Abstract
Within science education, questions of “what counts” as science continue to be debated. Largely at stake is the inclusion or exclusion of traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) and Indigenous ways of living with nature (IWLN) alongside Western modern science (WMS), as well as the norms through which they are included, excluded, and juxtaposed. However, given science education’s inheritance of the Nature/Culture binary, knowing nature and respecting cultural diversity are often framed as competing, conflicting, and mutually exclusive goals. Using and troubling Cobern and Loving’s call for a (re)consideration of how epistemology aligns with ontology, this chapter engages with the question: What types of ethical practices emerge within the context of multicultural science education when we account for, and are responsive to, ontology and its relation to epistemology? To respond, I turn to Barad’s quantum physics-philosophy to open a space of accountability for and to ontological situatedness, enactment, and production within science education. I then revisit the multicultural science education debate to ask ontological questions of the ways in which TEK and IWLN are included/excluded. Lastly, I explore possible possibilities for a science education that is ethically shaped by ontological plurality and open to the ways in which matter has always mattered for Indigenous peoples.
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Notes
- 1.
Here equally valid does not signify that TEK and IWLN achieve equivalence or sameness with WMS but rather that they offer something that is of similar importance (e.g. the former presents frames for ethical and sustainable practices of living with nature, while the latter offers quantifiability, reproducibility, and predictability through laboratory-based experimentation; see Aikenhead & Michell, 2011; Aikenhead & Ogawa, 2007).
- 2.
Note that TEK and IWLN are but some of the diverse ways of knowing nature that students bring into a science education classroom.
- 3.
Cobern and Loving (2008) state, “epistemological realism is literally the common ground––the common sense––we all share” (p. 443). However, even if it is common, Cobern and Loving (2008) neglect to discuss how it came to be (made) common, as well as what this “common sense” produces. Without these pieces, the superpositional relation between having common sense and being had by common sense becomes blurred. It becomes something that we possess in common that also possesses us (see Apffel-Marglin, 2011).
- 4.
Barad (2010) draws from quantum physics and the concepts of entanglement and superposition to explore and understand how epistemology and ontology might come to co-constitute one another:
Quantum entanglements are generalised quantum superpositions, more than one, no more than one, impossible to count. They are far more ghostly than the colloquial sense of ‘entanglement’ suggests. Quantum entanglements are not the intertwining of two (or more) states/entities/events, but a calling into question of the very nature of two-ness, and ultimately of one-ness as well. Duality, unity, multiplicity, being are undone. ‘Between’ will never be the same. One is too few, two is too many. No wonder quantum entanglements defy commonsense notions of communication ‘between’ entities ‘separated’ by arbitrarily large spaces and times. Quantum entanglements require/inspire a new sense of a-count-ability, a new arithmetic, a new calculus of response-ability. (p. 251)
Accordingly, onto-epistemology can neither be adequately referred to as both ontology and epistemology nor the two as one or a monistic whole but rather a state of superposition.
- 5.
It is important to note however that Cartesianism and Eurocentrism, “the idea that the people, places, and events of Western European cultures are superior and a standard against which other cultures should be judged” (Lewis and Aikenhead, 2001, p. 53), co-constitute one another. As such, particular attention needs to be paid to how these produce science education and educator, as well what such a science curriculum and pedagogy might come to produce (see Higgins, 2014).
- 6.
Part of the reason for this, if we take Barad’s (2007) notion of onto-epistemology seriously, is that the epistemology and ontology of Western modern science are always already simultaneously enacted. Furthermore, it has been argued that the two were also historically codeveloped (see Apffel-Marglin, 2011; Latour, 1993).
- 7.
Elsewhere (Higgins, 2016), I differentiate between Barad’s (2000) notion of agential literacy and scientific literacy:
Agential literacy goes beyond scientific literacy’s accounting for the diverse natural and cultural agents that constitute experimental phenomena studied and produced within the context of science education. First, it considers the ways in which agents are always already natural-cultural. Secondly, it accounts for the ways in which these agents not only constitute but are also constituted by phenomena. Third, agential literacy ethically re(con)figures accountability as a process of not only accounting for, but also being accountable to these agents and their intra-action in the world’s ongoing becoming (pp. 190–191).
Furthermore, I provide therein a school-based example of what it might mean to enact science education through a cross-cultural conception of agential literacy.
- 8.
For example, Cajete (1994) invites us to consider the similarities and differences between IWLN and quantum physics:
Scientists study the tracks of subatomic particles that exist only a millionth of a second. They find the human observer influences the energy relationships and even the nature of existence of these subatomic particles. Humans do participate with everything else even at this level of natural reality. Indigenous people understood this relationship of human activity as concentric rings that extend into the spirit realm. (Cajete, 1994, p. 55)
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Higgins, M. (2019). Positing An(Other) Ontology: Towards Different Practices of Ethical Accountability Within Multicultural Science Education. In: Milne, C., Scantlebury, K. (eds) Material Practice and Materiality: Too Long Ignored in Science Education. Cultural Studies of Science Education, vol 18. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01974-7_6
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