Cosmologies And Lifestyles: A Cultural Ecological Framework and its Implications for Education Systems

Abstract

This paper opens with a critique of the majoritarian, post-Enlightenment, scientific worldview, the assumptions it makes about human cosmologies and lifestyles and how, in turn, these assumptions influence the nature of educational systems. The critique focuses on how the experiences of minority cultures, particularly those cultures that are nomadic or pastoralist, challenge some of the fundamental premises of majoritarian education. There follows a cultural ecological framing which compares the ways in which western (majoritarian) cultures and minoritarian cultures contextualise education. In western educational situations, structures, contexts and schemata are substantially pre-defined, and we talk about things as ‘context-dependent’, since context is something that can be described as the backdrop to behaviour. In minoritarian cultures both meaning and context emerge from people’s interactions with their environments and may subsequently be described. These are respectively relational and co-constitutional manifestations of situations. The manifestations are different, not oppositional or mutually exclusive. We present an ecological framework in an attempt to simultaneously embrace both interpretations.