1988; Swift, 1992; Hodson, 1993). Recently Pomeroy (1994) clarified this accumulated body of literature into nine research agendas, each depicting a different facet of cross-cultural work. All of these studies looked at science education in non-Western countries or in indigenous societies, or science education for minority groups in industrialized countries (groups under represented in the professions of science and technology).
The purpose of this article is to reconceptualize a cultural perspective for science education, one that is informed by, but extends beyond the perspective painted by Maddock, Wilson, Pomeroy, and the others. The cultural perspective proposed here addresses science education for Western students in industrialized countries, and builds on the work of Costa (1995) and Hawkins and Pea (1987). My proposal offers an account of students' lived experiences in a science classroom by considering those experiences in terms of students crossing cultural borders, from the subcultures of their peers and family into the subcultures of science and school science. This theoretical frame of border crossing will provide Western science educators with a new vantage point from which to analyze familiar problems. It considers the typical science classroom as a cross-cultural event for many students, including the majority of Western students. The concept of border crossing may also shed light on the anthropological ideas Maddock (1981) proposed for non-Western, indigenous, and minority students.
In his 1981 article, Wilson challenged: "It is easy to assert that, to be effective, teaching must take full account of the multi-dimensional cultural world of the learner, to apply this principle in a particular situation, and to express it in terms of curriculum materials and classroom methods, is a formidable task" (p. 40). I take up this challenge in part by exploring the practical implications of cultural border crossings in terms of curriculum materials aimed at teaching science and technology for all students, no matter what borders they need to cross. This implication in turn will challenge a traditional goal subscribed to by many science educators, the goal of cultural assimilation of all students into science (AAAS, 1989; UNESCO, 1994). I shall argue that science educators, Western and non-Western, need to recognize the inherent border crossings between students' life-world subcultures and the subculture of science, and that we need to develop curriculum and instruction with these border crossings explicitly in mind, before the science curriculum can be accessible to most students. The argument proceeds in several stages, moving from the theoretical to the practical: (1) a chronological overview of research on learning and the re-introduction of a cultural perspective for science education, (2) an explication of border crossings, (3) a more detailed description of cultures and subcultures,
(4) an empirical description of borders that Western students cross to learn science, (5) a curriculum implication, and (6) critical issues to be resolved, along with some concrete proposals.
Towards a Cultural Perspective for Science Education Research Let me state a naive yet potent proposition: If only we could understand how students make sense of their natural world, we could design a science curriculum so that science makes sense to all students. The proposition has spawned a ubiquitous research question: How do students make sense out of their natural world? Most research traditions in science education continue to address that question. A chronological and simplified overview of these traditions is
provided here. Slightly different but more detailed accounts may be found in O’Loughlin (1992), Cobern (1993), and Solomon (1994b). My purpose here is to re-introduce a cultural perspective for science education, from which we can examine and critique the traditional goal of cultural assimilation for all students.
Behaviourism, assuming a tabula rasa student, investigated drill and practice, programmed learning, and the transmission of facts and principles. Its popularity with the general public as a model for learning is evident in much of the media criticism of education today (Lewington and Orpwood, 1993).
Personal constructivism then became a dominant field of research. Initially based on the work of Bruner, Piaget, and Ausubel, it developed into research on misconceptions, alternative frameworks, commonsense conceptions, untutored beliefs, and preconceptions (Driver and Easley, 1978; Driver and Erickson, 1983; Gilbert and Watts, 1983; Hills, 1989; Mayer, 1984; Pfundt and Duit, 1994). Almost all studies into rational conceptual change show that students successfully resist such conceptual change (West and Pines, 1985). Most students are not about to risk altering a useful commonsense conception in favour of a counter-intuitive abstraction advanced by a teacher or textbook (Cobern, 1994b; Hills, 1989). Students may be uneducated,
but they are not stupid. The research field broadened to take into account non-rational aspects of conceptual
change and the context-dependent nature of concept development. Students' social worlds were seen to influence the way students make sense out of their natural world. Solomon (1983a) noted that life-world knowing contrasted and co-existed with science-world knowing, and in 1987 she developed a social constructivist perspective on learning: Science concepts have a socially negotiated meaning shared within a group such as a science class or peer group. Larochelle and Désautels (1991) demonstrated the power of students' epistemologies which they bring to the social setting of the science classroom. Driver (1989) emphasized the role of language and social negotiations in the science classroom. Shapiro (1989) and George (1995) enriched the social constructivist perspective by including a student’s personal orientation towards, for example, the science content, the teacher, and the school or institutional context. “Situated cognition” (Furnham, 1992; Hennessy, 1993; Lave, 1988) became a new current in science education literature and broadened the scope of social constructivism even further. It fostered ideas such as O’Loughlin’s (1992) socio-cultural model of teaching and learning (power, discourse, and culture in the classroom), Shapiro’s (1992) socio-cultural ecology (the personal, school, and political environments that create a type of environmental press on a student), and Jegede’s (1995) socio-cultural paradigm for non-Western students. In short, personal constructivism evolved into social constructivism.
Our perspective on how students make sense of their natural world widens even further if we consider the worldviews that students possess. Cobern (1991, 1993, 1994b) draws upon anthropology to hone a model of worldview comprised of seven "logico-structural categories" (self, other, causality, classification, relationship, time, and space). Worldview "provides a special plausibility structure of ideas, activities, and values, that allows one to gauge the plausibility of any assertion" (1993, p. 57, italics in the original). Worldviews are culturally validated presuppositions about the natural world. To understand a student's worldview is to anticipate what meanings in a science curriculum will appear plausible and which will not. Seen as a "fundamental organization of the mind" (Cobern, 1991, p. 42), worldview connects with cognitive psychology and lends itself to fruitful investigations into various worldviews, including those of Western science. However, as a culturally dependent fundamental organization of the mind, worldview suggests a broader perspective on science education:
learning science as culture acquisition.
The view of learning science as culture acquisition affords an intuitive, holistic, and rich appreciation of students' experiences in a science classroom (Costa, 1995; Hawkins and Pea, 1987; Maddock, 1981; Swift, 1992; Wolcott, 1991). It is a practical extension of constructivist theories and plausibility structures. Driver's social constructivism has also moved towards a perspective of culture acquisition: "Learning science in the classroom involves children entering a new community of discourse, a new culture" (Driver, Asoko, Leach, Mortimer and Scott, 1994; p. 11). Research into personal, social, and worldview constructivism will continue to contribute significantly to the broadened conception of learning science as culture acquisition; for example,
respectively, the work of Driver, Leach, Scott and Wood-Robinson (1994), Solomon, Duveen and Scott (1994), and Lawrenz and Gray (1995).
The cultural perspective proposed in this article recognizes conventional science teaching as an attempt at transmitting a scientific subculture to students (Hawkins and Pea, 1987). But cultural transmission can either be supportive or disruptive (Baker and Taylor, 1995; Battiste, 1986; Urevbu, 1987). If the subculture of science generally harmonizes with a student's lifeworld culture, science instruction will tend to support the student's view of the world ("enculturation"). On the other hand, if the subculture of science is generally at odds with a student's life-world culture, science instruction will tend to disrupt the student's view of the world by trying to replace it or marginalize it ("assimilation"). The distinction between the enculturation and assimilation forms of cultural transmission is central to the cultural perspective that I am proposing for science education. Enculturation appeals to students who are science enthusiasts while assimilation attempts to dominate the thinking of students. Both enculturation and assimilation require cultural border crossings into the subculture of science. This idea of border crossing is described in the following section before we consider the nature of culture and subculture.
Border Crossings
Three scenarios illustrate difficulties people encounter when they move between cultures or subcultures. In each scenario a misunderstanding arises because at least one of the players does not recognize a cultural border that needs to be crossed.
- George and Gracie Smith flew from North America to Spain, physically crossing political borders, but not crossing cultural borders. After waiting 45 minutes for their dinner bill to arrive, George finally became vocally irate over the waiter's lack of service. The waiter, in turn, became hurtfully perplexed over the fact that his impeccable manners were not appreciated.
- A First Nations student in Margo Zimmerman's 7th grade science class had not obtained the correct lab result. Ms. Zimmerman's frustration peaked after she asked him to explain to her and the class what might have gone wrong (so he could learn from his mistake), and yet again he spoke so quietly that no one could hear him. "You must speak up!" she demanded. The student had crossed physical borders by coming to her science room, but he had not crossed cultural borders into the subculture of her classroom. He felt very uncomfortable expressing himself when directed to do so by the teacher rather than being directed by the need to cooperate with other students.
- University student Stirton McDougall disobeyed his faculty advisor by avoiding geology courses throughout his university career. Stirton did not want to spoil his aesthetic understanding of nature's beauty by polluting his mind with mechanistic explanations of the earth's landscapes. He understood science all to well and chose not to cross one of its borders. His advisor thought he was soft-headed and not worthy of a science scholarship. These scenarios point out potential obstacles for students who travel from their own life-world culture to the subculture of a science classroom or to the subculture of science itself. Reinforcing the point Solomon (1983a) made when she first articulated the distinction between life-world knowing and science-world knowing, Hennessy (1993, p. 9) recently concluded, “Crossing over from one domain of meaning to another is exceedingly hard.”
On the other hand, border crossings can be problematic. For instance, the border crossing between humanistic and scientific subcultures has been a concern to science educators ever since C.P. Snow (1964) wrote The Two Cultures. Moreover, research into the difficulties of non-Western students learning Western science has identified obstacles experienced by students who have an indigenous "traditional" background and attempt to learn a subject matter grounded in Western culture (Baker and Taylor, 1995; Dart, 1972; Jegede, 1994; Jegede and Okebukola, 1990, 1991; Knamiller, 1984; MacIvor, 1995; Ogawa, 1986, 1995; Pomeroy, 1994; Swift, 1992).
This research on students in non-Western countries can help Western science educators understand how their own students need to cross borders; for instance, from a humanities oriented life-world to the science-world of school science. Border crossings always involve cultures or subcultures. We now turn our attention to a
more detailed description of culture and subculture to clarify what they mean, before we examine research which suggests that a cultural perspective for science education has merit for curriculum developers and teachers.
Cultures and Subcultures
Students' understanding of the world can be viewed as a cultural phenomenon (Spindler, 1987), and learning at school as culture acquisition (Wolcott, 1991), where culture means "an ordered system of meaning and symbols, in terms of which social interaction takes place" (Geertz, 1973, quoted in Cobern, 1991, p. 31). We speak about, for example, a Western culture, an Oriental culture, or an African culture because members of these groups share, in general, a system of meaning and symbols for the purpose of social interaction. Geertz’s anthropological definition is given more specificity by Phelan, Davidson, and Cao (1991) who conceptualize culture as the norms, values, beliefs, expectations, and conventional actions of a group.
Other definitions of culture have guided research in science education; for example, Banks (1988), Bullivant (1981), Ingle and Turner (1981), Jordan (1985), and Samovar, Porter and Jain (1981), from which one could establish the following list of attributes of culture: communication (psycho and sociolinguistic), social structures (authority, participant interactions, etc.), customs, attitudes, values, beliefs, worldview, skills (psycho-motor and cognitive), behaviour, and technologies (artefacts and know-how). In various studies, different attributes of culture have been selected to focus on a particular interest in multicultural science education. For instance, Maddock (1981, p. 20) listed "beliefs, attitudes, technologies, languages, leadership
and authority structures" while Ogawa (1986) addressed a culture's view of humans, its view of nature, and its way of thinking.
I have chosen to follow Phelan et al.'s (1991) definition of culture for two reasons. First, it has a relatively small number of categories that can be interpreted broadly to encompass the anthropological attributes listed just above, as well as the educational attributes often associated with science instruction: knowledge, skills, and values. Canonical scientific knowledge will be subsumed under "beliefs" in Phelan et al.'s definition. A second reason for my choice is coherence. My argument for a cultural perspective for science education, along with its border crossing requirements, will be based on some recent research by Costa (1995) who framed her work by Phelan et al.'s definition of culture.
Within every culture group there exist subgroups most commonly identified by race, language, and ethnicity, but who can also be defined by gender, social class, occupation, religion, etc. Consequently, an individual simultaneously belongs to several subgroups; for instance, an Oriental female Muslim physicist or a male middle-class Euro-American journalist. Large numbers and many combinations of subgroups exist due to the associations that naturally form among people in society. In the context of science education, Furnham (1992) identified several powerful subgroups that influence students’ understanding about science: the family, peers, the school, the mass media, and the physical, social, and economic environment. Each
identifiable subgroup is comprised of people who generally embrace a defining set of norms, values, beliefs, expectations, and conventional actions. In short, each subgroup shares a culture, which I shall designate as “subculture” to convey an identity with a subgroup. We can talk about, for example, the subculture of females, the subculture of the middle class, the subculture of the media, or the subculture of a particular science classroom. Phelan et al. (1991) used a cluster of four subgroups in their anthropological research with students: families, peer groups, classrooms, and schools. This cluster will provide the generic framework for my analysis of border crossings by students in science classrooms, and is described in a later section.
Subculture of Science
We need to recognize that science itself is a subculture of Western or Euro-American culture (Baker and Taylor, 1995; Cobern, 1991, Ch. 5; Dart, 1972; Jegede, 1994; Maddock, 1981; Ogawa, 1986; Pomeroy, 1994), and so Western science can be thought of as "subculture science." Scientists share a well defined system of meaning and symbols with which they interact socially. This system was institutionalized in Western Europe in the 17th century, and it became predominantly a white male middle-class Western system of meaning and symbols (Mendelsohn, 1976; Rose, 1994; Simonelli, 1994). To emphasize this cultural makeup of science, some authors have represented "science" with the acronym WMS, which either means "Western modern science" (Ogawa, 1995) or "white male science" (Pomeroy, 1994).
Opposition to treating science as a cultural enterprise has arisen, however, mostly because the idea tends to undermine a philosophical presupposition called “the universality of science” -- science is the same everywhere; that is, science uncovers knowledge or solves problems irrespective of the culture, race, or gender of the individual scientist involved (Stanley and Brickhouse, 1994). The debate over the universality of science is not new, but it became contentious in a recent exchange in Science Education (Brickhouse and Stanley, 1995; Good, 1995; Loving, 1995; Stanley and Brickhouse, 1995) and at the 1993 and 1995 annual meetings of the National Association for Research in Science Teaching. Speaking against the universality of science, Munro (1993, p. 4) asked: What does this tell us about those who believe such a notion? Science educators embracing a cross-cultural perspective have published a variety of responses: “naive” (Ogawa, 1986), suffering from "Cartesian anxiety" (Stanley and Brickhouse, 1995), "colonialist" (Brickhouse and Stanley, 1995), or "racist" (Gill and Levidow, 1987; Hodson, 1993). The controversy will surely continue. Accordingly, it is important to acknowledge the fact that a cultural perspective for science education treats science as a cultural enterprise and this represents a radical shift in thinking for some science educators.
Science does have norms, values, beliefs, expectations, and conventional actions that are generally shared in various ways by communities of scientists. Hence, science satisfies the definition of culture established by Phelan et al. (1991). Although these norms, values, etc. vary with individual scientists and situations (Aikenhead, 1985; Cobern, 1991; Gauld, 1982; Ziman, 1984), the following list dominates the literature that describes cultural features of Western science (even though some items on the list turn out to be merely public facades): mechanistic, materialistic, masculine, reductionistic, mathematically idealized, pragmatic, empirical,
exploitive, elitist, ideological, inquisitive, objective, impersonal, rational, universal, decontextualized, communal, violent, value-free, and embracing disinterestedness, suspension of belief, and parsimony (Fourez, 1988; Gauld, 1982; Harding, 1986; Kelly, Carlsen, and Cunningham, 1993; Rose, 1994; Savon, 1988; Simonelli, 1994; Smolicz and Nunan, 1975; Snow, 1987; Stanley and Brickhouse, 1994).
To summarize the terminology, subculture science (Western science) possesses cultural features that define the subculture of science (the culture of Western science). Subculture of School Science Closely aligned with subculture science is school science which expects a student to acquire science's norms, values, beliefs, expectations, and conventional actions (the subculture of science) and make them a part of his or her personal world to varying degrees (AAAS, 1989; Cobern, 1991, Ch. 5; Gauld, 1982; Layton, Jenkins, Macgill and Davey, 1993; Maddock, 1981; Pomeroy, 1994), as well as to acquire the community's dominant culture (Archibald, 1995; Battiste, 1986; Krugly-Smolska, 1995; Ermine, 1995; Maddock, 1981; Stanley and Brickhouse, 1994). School science has been observed by educational researchers as attempting, but often failing, to transmit an accurate view of science (Cobern, 1991, Ch. 5; Duschl, 1988; Gaskell, 1992; Millar, 1989; Nadeau and Désautels, 1982; Ryan and Aikenhead, 1992; Smolicz and Nunan, 1975). Unfortunately, the "taught" science curriculum, more often than not, provides students with a stereotype image of science: socially sterile, authoritarian, non-humanistic, positivistic, and absolute truth.
When this stereotype of science is transmitted in a science lesson, the conclusion that Krugly-Smolska (1995) drew, erroneously I suggest, is that science is presented as having no culture -- it is "presented aculturally and as `truth'" (p. 45). The instruction described by Krugly-Smolska may have dishonestly pretended that science has no culture, but instruction steeped with stereotype messages about the nature of science does convey norms, values, beliefs,expectations, and conventional actions of scientists, and therefore, such instruction does convey a subculture of science, albeit a mythical, a logical positivist, or a stereotypical subculture. My point is that the subculture of school science always conveys images of science as a subculture, even though science educators may pretend that it does not, or may disagree over those images (for example, note the contradictions in the descriptors of science listed in the previous section). And as a consequence, science educators may transmit to students different views of what the subculture of science is all about (Brickhouse, 1990; Lederman, 1992). To suggest that school science can present science as culture-free is simply to characterize the subculture of science by its stereotype features.
The stereotype image of science tends to affect negatively the career choices made by some bright imaginative science enthusiasts who quickly get out of science upon graduation from high school (Oxford University Department of Educational Studies, 1989). Therefore, one can well imagine the impact that these same images of science might have on students who are less sympathetic to the subculture of science. This issue is taken up later in the article. Although some culture-related research on school science has been conducted within Western settings (for example, Atwater and Riley, 1993; Barba, 1993; Krugly-Smolska, 1995; Lee, Fradd and Sutman, 1995; Rakow and Bermudez, 1993), most culture-related research is found in non-Western settings (Baker and Taylor, 1995; George, 1992, 1995; Jegede, 1994, 1995; Knamiller, 1984; Maddock, 1981; Pomeroy, 1994; Swift, 1992; Urevbu, 1987; Wilson, 1981) where disparities abound between the subculture of science and the students' traditional cultures. Of interest to this article will be the vantage point achieved by taking a cross-cultural perspective on the daily experiences of many European and North American students in science classrooms.
Science education's goal of cultural transmission runs into ethical problems in a non-Western culture where Western thought (science) is forced upon students who do not share its system of meaning and symbols (Baker and Taylor, 1995). As mentioned above, the result is not enculturation, but assimilation or "cultural imperialism" -- forcing people to abandon their traditional ways of knowing and reconstruct in its place a new (scientific) way of knowing (Battiste, 1986; Jegede, 1994, 1995; MacIvor, 1995). Cultural imperialism, or the "arrogance of ethnocentricity" as Maddock referred to it (1981, p. 13), can oppress and disempower whole groups of people (Ermine, 1995; Gallard, 1993; Gill and Levidow, 1987; Hodson, 1993; Urevbu,
1987). School science traditionally attempts to enculturate or assimilate students into the subculture of science.
School science has other social functions which characterize its cultural makeup, functions familiar to science educators as educational goals. Fensham (1992) pragmatically summarizes these goals in terms of societal interest groups competing for privilege and power over the science curriculum. For example, school science (most often physics) can be used to screen out students belonging to marginalized social groups, thereby providing high status and social power to the more privileged students who make it through the science "pipeline" and enter science-related professions (Anyon, 1980; Giroux, 1992; Jegede, 1995; Posner, 1992) -- those who can "cut the mustard," to use the rhetoric of the scientific community. Fensham (1992) categorizes this societal self-interest as political. His other categories are: economic interests of business, industry, and labor, for a skilled work force; university scientists' self-interests in maintaining their discipline; societal groups' interests for empowerment in a nation whose culture and social life are influenced by science and technology; and students' interests for individual growth and satisfaction. School science is a potent cultural force in any society, a force that impinges upon most students daily.
Another aspect to the subculture of school science should be mentioned. Most students view orthodox science content as having little or no relevance to their life-world subcultures. "Science learned in school is learned as science in school, not as science on the farm or in the health clinic or garage" (Medvitz, 1985, p. 15). Cobern (1994b) similarly talks about students practising "cognitive apartheid," referring to the isolation and segregation of school science content within the minds of students. Jegede (1995) has proposed a “collateral learning theory” to explain various degrees of cognitive apartheid. The foreign nature of science content has been the focus of research in the field of situated cognition (Furnham, 1992; Hennessy, 1993; Ryle, 1954) which concludes that scientific content traditionally learned at school can seldom be applied to the everyday world. This finding seriously compromises Fensham’s economic goal of building a skilled labour force for national development (Layton, 1991; Medvitz, 1985).
Other Subcultures
In addition to the subcultures of science and school science, students must deal with, and participate in, an array of other important subcultures in their lives associated with: (1) the institution of school itself (the community’s instrument of cultural transmission), (2) various peer groups, (3) the family, and (4) the mass media (Furnham, 1992). Participation in different subcultures creates the need to cross borders between these subcultures. Researchers Phelan et al. (1991) have investigated this phenomenon and describe their findings this way:
On any given school day, adolescents in this society [the United States] move from one social context to another. Families, peer groups, classrooms, and schools are primary arenas in which young people negotiate and construct their realities. For the most part, students' movement and adaptations from one setting to another are taken for granted. Although such transitions frequently require students' efforts and skills, especially when contexts are governed by different values and norms, there has been relatively little study of this process. From data gathered during the first phase of the Students' Multiple Worlds Study, it appears that, in our culture, many adolescents are left to navigate transitions without direct assistance from persons in any of their contexts, most notably the school. Further, young people's success in managing these transitions varies widely. Yet students' competence in moving between settings has tremendous implications for the quality of their lives and their chances of using the education system as a stepping stone to further education, productive work experiences, and a meaningful adult life. (p. 224)
Viewed from this cultural perspective, we see that learning science is influenced as much by diverse subcultures within a student's life-world, as it is by a student's prior knowledge and the “taught” curriculum -- the purview of constructivism and the science-world of the teacher. Even though students cross cultural borders between their science class, school, peers, and family, these borders can seem invisible to educators; for example, to Margo Zimmerman in the scenario described earlier. Borders can even seem invisible to the "unfortunate" students who find science a foreign experience. This is where non-Western cross-cultural studies in science education can help clarify the border crossing problems for the conventional European or North American student. Ogawa (1995) in Japan, and Kawagley (1990) in Alaska's Yup'ik nation, contemplated why certain groups of non-Western students living with traditional beliefs about the physical world achieved academic superiority over certain groups of Western students, on "Western modern science" examinations. Similarly Krugly-Smolska (1995) was surprised to discover that non-Western immigrants to Canada often did better than their Canadian counterparts in high school science courses. She concluded that the successful non-Western students exhibited culture-related values of cooperation and attentiveness, and that they caught
on quickly to "the cultural expectations of the classroom" (p. 56) -- the subculture of school science. Both Ogawa and Kawagley concluded that the culture of Western science is equally foreign to Western and non-Western students, for similar reasons. Non-Western students have acquired a traditional culture of their community, which interferes with learning Western science. In the same vein, Western students have their commonsense understanding of their physical world; that is, their "traditional" science -- their preconceptions -- that makes sense within their life-world subcultures. Thus, Western students also have difficulty acquiring the culture of Western science (Kawagley, 1990; Ogawa, 1995). However, I would quickly add, so do non-masculine students; so do humanities-oriented non-Cartesian thinking students; and so do students who are not clones of university science professors (Haste, 1994; Seymour, 1992; Tobias, 1990).
Within Western culture, and therefore within every European or North American science class, the subculture of science has borders that many students may find difficult to negotiate. We now turn to the empirical evidence that documents this suggestion. Borders that Students Cross Phelan et al.'s (1991, p. 228) model of students' multiple worlds helped explore how students move from one world to another. Their data suggested four types of transitions: congruent worlds support smooth transitions, different worlds require transitions to be managed, diverse worlds lead to hazardous transitions, and highly discordant worlds cause students to
resist transitions which therefore become virtually impossible. Guided by this model, Costa (1995) gathered qualitative data (the words and actions of students) on 43 high school students enrolled in chemistry or earth science in two schools with diverse student populations. She concluded: "Although there was great variety in students' descriptions of their worlds and the world of science, there were also distinctive patterns among the relationships between students' worlds of family and friends and their success in school and in science classrooms" (p. 316). Costa described these patterns in terms of five categories. In this article, these categories will help clarify some critical issues that we face when we consider the consequences (to the curriculum) of a cultural perspective for science education. Costa's five categories are:
- Potential Scientists: Worlds of family and friends are congruent with worlds of both school and science.
- Other Smart Kids: Worlds of family and friends are congruent with world of school but inconsistent with world of science.
- "I Don't Know" Students: Worlds of family and friends are inconsistent with worlds of both school and science.
- Outsiders: Worlds of family and friends are discordant with worlds of both school and science.
- Inside Outsiders: Worlds of family and friends are irreconcilable with world of school, but are potentially compatible with world of science. (p. 316, italics added).
Potential Scientists
Potential Scientists tend to hold professional career aspirations for which their science classes play a significant role. Even bad experiences with science teachers are overlooked in order to sustain the centrality of science for their career plans. A family member or friend usually serves as a role model, or if not, they at least provide strong encouragement. Generally, Potential Scientists view themselves as having the potential to participate in society's power structures and to generate knowledge. They appear comfortable with the stereotype image of modern science described earlier (in the section "subculture of school science"). They enjoy the challenges of the academic subject matter. The subcultures of school and science are indeed
congruent with their subcultures of family and peers. Not surprisingly, Costa found a relatively disproportionately high number of Euro-American males in this group. For Potential Scientists (who may or may not actually become scientists or engineers), school science is enculturation (Hawkins and Pea, 1987) and a type of rite of passage (Costa, 1993). Border crossing into school science for Potential Scientists is so smooth and natural that borders appear invisible.
Other Smart Kids
Other Smart Kids (a phrase Costa borrowed from Tobias, 1990) do well at school, even in science, although science is neither personally meaningful nor useful to their everyday lives. Science is, however, necessary for their post secondary plans. Like Potential Scientists, Other Smart Kids do not question the traditional stereotype norms, values, beliefs, expectations, and conventional actions of the scientific community. They prefer, however, to engage in creative activities that require self-expression and human interactions, making themselves candidates for C.P. Snow's (1964) humanistic culture. "Science courses seem more fact-oriented,
memorization-oriented, more focused, neat and orderly, more predictable and analytic, than their non-science classes" (Costa, 1995, p. 321). Other Smart Kids choose not to take up science once they graduate because they find the subculture of science to be personally unimportant and inconsistent with the subcultures of their school, peers, and family. Other Smart Kids refuse to be enculturated into the subculture of science. But border crossing into school science is managed so well that few students express any sense of science being a foreign subculture.
"I Don't Know" Students
Costa's "I Don't Know" Students were labelled for their ubiquitous response to a host of questions about science and about school, and for their noncommittal overall attitude toward school science. Generally science classes were no different than other classes at school. The subcultures of school and science are equally inconsistent with the subcultures of their peers and family. Although "I Don't Know" Students usually take a minimum number of science courses and tend to occupy lower track classes, they usually achieve reasonably well. School grades have personal meaning -- "I don't want to look like a dummy!" These students have learned to play the school game of passing a course without understanding the content, a game not unfamiliar to Other Smart Kids and to some Potential Scientists as well (Prosser, Trigall and Taylor, 1994). The game can have well established procedures (forming part of the unintended "learned" curriculum) which can be discovered by carefully listening to students. Larson (1995) captured this phenomenon as "Fatima's Rules," named after an articulate student in a high school chemistry class. Latour (1987) anticipated the phenomenon when he observed, "most schooling is based on the ability to answer questions unrelated to any context outside of the school room" (p. 197). Fatima's Rules tell us how to do just that without understanding the subject matter. "I Don't Know" Students pose little problems for their science teachers, as long as their teachers do not try to assimilate them into the subculture of science; that is, as long as teachers do not expect them to replace their commonsense conceptions with self-constructed scientific knowledge or to engage in scientific inquiry other than going through the motions of getting the right answer. "I Don't Know" Students do not know much about the subculture of science and when asked they simply submit to the wisdom of the media and treat scientists as experts. Border crossing into school science poses real hazards, but these students generally navigate successfully around those hazards. They learn to cope and survive.
Outsiders
Outsiders experience great and unique difficulties in the subculture of school, difficulties that lead to failure, alienation, and problems for teachers. The subcultures of school and science are highly discordant with the subcultures of peers and family. For Outsiders, all school work is busy work and emphasizes compliance to directions from authorities. Like "I Don't Know" Students, Outsiders view scientists as experts who are always right, drab, and boring. Outsiders do not know anything about the subculture of science, but even more importantly, they do not care. Even when science content makes sense to them, they may not care enough to hand in homework or pass examinations. School and science are indeed foreign subcultures. ("I feel like chemistry is another world.") Some Outsiders are savvy enough to figure out the system (Fatima's Rules) and manipulate it enough to pass their science course. But for most of them, border crossing into school science is virtually impossible.
Inside Outsiders
Costa discovered a group of bright students interested in science but who were inhibited from crossing the border into school science because of their school's abject discrimination and a lack of support from peers and family. These students, "Inside Outsiders," happened to be female Afro-Americans in Costa's study. They possess an intense curiosity about the physical world but developed a mistrust for the schools' teachers and administrators. Because of their unconventional lives, these students found border crossings into the subculture of school to be almost impossible, which therefore prevented them from participating fully in the subculture of
school science.
Summary
For the five groups of students described above, border crossings into the subculture of science are smooth, manageable, hazardous, or virtually impossible. Costa's (1995) research suggests an empirically based system with which curriculum issues can be examined within the framework of my proposed cultural perspective on science education for Western students in Western schools. I now pursue several curriculum issues, in response to Wilson's (1981) challenge to express a cultural perspective on learning in terms of curriculum materials and classroom methods.
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