within broader programmes targeting women, with long-term benefits on women’s health and wellbeing and animal welfare. Lastly, integrating females’ and indigenous people’s viewpoints in One Health research could enhance the identification of sustainable solutions to tackle the burden of working equid diseases.

Women and digital political communication in non-Western societies

ABSTRACT This special issue brings together contributions and theoretical insights that probe ways through which gender interacts with context to shape non-Western-based political communication trends. It seeks to address the need to diversify theory and research in political communication. Our key contribution is to provide empirically-guided, contextually-shaped and methodologically-rich research on digital political communication strategies that facilitate women's political participation in geographical areas underrepresented in the scholarship. We do this in five ways. First, feminist approaches to digital political communication have rarely been studied this way, focusing exclusively on previously unaddressed developments in non-Western settings while also theorizing their contributions to communication scholarship through a special issue format in a credible journal that retains a wider audience. Second, it is of scholarly interest to know whether women politicians in richer and poor countries grapple with the same issues when it comes to political communication. Third, we provide novel ways to expand scholarship on women's digital political participation through incorporation of indigenous knowledge and practices. Fourth, the diversity of fresh voices coupled with pioneering findings assembled in this special issue is encouraging in a field dominated by a few. Finally, the number of women vying for political office in the Global South is increasing. Therefore, studying how they are faring on the political frontline has a significant bearing on how current and future studies within the remit of understudied non-Western digital political communication can and should be framed, paving way for new and better understandings on the region and its multifaceted political perturbations.

Community‐driven science and science education: Living in and navigating the edges of equity, justice, and science learning

Profound equity and justice-related challenges persist in promoting community engagement with science. The intersecting effects of multiple pandemics—racial and economic injustice, COVID-19, gun violence, and climate change, among others—have all shaped when, how and why people engage with, or even have access to, science. There is also a growing public distrust in science, with broad-reaching implications. The antivaccination movement, one manifestation of the distrust of science, has substantively shaped the course of the COVID-19 pandemic (Tsipursky, 2018). From “alternative facts” to climate change denial, there is increasing public rhetoric, driven by corporate and political interests, that any empirical position can be denied because it does not fit with one's wishes or desires. In the face of inequitable access to science, distrust, and debate on what can even be considered verifiable information, many look to science education to rescue society from this destructive spiral. Surely, we just need to find better ways of engaging people in science? Yet, the culture and practice of dominant science has been used to justify racism, and to position particular ways of knowing, doing, and being as outside the realm of science. By “dominant science,” we mean the particular forms of Western science that have become dominant to the point that “other ways of knowing, doing, and being are deemed illegitimate or are erased” (Liboiron, 2021; p. 21). The historical lack of inclusion of multiple voices and perspectives in decision-making around scientific issues and in the production of scientific understandings, a lack of transparency of how science is done, including insights into who controls the agenda, whose knowledge counts, and who benefits, all shape how and why communities may—or may not—engage in science. Consequently, a significant divide exists between the scientific community and many members of local communities. Among these tensions emerges the notion of community-driven science. Consider Flint, MI, a city home to primarily African American families, where 40% of residents live in poverty. In 2014, residents of the city began complaining of discolored and foul smelling and tasting water. However, the city and state were slow to respond. It took a resident-organized effort in collaboration with outside researchers at Virginia Tech University to document what was to become known as one of the “most significant” environmental injustice events of “recent history” (Pauli, 2019). They documented low levels of chlorine in the city's water that led to high levels of the bacteria that causes Legionnaires' disease, and the heavy metals leaching into the water supply at levels in violation of the Safe Drinking Water Act (Zahran et al., 2020), lead to highly elevated levels of lead in children's blood. All of this resulted from the entanglement of economic, political, and structural inequities that led to a state-level decision to save money by changing the city's water support from treated Huron River water to untreated Flint River water (Pauli, 2019). The health and safety impacts of the decision to prioritize saving money over people's well-being only became known because of the collective work of residents. The Flint water crisis is just one of many science-related issues that affect the well-being of communities that could have had a more positive outcome if governmental and scientific institutions took everyday people's observations seriously. Health care, food, the environment, climate, energy production, digital surveillance, genetically modified organisms, and disease transmission are just a handful of areas of study that all demand cooperation between science and society. Recent events such as the COVID-19 pandemic illustrate that not only has distrust in science increased, science itself has become politicized. Partisan divisions mark almost all aspects of the pandemic, from how seriously the threat to public health was treated, to the uptake of misinformation about the virus' origin, possible treatments, and the safety of vaccines. People and communities can play a vital role in helping to define the problems that are worth investigating, in generating sources and forms of data, and in offering interpretations for the future of this planet. But for this to happen, scientists need to acknowledge and better understand the needs, interests, and knowledge of people and communities. Even further, most scientists have not necessarily been educated or encouraged to support community engagement as part of their efforts. At the same time, many different communities may not understand, trust, or engage with the scientific enterprise, for historicized and self-protecting reasons. We noted above that communities of color, and low-income communities, such as the people of Flint, MI, have powerful historical reasons for this distrust (Ramirez-Andreotta, 2019), as these communities have been often ignored or silenced by the scientific community in dehumanizing and harmful ways. The field of science education is both partly responsible for these problems, but is also key to addressing them. So while some progress has been made in scientists and government agencies listening to local community science observations and expertise (e.g., Dosemagen & Parker, 2019), and conceptual discussions of the relationship of citizen science, ecojustice, and science education (e.g., Mueller & Tippins, 2012), there is a gap in explicitly examining, with empirical research, science education as part of the problem and solution through community-driven science. How the field of science education grapples with these equity- and justice-related concerns around community participation in science is a central concern for the field, and a variety of approaches have been introduced both within and outside the field of science education. From the professional scientist's perspective, there has been some focus on community participation in science, but primarily a broader push toward “public engagement in science.” Historically, this has meant “intentional, meaningful interactions that provide opportunities for mutual learning between scientists and members of the public” (AAAS, 2018). This approach has been heralded as a way to decrease the tension between science and society. However, while a good first step, current efforts to promote public engagement have also been critiqued for (1) lacking more authentic and substantive forms of engagement by communities themselves, particularly communities historically marginalized by science and society or (2) limited efforts to have such engagement transform the processes and outcomes of science (Jadallah et al., in Review, Stilgoe et al., 2014). Additionally, approaches focused on “public participation in scientific research” (Shirk et al., 2012) and “citizen science” (Bonney et al., 2014) do go farther in inviting members of the public into scientific research through participation in data collection and the generation of new scientific knowledge, but these are still focused primarily on projects driven by professional scientists and often lack roles in the decision-making for community members. Community science, typically defined as more community-driven and focused on community needs (Dosemagen & Parker, 2019), gets closer to the equitable cogeneration of knowledge that benefits local communities, but nevertheless as a term has been more recently muddied to include scientist-driven efforts (Cooper et al., 2021). The goal of the special issue on community-driven science is to develop deeper understandings of the variations in and possibilities for community-driven science, and to produce new understandings of and discourses on the role and possibilities for community-driven science within science education contexts: what it is, what it looks like, what people learn, how it is practiced, and its implications for democratizing the knowledge, practice, and discourses of science and science education. For us, community-driven science is more than engagement; it is about tangible and intangible relationships between knowledge and skills produced by science for the benefit of the community. Relationality is central to community-driven science because it situates people, place, and the environment (politics, history, and culture) at the heart of doing and knowing science, rather than at a distance to suffice presumed notions of objectivity. Additionally, one of the foci of community-driven science is that science, in all its forms, is contributory to the community wellbeing rather than extractive. The idea of community-driven science is not new to the field of science education, even if it has been marginal to research, development, and reform efforts. Indeed, powerful previous work has focused on everything from preservice science teachers learning to use local environmental justice issues as contexts for learning (Varelas et al., 2018), to young people in a summer program collecting water quality data at their local creek and presenting to their city council (Ballard et al., 2017), to “fence-line” organizations using their own air monitoring samples to fight a chemical plant (Ottinger, 2010), to youth organizing through STEM investigations to transform local injustices through place-based scientific inquiry (Birmingham et al., 2017; Morales-Doyle, 2017; Upadhyay et al., 2020) and engineering design (Nazar et al., 2019). We seek to build on and expand this work to develop a framework for what community-driven science might be with respect to science teaching and learning. We use this overarching term to frame how people, collectively, engage with science, in their local contexts, and in ways that position them as critical stakeholders and decision-makers in the processes and outcomes of science, in ways that are consequential to their own learning and for broader social change. We view community-driven science as involving community members in the scientific process early on as co-owners of a research agenda that is for the wellbeing and social futures of the community and its members. This stands in contrast to more traditional citizen science approaches typically studied in science education contexts, where the agenda is created and owned by professional scientists (e.g., Brossard et al., 2005, Phillips et al., 2018), though many scholars discuss the conceptual potential for more co-created participatory to promote science learning (Bonney et al., 2016; Roche et al., 2020). Our conceptualization links closely to the long and rich history of community-based participatory research in public health (Israel et al., 2013) and environmental justice (Bacon et al., 2013), as well as community science approaches that also foreground community questions and leadership in primarily air and water quality monitoring (Dosemagen & Parker, 2019; Wilson et al., 2018). However, we focus on community-driven science not only to steer away from the debate around terminology in the citizen science and community sciences fields (Cooper et al., 2021; Eitzel et al., 2017), but also to emphasize the particular decision-making roles of community members with respect to science and science learning, and to focus on the ways that the work benefits the community and its members, not just benefits from their participation. In the remainder of this special issue introduction, we map the terrain of community-driven science using the manuscripts of this issue, delving into three key themes that help us reveal the tensions and contradictions inherent in this often-fraught work. This mapping then allows us to examine the ways community-driven science seems to offer a space in the borderlands between science and communities such that working in “the edges” between worlds increases the possibilities for fostering equity and justice even as it fosters new roles in doing better science. Lastly, we offer the implications these studies have for both research and design in science education. In framing this special issue, we intentionally used the term “community” to challenge the field to consider who owns the science agenda and whose voices count, how and why. We use the term “community” to refer to people who are bonded together through place-based locations and history, with shared interests, concerns, social structures, and norms, acknowledging these shared dimensions are dynamic and are frequently contested as communities develop over time (Agrawal & Gibson, 2001). The manuscripts in this special issue call our attention not only to a wide range of communities but also challenge us to consider what constitutes community and who decides. Across the manuscripts in this issue, authors remind us of the varied and entrenched ways that onto-epistemologies in science have “been treated as fixed, agreed upon, or “settled” (Bang et al., 2012, p. 302), anchored in White western norms and values” (Tan & Faircloth, this issue). Such anchoring—in curriculum, pedagogy, legitimized content and practice—reproduces dominant ways of knowing, while omitting, subsuming, and erasing others. As we see in these manuscripts, community-driven science not only expands the onto-epistemologies and practices of science through its rootedness in people and their relationship to place, it also challenges the racial, class, gendered, sexuality, linguistic, and citizenship status hierarchies that result. Indeed, all of the manuscripts challenge what science is—what defines science as a way of knowing and a set of practices, discourses, ideas and ways of being. Across these texts, community knowledge, in history and in practice, disrupts what counts as science that “matters,” with special attention to the needs and desires of communities most marginalized by dominant society. Consider that for many youth and communities, science/STEM invokes histories of harm. This onto-epistemological shift gives witness to the lives and histories of families and communities, and in ways that refuse advancing histories of harm (Tuck, 2009). At the same time, drawing on the rich history of environmental justice and health research used by activists in the United States (MacIver et al., 2022), many of the authors in this issue offer ways that Western or “dominant science” ways of knowing and creating knowledge (Liboiron, 2021) can be co-opted and employed strategically by these same communities to change policies that affect their lives and livelihoods, from using pollution science in Arizona (Ramirez-Andreotta et al., this issue), to foregrounding Indigenous knowledge of climate change and its impacts in a Nunavut community while also acknowledging Western science's contributions (Rahm et al., this issue). This kind of epistemological witnessing and reconstruction, in form and function, is foundational to the studies presented in this special issue. Consider Tan and Faircloth's study that followed recently resettled refugee girls in their weekly, STEM-rich maker program. These authors show how youth co-opt the practices and tools of science as they negotiate their resettlement process in the new community where they live. By nesting the lived experiences of the girls within the context of a community-authored STEM-rich maker program, the authors make a case for how and why a community-driven science can and should be built around a set of emerging “incubating epistemologies.” The authors use this term to call attention to collaboration processes that attune to, and allow knowledge formation to grow from the tension between everyday experience and robust STEM experiences. Such tensions yield new and shared discourses, coproduced artifacts, and new social relations. In this way, incubating epistemologies as community-driven science, are a form of epistemological witnessing and world-building in, with, and through science. As the authors deftly illustrate through ethnographic narrative, what incubating epistemologies make visible are not only the varied lives lived, insider knowledge and wisdom of youth experiencing re-settlement as refugees, but also the power structures in refugee communities that both facilitate and constrain their possibilities for being in STEM in diverse and culturally sustaining ways. Youth's utilization of the STEM program itself as a tool to shape their community as a broader reflection of their desires frames their community as “not immutable,” offering the youth many possible presents and pathways forward, and the role of STEM in those pathways. Just as the authors challenge the role of science itself, they expose powered questions about community. They illustrate how enactments of community-driven science are contingent upon participating more powerful adult allies willingly engaging in allied political struggle to reform the dual/dialectic toward just outcomes. This involved everything from bearing critical witness to the questions, needs and desires that drive youth-authored investigations in STEM/community to strategically procuring materials and resources in support of youths' maker efforts. Across the manuscripts in this issue, we see community-driven science involving youth and adults working on questions and problems that are authentic to both the disciplines of science and to their own community, where data generation and analysis can potentially lead to answering those questions or problems (Morales-Doyle, 2018). These build on the ways that science participation can be of, within, and for communities (Calabrese Barton & Tan, 2010). Community-driven science seeks to democratize science, including the inquiry and decision-making processes associated with it, and of the ways in which science is taken up by, with and for community participants (Coburn, 2005). These manuscripts challenge us to consider who is community, what is community, and where is community. Indeed, the geographic diversity represented in this article set makes visible the importance of people and place and history in framing community-driven science. For example, the experiences that Inuuit youth have in northern Canada as they learn to care for the land (Rahm et al., this issue) significantly differs from Black and Latinx youth in Chicago who engage critically with technology to understand and challenge dominant racist norms around race and surveillance (Vakil et al., this issue). Leveraging wide-ranging onto-epistemological frameworks including Inuit and Native Hawaiian indigenous frameworks, critical race perspectives, critical data and critical technology literacies and practices, the relationships between power and knowing in science is scrutinized. As O'Neill and her coworkers (this issue) state, “Building on the argument that certain cultural practices that constitute “knowing about the world” are defined by people who are in positions of power (Gutiérrez et al., 1995), we wonder what ways of knowing and what knowledge bearers are excluded by the use of the term science.” O'Neill and coworkers, who are two practicing teachers, center community-based problem solving as a way to connect community and Hawaiian knowledge systems of the place (e.g., indigenous, ancestral, traditional, and Western). Learning from place involves learning from the people—the kūpuna [ancestors] and the moʻolelo [stories], as well as to “asking and providing kōkua [help/support] and engaging at the invitation of the people in the place.” The practice of community-driven science can at times contribute to decolonizing science itself, or anticolonial science (Liboiron, 2021). As the practice centers the relational work of learning from people and place, doing science expands beyond doing knowledge and practice. It expands to centrally and integrally including a learning journey that integrates developing a critical consciousness of one's sense of place and its multidimensions with western and Native Hawaiian ways of knowing, buttressed by a kind of humility that “enables participants to elevate the knowledge of the place and its people first” and “engages in real-world problems solving as a reciprocal rather than transactional processes.” Yet as these authors rightly note, as the field of science education expands the knowledge systems it includes within learning contexts, expansion needs to be tied to legitimization, thereby shaping the norms, discourses, practices, goals, and outcomes of learning. As these authors state: “We argue that incorporation of indigenous knowledge is not just valuable for indigenous youth, bridging indigenous and Western knowledge systems is required for humanity to engage in more thoughtful and sustainable problems solving.” Yet, O'Neill and her coworkers show that peeling back layers of science/community takes time and is a fraught process. Schools are not set up to take the time to learn about the ideological and political dimensions of a place like the students were able to do by forming new relationships with Uncle Mark and his Ohana. But if community-driven science is a practice of decolonization, then the people and their stories provide the relational and curricular guidance such work demands. We view learning, education, and scientific inquiry to be world-building endeavors, and if we are to proceed as a field in pursuit of prosperity, joy, and justice, we must honestly reckon with the realities of deeply entrenched racial and economic inequities that remain indelible aspects of U.S. society. Broadly, the authors in this special issue call attention to how and why people engage in science toward reimagining and remaking their worlds toward more just futures. They actively engage in acts of knowledge-, practice-, self-, and community-production and action that allow youth and adult participants to be, and become, in liberatory and self-determined ways. This work is intergenerational, interinstitutional, and interdependent. For example, Clegg and her coworkers bring us into the world of university-level Division 1 athletics, the “most competitive and commercialized level of collegiate athletics within the US” with extensive budgets directed at robust sports analytics. This sociopolitical context disproportionately affects young Black men, and contributes to a struggle to balance athletic, academic, personal, and familial commitments. As Clegg and others have suggested, elite collegiate athletes exist in the liminal space between academics and athletics, amateur and professional—“student-athletes” whose accomplishments on and off the field are distilled to that which advances the wealth of universities and their corporate partners. Clegg and her coworkers raise up new liminal spaces that athletes negotiate daily as they navigate their student-athlete trajectories—that of source/producer/user of data. They at once live their lives and experience their own data in sport, while they are under the watchful eye of more powerful others in nearly all aspects of their life—from sleeping and nutrition, to bodily performance. These authors challenge us to see, through the eyes of elite athletes, how community-driven science happens in places we, as a field of science education, might not typically recognize. By illuminating the agency that athletes enact to engage, resist, and coopt critical data practices in support of their performance and well-being, Clegg et al. show how athletes' engagement reflects a collective response to systemic racial, equity, and justice issues inherent in sport institutions. Here, we see how questions around who and where is community in community-driven science involves deep consideration of the “social, political, and historical contexts that community members must navigate.” Indeed, the kinds of subaltern worldbuilding happening among college athletes is a kind of community-driven science that has the power to rehumanize, beginning in small moments and local spaces, the liminality that athletes experience. Clegg et al. show us how athletes, as both sources and producers of data, are uniquely positioned to explore technical, social, and political aspects of data science in a context in which they are deeply embedded. These engagements produce “felt data” that athletes authored and leveraged toward fighting back against the athletic community practices that prevented well-being. We can see, then, how community-driven science foregrounds a kind of agency and action-taking that involves naming and confronting injustices, refusing erasure, and coconstructing new hybrid forms of discourses, knowledge, and practices; this allows people to coproduce socioscientific-cultural artifacts that restory their worlds and science itself. This is a fraught process because it involves naming and challenging power structures. Vakil et al.'s article makes visible the tensions and contradictions involved in efforts to “honestly reckon with the deeply entrenched racial and economic oppression” that youth of color experiences in STEM and in society, here in the United States and globally. This takes form in negotiating not only what the focus of community-driven science might be (e.g., documenting inequitable technology-driven surveillance practices) but also what the outcomes of such efforts might be for both individuals (e.g., production of multimedia artifacts to make visible their insights) and communities (agency and jamming power). Such work requires those who represent societal structures of power in STEM (e.g., university researchers and scientists) to re-see and re-think their own subjectivities in relation to youth and communities and the possibilities for worldbuilding through community-driven science. Vakil et al. directly address issues of power and agency in the possibilities for youth and communities to engage in community-driven science/technology. Using the context of an after-school technology program, and the sociopolitical context of surveillance of black and brown youth in urban communities, these authors show how one function of community-driven science is in interrupting, subverting, and creatively “jamming” systems of inequitable power—toward the well-being of youth and communities. Here, jamming power is explored as “a disciplinary-specific mode of agency that can be used to explain not only the practices of community-driven science activists, but also as an analytic tool for designing for programs and community organizing.” Ramirez-Andreotta et al. (this issue) challenge the typical delineations of who can own and do science by focusing on one urban and three rural communities in Arizona investigating pollution cases from unlined landfills to electronics factories to historical and active mining Superfund sites. Each community centered around one or more promotoras, women with local knowledge and leadership who are knowledge mediators that help promote and mobilize their neighbors around public health issues, who partner in asking questions, collecting, and analyzing soil and air samples, and using their findings for advocacy. These women and members of the community Vakil et al. describe, also show the possibilities for what it might mean to bring together a network of community actors, in the latter case from arts organizations, churches, after school groups, and university researches, to co-design for community-driven science. Community-driven science and science education is an ethical practice strengthened by relational trust and sociopolitical clarity. The manuscripts in this special issue foreground the ethical, or how people engage with each other, community, and science toward affecting people's lives, social relations, and possibilities (Vakil, 2018). Each one of these studies names just possible futures as a guiding ideal, a hoped-for outcome of their efforts. Each one of the studies are indicating that the best community-driven science starts, ends, and grows with “relationship,” which is more than connection. At the same time, each one of these manuscripts offers powerful descriptions of how movement toward these ideas is grounded in relationalities that open up possibilities for being and becoming (relational trust), while also bearing critical witness to structures of power and oppression (sociopolitical clarity, see McKinney de Royston et al., 2017). Findings illuminate how engaging community health at the intersection of history, race, place, and power shaped engagement in community-driven science practices and supported student sense making in ways that surfaced challenges, tensions, and opportunities for disrupting and reimagining community narratives. Visitainer's study makes a compelling case for how a teacher's, Felicia, sociopolitical clarity oriented her to engaging students in the relational explorations of health inequities as she challenged students to question dominant narratives of places, people, and forms of relationality that negatively impact community agency. The practice of community-driven science was built around engaging “critical inquiry and data analysis of the impacts of unjust policies and practices on the health outcomes for communities of color” while also centering “unified forms of relationality in the classroom that directly contrasted with dominant forms of individuality in society that she sought to problematize and disrupt.” Acts of relational trust toward new possible futures as the work of community-driven science took many forms in this classroom. The teacher positioned herself as a member of the community and placed herself in the statistics they sought to engage and critique. She promoted social closeness and critical collective care by physically moving the class so they were in close proximity to each other and described the social relations of the class as “family.” She explicitly elicited and leveraged youths' cultural practices and lived experiences as instructional resources and as central to the doing

Tech for Collaboration

The utilization of Indigenous Knowledge in natural resource management frameworks, including environmental assessments, is increasingly being recognized as an important asset by the environmental community. This is because Indigenous Knowledge, which has been developed over generations by Indigenous communities, can lead to the development of more effective and equitable resource management practices that are aligned with local needs, cultural values, and ecological knowledge. At the same time, Participatory Geographic Information Systems (PGIS) are also emerging as a valuable tool for storing and mobilizing information towards natural resource management. Considering shifts in the environmental community around natural resource management and the use of IK, and the potential of PGIS, the incorporation of Indigenous Knowledge into PGIS raises important ethical questions regarding knowledge ownership and sharing, and there are challenges and limitations to implementing Indigenous Knowledge-based PGIS platforms. This research paper seeks to explore the application of Indigenous Knowledge in natural resource management through a scoping review or relevant literature, including case studies of PGIS platforms used by Indigenous communities, both in Canada and abroad. The paper addresses the following key questions: How can Indigenous Knowledge be applied towards natural resource management frameworks and environmental assessments? How can Indigenous knowledge be stored and mobilised within PGIS platforms for future generations? What are the challenges and limitations surrounding the implementation of Indigenous Knowledge within PGIS platforms in natural resource management? What are the ethics surrounding Indigenous Knowledge-based PGIS platforms? The paper reveals that integrating Indigenous Knowledge into natural resource management frameworks can lead to sustainable management practices. The paper also demonstrates that PGIS platforms have the potential to facilitate knowledge sharing and collaboration among communities, but their implementation requires careful considerations of the challenges and limitations associated within Indigenous Knowledge-based systems. Balancing the need to share knowledge across communities with protecting intellectual property rights and the cultural significance of Indigenous Knowledge is crucial. The implementation of PGIS platforms also requires significant technological infrastructure and skills, requiring significant human resources, which can be challenging for Indigenous communities with limited resources.

Incorporation of Indigenous Knowledge in the Mathematical Geometry Discipline at a TVET College

Mathematical geometrical (MG) concept is often perceived as abstract and difficult to understand by students at the TVET College. Students are unable to perform well in Mathematic Assessments Tasks specifically on this concept. Drawing from this is the declining percentages of student enrolments in mathematics at National Qualification Framework (NQF) level 2. The aim of this study was to enhance the teaching and learning of Mathematical Geometry through the integration of indigenous knowledge in the form of a pilot-practical assessment task (PAT). The research team made use of focus group discussions to gather empirical data. Students were given the practical assessment task that incorporated indigenous knowledge to close the gap of students being unable to relate the mathematical geometry taught in the classroom to their everyday lives that seemed to prevail amongst mathematics students at a TVET College. Ten co-researchers were homogeneously selected based on their level of experience in teaching mathematical geometry at a TVET college located in the Afromontane communities of Thabo Mofutsanyane municipality, South Africa. The result indicated that indigenous knowledge can be utilized as an effective way of learning and teaching mathematical geometry at the TVET college.

Indigenous Participation and the Incorporation of Indigenous Knowledge and Perspectives in Global Environmental Governance Forums: a Systematic Review

Global environmental governance (GEG) forums, such as those convened through the United Nations, result in the development of monumental guiding frameworks such as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) Conference of Parties (COPs) Aichi and post-2020 targets. The ratification of policy frameworks by member and/or signatory states can result in major shifts in environmental policy and decision-making and has major implications for Indigenous communities. In this article, we present systematic review of the peer-reviewed literature on Indigenous participation in GEG forums, and focus on the specific questions: (1) what GEG forums include Indigenous participation and (2) how do Indigenous peoples participate in GEG forums, including how their perspectives and knowledges are framed and/or included/excluded within governance discussions, decisions, and negotiations. We provide a bibliometric analysis of the articles and derive seven inductively determined themes from our review: (1) Critical governance forums and decisions; (2) inclusion and exclusion of Indigenous voices and knowledge in GEG forums; (3) capacity barriers; (4) knowledge hierarchies: inclusion, integration, and bridging; (5) representation and grouping of Indigenous peoples in GEG; (6) need for networks among and between Indigenous peoples and other governance actors; and (7) Indigenous peoples influence on GEG decisions and processes. Our findings can be used to improve GEG forums by contributing to the development strategies that address the barriers and inequities to meaningful and beneficial Indigenous participation and can contribute to future research that is focused on understanding the experiences of Indigenous peoples within GEG forums.

Literacy and Identity Development of Indigenous Rukai Children

This study examines the development of literacy and identity for young Indigenous Taiwanese children using ethnographic methods and the theories of multiple literacies, Indigenous knowledge, and identity construction, and it provides insights into the incorporation of Indigenous knowledge and literacies to create hybrid literacy spaces. Focused-upon participants included four 6-year-old Rukai-tribe children—two who lived in a city and two who lived in a village—and their families and teachers. We found that all children learned literacies in culturally meaningful contexts that involved stories and hybrid literacy practices, Indigenous foods, religious activities, traditional life skills, Indigenous language, and multiple forms of text. The two city children developed Rukai knowledge and literacies through performance-based contexts, whereas the village children learned through authentic contexts (e.g., observing farming and hunting). The literacy and identity of the two city children may be undermined due to limited access to Rukai resources, stemming from racism, classism, and linguicism.

¿Del monólogo al diálogo de saberes? Una reflexión epistemológica y pedagógica sobre la incorporación de los saberes tradicionales indígenas en la educación intercultural básica en México

Con el presente artículo propongo un análisis del concepto de diálogo de saberes en la educación intercultural. Para ello, la reflexión gira en torno a tres puntos: la dificultad teórica de hacer conciliar inclusión y diálogo; el cuestionamiento de la pertinencia de los métodos e instrumentos de la epistemología occidental para sistematizar los saberes indígenas; la crítica a la propuesta de incorporación de los saberes indígenas reflejada en los Marcos Curriculares de Educación Indígena y de la Población Migrante. Se sostiene que el sistema educativo mexicano, al encontrarse aún inmerso en una ideología sustancialmente inclusivista y homogeneizadora, está muy lejos de pasar del monólogo cultural, pedagógico y epistemológico al diálogo. Se concluye que el desafío consiste en hacer efectivo el ideal de una educación intercultural para todos y en fomentar la reflexión epistemológica para la comprensión de los saberes indígenas, con el fin de evitar aplicar procesos de sistematización erróneos para su incorporación en la escuela.

Contextualising science and mathematics teacher professional development in rural areas


 
 
 Science and mathematics teacher professional development in South Africa does not adequately address teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge or ability to integrate indigenous knowledge into the curriculum. This situation is partly due to traditional teacher professional development programmes that utilise top-down and expert-driven approaches without consulting teachers. This “one- size-fits-all” model is rarely relevant to teachers’ classroom realities, especially in rural areas. The research question that guided this research was: How could the professional development intervention be contextualised to better meet the educational needs of a rural environment? In this paper, we explore the design principles for teacher professional development interventions that could addressthe needs of teachers and the context, acknowledging that teachers in rural areas face different challenges compared to teachers in urban areas. We use the Hantam region of the Northern Cape Province as a case study to explore the affordances of partnerships with local indigenous knowledge holders and cultural institutions (museums) in the professional development of teachers. Data were generated from semi-structured interviews with Hantam school and community participants using a qualitative approach. Two major themes that emerged from this qualitative research was that (a) the involvement of indigenous knowledge holders and museums as “third partners” in the value chain between universities and schools, could greatly assist to better contextualise the “western” science curriculum, and (b) the incorporation of indigenous knowledge in the STEM curriculum could assist in building the self-esteem of learners. We argue that contextualising science and mathematics teacher professional development for the rural environment has affordances for improving not only teacher competencies, but also learners’ views on the relevance of science and mathematics in everyday life.
 
 

I-DIGEST framework: towards authentic learning for indigenous learners

There is a distinct lack of authentic and relevant learning opportunities for Indigenous learners in formalized educational settings. This is due to multiple factors including the lack of incorporation of Indigenous knowledge into educational curriculum. A significant portion of Indigenous knowledge is in relation to the land and is experientially grounded. Therefore, any knowledge system used by Indigenous learners must take into account that learning is contextual to a place and should include a significant experiential learning component within the curriculum. Digital storytelling has emerged as a methodology for incorporating Indigenous knowledge into learning and with the literature identifying the lack of a formal curriculum design process, a framework is presented for incorporating digital storytelling into learning curriculum, allowing for authentic and relevant learning opportunities for Indigenous learners. To test the efficacy of our framework approach, prototype tools have been created to generate learning objects to be used in a case study course. Experts in the field of education and Indigenous knowledge were then asked to provide feedback on the efficacy of the framework. Strengths identified include the inclusion of knowledge holders and community members in the design process as well as providing a visual and oral alternative to the standard written method of expression. Weaknesses identified include possible lack of knowledge and support from educators as well as a lack of protocol to determining valid, relevant knowledge. Additional benefits identified include using this approach beyond the physical boundaries of a community, to allow, for remote community members to contribute to the knowledgebase.

English

The study assessed the level of indigenous environmental consciousness and education in Nigerian cities using Ogbomoso as a case study. It identified the level and limitations to the consciousness of environmental issues; it also evaluated the presence and level of indigenous environmental consciousness; examined the forms of indigenous environmental education prevailing in the city, how it is acquired, and their relevance to environmental management. It also assessed the effectiveness of this indigenous environmental consciousness and relayed the outcome of the survey for further work, by the incorporation of indigenous knowledge into the educational curriculum. The study elicits various indigenous educations relating to the environment, the level of awareness as regard such and the effectiveness. Data for this research were obtained mainly from a comprehensive questionnaire survey, which were administered to 3,000 (10%) households from the total of 30,020 households in the study area. The data collected were analysed using simple statistical techniques such as frequency table and percentages. Simple linear regression was used to explain the relationship between education, level of environmental consciousness of the people, income level and level of consciousness to environment. The study observed that the level of education is negatively related to the level of environmental consciousness and the level of income is directly related to environmental consciousness. The study shows that traditional and indigenous education are the avenue through which indigenous knowledge is passed to people through gradual socialization of youths in a society into its norms, religious beliefs and moral values.   Key words: Indigenous knowledge system, environmental consciousness, education.

Incorporating indigenous knowledge into extractive economies: The science of colonial silver

Historians of mining in colonial Latin America are faced with a deep and persistent methodological tension in our field. From census records, surveys, and tribute tallies, we know that indigenous men and women represented the majority of miners and refiners in the silver centers of Potosí and Zacatecas, but because they left little written evidence of their work, their intellectual and technical contributions remain underappreciated in the historiography. By tracing terms that European translators of Álvaro Alonso Barba’s _Arte de los metales_ (Madrid, 1640) understand (which tend to reflect familiar concepts in natural philosophy) and misunderstand (which tend to reflect Hispanized forms of Quechua and Aymara), we can use the language of colonial mining and metallurgy to identify where and how indigenous ways of knowing provided key technical vocabularies in the science of American silver. Recovering some of the Andean intellectual and etymological roots of colonial amalgamation technologies also provides a new way of thinking about the incorporation of indigenous knowledge into extractive industries that figured prominently in the early modern making of the black legend.

Incorporating Indigenous Knowledge into the Bachelor of Education (Pre-service) Primary

his project was initiated to support the School of Education’s (SoE’s) impetus to embed Indigenous Knowledge (IK) into its Bachelor of Education (Primary) Degree. This move to increase the level of IK in Higher Education curricula is a response to a national push initially stimulated by the Council of Australian Government (COAG). The embedding of IK into the SoE units has been somewhat sporadic and intermittent. The incorporation of Indigenous Knowledge into the BEPD program (and others across the university) will thus be an on-going process that requires further work and resourcing. It is therefore important that impetus is not lost and that a range of measures are put in place to ensure continuity of progress. The project was carried out through a series of interviews with School of Education staff; workshops seeking wider Indigenous input; a desk top review of School of Education course units; liaison with CDU Library.

An Evaluation of Constraints in Climate Change Indigenous Coping and Adaptation Strategies for Sustainable Agro-Pastoral Based Livelihoods in Baringo County, Kenya

The frequency and intensity of climate change events have overwhelmed the coping and adaptation capacity of communities resident in the arid and semi-lands of Kenya. This is evidenced by the continued over reliance on external food aid. The objective of this study was to assess constraints in climate change indigenous coping and adaptation strategies for sustainable agro-pastoral based livelihoods in Baringo County, Kenya. The study postulated that incorporation of indigenous knowledge can add value to the development of sustainable climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies. A social survey research design was adopt for this study. The target population was all the households in the study area. A completely randomized cluster sampling approach was used for data collection. Data collection instruments included questionnaires; focus group discussions; key informant interviews; personal observation and secondary data review. The data collected was analysed through descriptive and inferential statistics; Pearson's Chi-square; and Correlation analysis. We therefore conclude that neither the indigenous knowledge nor the exogenous knowledge is yet fully utilized in the development process as each has inherent constraints that limit their adoption; and that conventional approaches have been perceived as more advanced and therefore have overlooked the potential in local experiences and practices. We recommend that indigenous knowledge needs to be captured, documented, preserved and transferred as well. To upscale any adaptation initiatives, there is need to improve indigenous knowledge information exchange between local communities; Community based Organizations; Non- Governmental Organizations; planners and academia. The use of the Integrated Knowledge Intervention Model (IKIM) conceptualized by the author is also recommended.

Incorporating indigenous knowledge materials. Efforts at Elhafeed Library, Ahfad University, Sudan

This article describes work being done at Ahfad University for Women in Omdurman, Sudan, to document and catalog indigenous knowledge (IK) materials. The recognition and appreciation of IK taps into the intellectual resources associated with it. Librarians, as major workers in the knowledge society, have to recognize their roles in the incorporation of IK into the “scientific knowledge system” with which they are familiar.

Incorporating indigenous knowledge materials. Efforts at Elhafeed Library, Ahfad University, Sudan: A preliminary study

This article describes work being done at Ahfad University for Women in Omdurman, Sudan, to document and catalog indigenous knowledge (IK) materials. The recognition and appreciation of IK taps into the intellectual resources associated with it. Librarians, as major workers in the knowledge society, have to recognize their roles in the incorporation of IK into the “scientific knowledge system” with which they are familiar.

Range Resource Assessment and Monitoring Techniques among the Pastoral Bahima in Uganda

Introduction Few comprehensive studies have documented indigenous knowledge in rangeland management in Uganda. Existing studies mainly present work done in the rangelands in terms of range productivity in respect to animal productivity. In this study I shall attempt to document the indigenous range resource assessment and monitoring techniques selected in only one agro-pastoral community in Uganda. Most range assessment, monitoring and condition classification have an ecological basis and are associated with different stages of secondary succession (Dyksterhius 1949; Parker 1954; Wagner 1989). The inferred condition is based on the relationship of the present vegetation composition of the sites. Site stability, grazing value, vegetation cover, forage and carrying capacity are assumed to increase as vegetation composition nears climax state. Range classification and monitoring can also ben done through use of diagnostic surveys and GIS methods which characterize the physical and socioeconomic environment such as drainage pattern, slope, soil quality and distribution, farming systems, land tenure and social and cultural characteristics of human communities. Within East Africa, range condition classification has placed emphasis on periodic re-measurements of range condition on permanent sample transects/plots (Casebeer 1970: Skovlin 1971; Bille and Heemstra 1978; Kuchar et al. 1981; Herlocker 1994). After almost a century of development activities in the rangelands of Uganda, there are no ready solutions to the pressing economic stagnation and environmental degradation in the country's drylands. To varying degrees, pastoralists and agropastoralists who live in these areas have been caught in a protracted crisis as a result of increasing scarcity of natural resources and inappropriate available technologies. This generalised crisis in pastoral development led to the proposition of a closer linkage between indigenous pastoral systems and knowledge, and modern scientific technologies to produce what Roling (1993) termed 'coupled systems' comprising hard ecosystem (i.e., range science) and a soft platform for making decisions about that ecosystem (i.e., a pastoral organisation). As Warren (1986) observed, indigenous knowledge is not necessarily simple. It does not exist in a cultural, economic or political vacuum but always confronts other knowledge systems. It is within the context of contestation that, through a process of dialogue and exchange, innovation and knowledge creation will always operate (Scoones and Thompson 1993). Much indigenous knowledge is based on accurate, detailed and thoughtful observations, collected and passed over many generations. It allows informed decisions to be made by combining information and techniques to maximise production and minimise risks (Brokensha and Riley 1980). According to Scoones and Thompson (1993): Rural peoples' knowledge and agricultural science are both general and specific, theoretical and practical, value laden and context bound and influenced by relations of power ... science and traditional knowledge are thus not different, elements of each may be incommensurable, but commonalities in process and outputs clearly exist ... in other words some elements of farmers' science show strong parallels with conventional, positivist, empirical based scientific approaches. A well established, durable process of experimentation exists that offers the potential for articulation with modern science. A lot can be learned from the local people. Perhaps the incorporation of indigenous knowledge into developing adaptable technologies can be an effective means to increase extension agents' and development workers' sensitivity to local needs and stimulate meaningful dialogue between all participants in the developing process (Tadingar 1994). A combination of formal science and traditional knowledge or technology sharing between the two may therefore prove to be an effective development approach. …

Incorporation of indigenous knowledge and perspectives in agroforestry development

An explicit representation of farmers' knowledge about on-farm tree fodder resources was developed using knowledge-based systems software and methodology at a front-line agricultural research centre in the eastern mid-hills of Nepal. Sophisticated knowledge of tree-crop interactions and the feeding value of various tree fodders was revealed. Farmers' ecological knowledge was more developed in some areas than others and was largely complementary to that of agricultural researchers in Nepal and the scientific literature more generally. Evaluation of the combined knowledge of farmers and researchers related to interdisciplinary land use problems by the creation of explicit, encyclopaedic knowledge bases, offers the possibility of targeting research more precisely to gaps in knowledge constraining the productivity and sustainability of the farming system. While similar insight into the depth of farmers knowledge may have been gained by researchers adopting a less formal approach to knowledge acquisition, without an explicit, durable and manipulable record, subsequent analyses and continued use of the knowledge in the research and development process might not be achieved.

Incorporation of indigenous knowledge and perspectives in agroforestry development

Calls for the effective integration of indigenous knowledge and perspective into agroforestry are increasingly familiar in agroforestry programmes. This is the result of a need to better target research, ethical concerns about participation and power and the recognition that indigenous knowledge is a potentially powerful source of understanding that may often be complementary to scientific knowledge. Incorporating indigenous knowledge into development may be achieved through farmer participation in research planning and implementation, external survey of local needs as a basis for planning research or the active synthesis of indigenous and scientific knowledge (in addition to collaboration between the scientist and the farmer) in order to capitalise on their potential complementarity. It is argued that active synthesis has received inadequate attention. In part this is because it demands rigorous analysis of indigenous and scientific knowledge. This is an exacting process and requires effective means of explicitly representing the knowledge concerned. An approach to this task is briefly introduced. A case study description and evaluation can be found in the accompanying paper [Thapa et al., 1995 (this issue)].