INTRODUCTION Akerson, Flick and Lederman (2000: 364) define - - PDF document

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The Paradox of Teaching Indigenous Knowledge Systems in South African Schools – A Natural Science Perspective By

• Prof. Sitwala Namwinji Imenda

University of Zululand – April 1, 2014

INTRODUCTION

• Akerson, Flick and Lederman (2000: 364) define

children’s ideas “as experience-based explanations constructed by the learner to make a range of phenomena and objects intelligible.”

• Thus the home environment, as well as the social

interactions children are involved in – from home to school, shape their understanding and interpretation of what takes place in their lives.

Introduction

• With reference to scientific knowledge, it is

widely acknowledged that “ideas about the biological world are developed in early childhood prior to children reaching school age.” (Prokop, Prokop, Tunnicliffe & Diran, 2007: 62).

Introduction

• Typically, however, indigenous students'

everyday ways of understanding and school science ways of understanding are often very different (Chigeza, 2007: 10).

• Quite importantly, indigenous students,

particularly in the remote areas, grow up with an understanding of the world that is subsumed with the meta-physical and supernatural, and antithetical to scientific ways of understanding (Chigeza, 2007: 10).

STATEMENT OF THE RESEARCH PROBLEM

• The National Curriculum Statement stipulates “one of the

differences between modern Science and Technology and traditional, indigenous knowledge systems is that they have their origins in different world views (Department of Basic Education [DBE], 2011: 8).

• This realisation, in itself, expresses an inherent tension

between the two knowledge forms, particularly when the

• verall goal of Natural Science and Technology is stipulated

as the “pursuit of new knowledge and understanding of the world around us and of natural phenomena [and the creation of structures, systems and processes to meet peoples’ needs and improving the quality of life.” (DBE: 9).

Statement of the Research Problem

• Clearly, this goal is an expression of school

science ways of understanding, as opposed to everyday ways of understanding, which typified most of indigenous knowledge systems.

• Discourse around the possibilities of, and

modalities for, teaching indigenous knowledge systems as an integrated part of the Natural Science and Technology curriculum, as espoused in the NCS, is therefore imperative and urgent.

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RESEARCH OBJECTIVES

• Primary Objective

– To identify and document grade 6 learners’ notions of the respective roles and functions of selected internal body parts, namely: liver, brain, heart, lungs, kidneys and spleen.

• Secondary Objective

– To make an overall assessment of the nature of the responses given by the learners against the requirements of the Main Stream Science (MSS) curriculum.

METHODOLOGY

• This was a survey study focusing on

respondents’ own qualitative descriptions of what they considered to be the main role and functions of the liver in a living body.

• The learners who participated in this study

came from a predominantly rural area in KwaMbonambi, KwaZulu Natal, South Africa.

Methodology

• For the majority of these learners, exposure to

the scientific world is very limited and the tenets of MSS are encountered mainly through school teaching, while traditional life and culture remain their dominant sources of both informal and non-formal learning.

• Altogether, there were 197 participants – 101

girls and 96 boys – all doing grade 6 drawn from four primary schools.

Methodology

• Data collection was made by way of a researcher-

designed instrument consisting of open-ended questions, formulated as follows:

Please, describe what you understand to be the role and function of a liver in a living body. (Ngicela, uchaze ngolwakho ulwazi ukuthi iyini indima nomsebenzi wesibindi emzimbeni ophilayo.)

In subsequent sections, “liver” was substituted by other internal body parts, in turn – namely, brain, heart, lungs, kidneys and spleen.

Methodology

• The reason for using isiZulu was eliminate English,

as a possible communication barrier, given that at Grade 6 level, most of these rural students have not yet mastered the language for easy communication.

• Further, at their level it was felt that a lot may be

lost in the translation from isiZulu to English.

• It was also envisaged that using isiZulu would allow

them to express constructs and notions in ways that would be typical of their culture and social conditions.

Methodology

• Data comprised passages written by the

respondents in response to the research question.

• A first language speaker of isiZulu, holding a degree

in English language served as a translator of the data collected.

• Data analysis involved the identification and coding
• f emerging themes of the qualitative data

gathered.

• The emerging themes were defined and redefined

into progressively fewer categories under which the various responses were classified until final categories were arrived at.

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RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Demographics

• The research sample consisted of a total of

197 duly completed responses; seven “spoilt papers” which were completely unreadable.

• There were slightly more boys (51%) than girls

(49%) – with ages ranging from 11 to 18.

• The home language (HL) for all respondents

was isiZulu and their first additional language (FAL) was English.

Results and Discussion

• In the analysis of all passages that were

provided by the respondents, across the six internal body parts, over 95% were context- based – and made no reference to MSS.

• Instead, they were, almost invariably, all based

within the context of the meta-physical and supernatural world of the respondents.

EXAMPLES

“The function of the liver is that if you want to do something scary you gather courage, because you want to housebreak and commit robbery. Even if you are ill you may go to the traditional healer who takes the liver and mixes it with the herbs for healing the ill

• person. There are different types of liver: one which

belongs to the goat, cow and human being. I would like to stress on the human liver, because it makes him attack innocent people. You will die or you will get arrested when you have killed people. You steal people’s stuff and kill people.”[F, 11]

Examples (Continued)

It enables one to decide/choose what he/she likes

• r do not like. You are able to listen to your heart. If

you think too much, the heart stops, and if you have done something wrong it beats very fast. If the heart does not like food you will not eat. It is like when you want to go and the heart does not feel like going, you stay. It makes you decide on what you are thinking. It is the source of life. [F, 12]

Examples (Continued)

They use the heart of a dead person on another person who needs it. One cannot live without a

• heart. The traditional healers use it to cure
• people. The heart is used by izangoma or spiritual

healers, they clean the bladder or womb, even at the clinics they can help. They can help you with an animal heart (any animal). The crushed heart

• f an animals helps in cleaning the inside of a
• person. It gets rid of all the problems. [M, 11]

Examples (Continued)

The brain is there so that when you are ill you know how to look for help from traditional healers and fortune tellers. The fortune tellers are able to help you when you are ill, they give you herbs and medicines, and they are also able to tell you about spiritual things. Their herbal mixtures help a lot, they sometimes ask you to use the enema. They also go to traditional and spiritual healers to ask for holy water. The traditional/spiritual healer performs their rituals in the special house, specially built for this. [F, 13]

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RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

• The examples given above emphasise the

significant role that CONTEXT plays in the respondents’ life-worlds – and how this finds expression in the manner in which they have articulated their answers to the respective questions.

• Science education literature makes a distinction

between Constructivist approaches to learning science versus Context-based pedagogy.

THE PARADOX

• Thus, the paradox comes from the following

two departure points:

– That, within the South African schooling system, MSS is to be taught from a Constructivist point of view, while these rural leaners’ “prior knowledge” has been constructed within context-based approach; and – That, essentially, the purposes of MSS ( as an aspect of Western Science) are not the same as those of Indigenous Knowledge Systems.

The Paradox

To Illustrate:

• In Constructivist learning, the main goal is for

the students to achieve deep understanding, for the students to be able to generate ideas, demonstrate concepts and not merely repeat what they have learned.

• Much of Indegenous learning is based on

story-telling, and being able to re-tell events and situations to succeeding generations.

The Paradox

• To Illustrate (Continued)

Constructivism centres on the knowledge, experiences and skills students bring with them into a science lesson and focuses on individual students as they inquire and explore phenomena and in the process, construct their own meanings and understandings. Much of Indegenous knowledge is “communinally held”.

SOLUTIONS

• The acceptance of multiple-realities; and of

MSS as one of the children’s realities, but not the only one.

• Therefore, for science instruction to focus on

facilitating “border-crossing”, rather than Conversion.

Facilitating Border-Crossing

• The argument is that instead of waging

epistemological and ontological wars regarding which worldview is more authentic than the

• ther, the principle of multiple realities dictates

that we see diversity of worldviews as complementary, rather than as standing in

• pposition to, or competition against, each other.
• As such, “one’s power to raid the subculture of

science”, for instance, should not necessarily “depend on one’s autonomous acculturation into the subculture of science.”

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Facilitating Border-Crossing

• In this regard, Aikenhead (1996: 2) opines that

science educators should rather “recognize the inherent border crossings between students’ life- world subcultures and the subculture of science, and that we need to develop curriculum and instruction with these border crossings explicitly in mind, before the science curriculum can be accessible to most students.”

• This may be referred to as the cross-cultural

instructional model of conceptual change.

Facilitating Border-Crossing

• This model sees teachers as playing the role of

‘tour guide’ “taking students across the border and directing their use of science in the context of the students’ everyday world.”

• This approach rejects conceptual replacement

“in favour of conceptual proliferation dictated by specific social contexts” (Aikenhead, 1996: 24).

Facilitating Border-Crossing

• In this regard, the “tour-guide teacher makes the

subculture of science accessible to the ‘tourist’ students by methods predicated on cross-cultural instructions” (Aikenhead, 1996: 27).

• In essence, the cross-cultural instructional model of

conceptual change best describes the real life world as lived by most people. Thus, this third model appears to be the most appropriate way to deal with students’ prior knowledge. In terms of the findings of this study, the centrality of Zulu cultural knowledge to the learners’ understanding of the world around them has been found to be very strong and pervasive.

Facilitating Border-Crossing

• These explanations are the ones that make them Zulu

people.

• Trying to obliterate these interpretations of the

learners’ life-world will be like trying to change them from being people of Zulu descent and extraction to something else – which they can never be.

• However, over time, the learners will voluntarily work
• ut how much currency they will place on which

interpretations as they accumulate more and more insights into the various world views that impact their lives.

• Otherwise, there appears to be little value in making

people learn things by force.

CONCLUSION

• The reality of life is that in people’s life-worlds,

knowledge is not neatly packaged into school- like subjects, or learning areas – such as physics, life sciences, accounting, history, and

• thers. People live an integrated life – a life in

which religion, physics, chemistry, language studies, and others, are all fused into one ‘learning area’.

? WHOSE FOOTPRINT IN LEFT BEHIND?

THE END