Abstract
Culturally relevant educational practices look to facilitate students’ dialogue between their own ways of knowing and scientific ways of knowing. Such practices give space to focus more on real-world issues that consider students’ lives, making science education a space with opportunities for identity development. Working with indigenous students makes us aware of the relevance of students’ knowledge and how this could be considered in the development of critical thinking related to their knowledge and practices. From the perspective of critical pedagogy and a decolonial stance, we present some examples of work with students and teachers in the Chiapas Highlands, related to their community work in milpa, a policrop based on maize (corn), squash and beans. The milpa, an agro-ecological system, is considered fundamental in the constitution of Mesoamerican societies, and is also a fundamental activity in indigenous communities in Latin America. By presenting this data we show students’ special interest about using fertilizers and its environmental impact. Taking into account the efforts to integrate indigenous (traditional) knowledge into the school science curriculum, in this chapter we discuss the contribution of considering students’ traditional knowledge for an intercultural dialogical education that could open new paths to understand the complex relations between environmental education and critical thinking in specific contexts.
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Notes
- 1.
Conscientization (concientização) is a concept proposed by Paulo Freire. It means ‘critical awareness’ or ‘critical consciousness’.
- 2.
This term is derived from resistance. It is widely used in postcolonial and decolonial studies to describe the political position of native/indigenous people facing colonialism.
- 3.
Good living is a translation from ‘buen vivir’ which is a common characteristic of the worldview of different Latinamerican indigenous people.
- 4.
Taken from: National Institute for Indigenous People https://www.gob.mx/inpi/es/articulos/etnografia-de-los-pueblos-tzotzil-batsil-winik-otik-y-tzeltal-winik-atel?idiom=es
- 5.
“The experience of those who teach”.
- 6.
Gallinaza is the manure of chicken mixed with soil, food residues and feathers.
- 7.
Pozol is a traditional drink in the Chiapas Highlands, made from fermented corn dough.
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Acknowledgments
We would like to thank students of the second grade in secondary school in Yochib, San Cristóbal de las Casas and Aldama, and the teachers who participated in the workshop in San Cristóbal de las Casas for letting us work besides them and learn from their experience.
To Yeison Arboleda for his support in data collection in some of the activities in Chiapas. To Rocío Balderas and Nallely Jiménez for organizing data and transcribing. To Yei Rentería for her support in organizing information.
To the members of the GRECI Seminar: Eurídice Sosa, Liliana Valladares and Luz Lazos for their opinions on a previous version of this document.
This work was made possible with the support of the project Cinvestav-SEP, Conacyt No. 217.
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García Franco, A., Ferrara Reyes, L., Gómez Galindo, A.A. (2022). Culturally Relevant Science Education and Critical Thinking in Indigenous People: Bridging the Gap Between Community and School Science. In: Puig, B., Jiménez-Aleixandre, M.P. (eds) Critical Thinking in Biology and Environmental Education. Contributions from Biology Education Research. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-92006-7_4
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