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Valuing indigenous knowledge: to call it “science” will not help

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Abstract

In this commentary on Brayboy and Castagno’s paper, published in this volume, we discuss, on the one hand, many points of agreement between their proposal of culturally responsive schooling for indigenous youth and El-Hani and Mortimer’s proposal of culturally-sensitive science education. On the other hand, we focus on a key disagreement, not only with Brayboy and Castagno, but with a whole body of literature on multicultural, postcolonialist, postmodernist education. The main point of disagreement lies in the fact that we are not sure that to broaden the concept of science so as to talk about “native science” or “indigenous science” is indeed the best strategy to attain a goal that we wholeheartedly share with Brayboy and Castagno, to value other ways of knowing for their own sake, validity, and legitimacy.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of General Biology, Institute of Biology, Universidade Federal da Bahia, Rua Barão de Jeremoabo, s/n-Ondina, Salvador, 40170-115, BA, Brazil

    Charbel Niño El-Hani

  2. Department of Biology, Universidade Estadual de Feira de Santana, KM 3, BR 116, Campus Universitário, s/n, Feira de Santana, 44031-460, BA, Brazil

    Fábio Pedro Souza de Ferreira Bandeira

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  1. Charbel Niño El-Hani
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  2. Fábio Pedro Souza de Ferreira Bandeira
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Correspondence to Charbel Niño El-Hani.

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El-Hani, C.N., Souza de Ferreira Bandeira, F.P. Valuing indigenous knowledge: to call it “science” will not help. Cult Stud of Sci Educ 3, 751–779 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11422-008-9129-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11422-008-9129-6

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