Unsettling Responsibility in Science Education

This open access book engages with the response-ability of science education to Indigenous ways-of-living-with-Nature. Higgins deconstructs the ways in which the structures of science education—its concepts, categories, policies, and practices—contribute to the exclusion (or problematic inclusion) of Indigenous science while also shaping its ability respond. Herein, he undertakes an unsettling homework to address the ways in which settler colonial logics linger and lurk within sedimented and stratified knowledge-practices, turning the gaze back onto science education. This homework critically inhabits culture, theory, ontology, and history as they relate to the multicultural science education debate, a central curricular location that acts as both a potential entry point and problematic gatekeeping device, in order to (re)open the space of responsiveness towards Indigenous ways-of-knowing-in-being.

“Moving beyond tropes of empowerment, scientific literacy, and related bon hommes, Higgins’s book offers one of the richest theoretical assemblages I have read in some time. He welds insights from post-humanist, feminist, Indigenous, and post-colonial scholars, conducing the theoretical potential of being and becoming into a fleshed out educational experience. Dr. Higgins’ asks ‘if science education has a responsibility, is it able to respond?’ and leaves this reader answering ‘yes, but…’ as he both affirms and questions that potential throughout with precision. This is truly an untimely book for these times of tweets and memes as readers who appreciate complex insights steeped in a deep ethical regard for our collective well-being will find themselves returning for nourishment to this book again and again.”
—Kent den Heyer, Professor of Education, University of Alberta, Canada

“Exploring the relationships between Indigenous and Western Science in science education, this book takes readers on a journey which explores various converging and diverging theoretical and epistemological standpoints that challenge normalized binary ways of looking at the world. This book is a must read for people who are engaged in thinking about and through the relationships between Indigenous science and enlightenment-based science. Particularly, this book will guide you in reflecting on, responding to, and recreating your own science education research and practices by wandering through creative new theoretical spaces.”
—Eun-Ji Amy Kim, Lecturer, School of Education and Professional Studies, Griffith University, Australia

Marc Higgins is Assistant Professor in the Department of Secondary Education at the University of Alberta, Canada, where he is affiliated with the Faculty of Education’s Aboriginal Teacher Education Program (ATEP). His research labors the methodogical space between Indigenous, post-structural, and post-humanist theories in order to respond to contested ways of knowing and being, such as Indigenous science.