Transcript Teacher as culture broker” in indigenous science education

“Teacher as culture broker” in
indigenous science education:
Work in progress
Michael Michie
Centre for Science and Technology Education Research
University of Waikato
[email protected]
In the spirit of reconciliation I acknowledge the traditional
owners of the lands around Darwin (the Larrakia) and
Armidale (the Nganyaywana).
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Abstract
 the variety of roles suggested in the literature for teachers
in cross-cultural education
 the results of an investigation of enactivism as an
alternative theory for teaching indigenous students
 some indications from the data collection through
interviews with practitioners and autobiographical
assessment.
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Defining culture broking (Jezewski, 1989)
• the act of bridging, linking or mediating between groups or persons of
differing cultural backgrounds for the purpose of reducing conflict or
producing change
• background in anthropology but not defined
• examined attributes from anthropology and health (12), as well as
brokering in business (6)
• produced a culture-brokering model
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Jezewski’s model of culture broking (1995)
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Jezewski’s strategies for intervention
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mediating
negotiating
advocating
networking
intervening
sensitizing
innovating
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Culture brokers in education
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Wyatt (1978-79), Canadian First Nations
Gentemann & Whitehead (1983), African American students
Gay (1993), African-American students
Stairs (1991/95), Native schools in Canada
Aikenhead (1995ff), science education
Bassey (1996), Multicultural education
Páez & McCarty (1997), ESL
Cooper, Denner & Lopez (1999), Mexican-American students
Gorman (1999), Canadian Native students
Harris (1999), Multicultural education
Haynes (2000), ESL
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Role of culture brokers in education
• gained some credence in education in recent times but not established
as praxis in indigenous education
• original definition: a mediating or facilitating role between two people,
often with a commercial bias
• in teaching the emphasis has been on the teacher becoming the culture
broker between themselves and their students at a personal level, but
also as facilitating between cultures
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Conflicting views of teacher as culture broker
• the role is better filled by someone from the Other and that teachers are
better off searching for the best person to fill the role
• a teacher needs to develop a set of skills to become more proficient in their
cross-cultural classroom, with the implication that upon attaining them
they would have achieved the role of culture broker. (Michie, 2003)
• brokerage commodifies knowledge simply as content, turning it into
something which could be bought or sold (Christie, p.c.)
• assumption that western science teachers only need to learn how to deal
with pedagogical aspects of cross-cultural differences
• if white teachers can learn to become culture brokers, then seemingly there
may be no role for indigenous people (McKinley, 2001)
• non-Western students compelled to accommodate Western science (Carter,
2004)
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Role of cultural brokers in contemporary society
• Peace (1998) and Palmer (2000) identified cultural brokers as a power
elite whose association with the media makes them “part of an
occupational group specializing in the production and dissemination of
symbolic goods and commodities” (Palmer, 2000, p.366).
• Peace (1998) concluded that the power exerted by this new class of
cultural intermediaries should be the focus of further examination:
“Cultural brokers should become a prime target for those who wish to
contribute to the ethnography of postmodernity” (p.283).
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Teachers in multicultural classrooms
• cultural organisers who facilitate strategic ways of accomplishing
tasks so that the learning process involves varied ways of knowing,
experiencing, thinking and behaving;
• cultural mediators who create opportunities for critical dialogue and
behaving;
• orchestrators of social contexts who provide several learning
configurations including interpersonal and intrapersonal opportunities
for seeking, accessing, and evaluating knowledge ( Diamond & Moore,
1995; Gay, 2000)
• maybe all three make a culture broker (Geneva Gay, 1993)
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Teachers as cultural negotiators (Stairs, 1996)
• “Understanding culture is dramatically different to knowing culture
…” (p. 232)
• “… move students beyond the initial multicultural what of culture …
to construct a cultural negotiation model, the how of contextualization
and the why of intention and meaning…”
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Role of the teacher in an enactivist setting
(Fenwick, 2000)
• a communicator assisting in naming and renaming and making use of
“appropriate” language
• a story maker tracing and recording the interactions between the
learner and the learned
• an interpreter helping learners make sense of the emerging patterns
and understanding their involvement.
• educators must be aware of “their own entanglement and interests in
the emerging systems of thought and action”
• reference to the teacher as an interpreter becomes intriguing in a
discussion of teachers as culture brokers
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Enactivism: first impressions (Michie, 2004)
Refer to http://www.ozemail.com.au/~mmichie/teacher_cb.htm
• associated with ecological theory, deep ecology and learners-in-theirenvironment (Jane, 2003)
• reminded of some of the characteristics of traditional indigenous
knowledge such as holistic, connective and participatory
• terms such as experiential learning (Fenwick, 2000), constructivism
(Begg, 2000), ethnomathematics (Begg, 2001a) and worldview (Gunn,
2003)
• understanding that the mind cannot be separated from the body
• Begg (2000): In enactivism, instead of seeing learning as “coming to
know”, one envisages the learner and the learned, the knower and the
known, the self and the other, as co-evolving and being co-implicated.
• contrasted enactivism with constructivism by emphasising knowing
rather than knowledge
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Potential challenges to enactivism
(Fenwick, 2000)
• constructivist viewpoint, “the lack of full recognition accorded to
individual meaning-making and identity-constructing processes”
• ethical issues of justice and right action
• critical cultural perspective, perspectives such as enactivism do not
address inevitable power relationships circulating in human cultural
systems. The influences on a systems perspective of categories such as
gender, race, sexuality, class and religion may be indiscernible.
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Concluding remarks on enactivism
• enactivism may have parallels with traditional ways of teaching and
learning but most indigenous students in developed countries have
started to move away from traditional life styles and many of them are
far removed from them
• what an enactivist-based science pedagogy would look like is a matter
of conjecture, as research in the area is limited
• as it would be considered acultural it must also be applicable to a large
population of non-indigenous students
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Research methodology
• The basic plan is use narrative inquiry to create a series of stories with
people who have engaged in cross-cultural experiences, then to use
those stories to understand the roles which they or others have taken to
facilitate the experience. The context of their stories will explain the
relationship with culture brokers and indigenous science education.
• The selection of research participants has been to give a range of
experiences, many of which are within the area of indigenous science
education but some of them have experience outside of science
education or outside of education.
• “Narrative is the best way of representing and understanding
experience” (Clandidin & Connelly, 2000, p.18)
• Focus on complexity rather than reductionism
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The primary methods of gathering field texts
(data) for this research are
• face-to-face interviews wherever possible (“conversation”)
• participants’ research writings
• comments made subsequently (“chat”)
• create a collaborative research story, at least for a core group of
participants.
• Chats with other participants may help clarify positions of other
participants.
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• The stories are structured as chronologies; they start with participants’
early experiences (from the interview), look at the developing ideas in
their writings and focus on their current thinking. Whether this will
remain the case after further collaboration on the stories remains to be
seen.
• Part of this is initiated through the interview questions, although the
questions do not necessarily direct the interview or structure the story.
Rather, they provide awareness of the research agenda.
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The researcher-as-participant through
autobiographical writing
• “Instead we need to acknowledge our participatory connectedness with
the other research participants and promote a means of knowing in a
way that denies distance and separation and promotes commitment and
engagement.” (Bishop, 1996, p.23).
• “Narrative inquiry characteristically begins with the researcher’s
autobiographically oriented narrative associated with the research
puzzle …” (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000, p.41)
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Progress to date
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2 interviews with core participants completed and transcripts returned
1.5 narratives completed, none returned to participants
some autobiographical writing undertaken, needs editing
couple of interviews scheduled for next few months
reassessment of methodology
• How much of an interview can you use? How do you structure the
narrative?
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