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Cultural Studies of Science Education

, Volume 13, Issue 4, pp 1101–1108 | Cite as

Knowledge systems and the colonial legacies in African science education

  • John R. Ziegler
  • Edward Lehner
Review
First Online:

Abstract

This review surveys Femi Otulaja and Meshach Ogunniyi’s, Handbook of research in science education in sub-Saharan Africa, Sense, Rotterdam, 2017, noting the significance of the theoretically rich content and how this book contributes to the field of education as well as to the humanities more broadly. The volume usefully outlines the ways in which science education and scholarship in sub-Saharan Africa continue to be impacted by the region’s colonial history. Several of the chapters also enumerate proposals for teaching and learning science and strengthening academic exchange. Concerns that recur across many of the chapters include inadequate implementation of reforms; a lack of resources, such as for classroom materials and teacher training; and the continued and detrimental linguistic, financial, and ideological domination of African science education by the West. After a brief overview of the work and its central issues, this review closely examines two salient chapters that focus on scholarly communications and culturally responsive pedagogy. The scholarly communication section addresses the ways in which African science education research may in fact be too closely mirroring Western knowledge constructions without fully integrating indigenous knowledge systems in the research process. The chapter on pedagogy makes a similar argument for integrating Western and indigenous knowledge systems into teaching approaches.

Keywords

Africa Data analytics Science education Colonialism Knowledge systems 
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Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2017

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Bronx Community CollegeCity University of New YorkBronxUSA

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