This study reports findings from a 10‐day professional development institute on curricular trends involving 19 secondary mathematics and science teachers and administrators from Japan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Korea, Philippines, the United States, and People's Republic of China. Participants explored the roles of culture, place, and personal experience in science education through writings and group discussions. Initially, Asian participants tended to view indigenous knowledge and practices more negatively than U.S. peers. After a presentation on indigenous Hawaiian practices related to place and sustainability, they evaluated indigenous practices more positively and critiqued the absence of locally relevant science and indigenous knowledge in their national curricula. They identified local issues of traffic, air, and water quality they would like to address, and developed lessons addressing prior knowledge, place, and to a lesser extent, culture. These findings suggested critical professional development employing decolonizing methodologies articulated by indigenous researchers Abbott and Smith has the potential to raise teachers' awareness of the connections among personal and place‐based experiences, cultural practices and values, and teaching and learning. An implication was the development of a framework for professional development able to shift science instruction toward meaningful, culture, place, and problem‐based learning relevant to environmental literacy and sustainability. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 44: 1247–1268, 2007

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This three year study of P-12 professional development is grounded in sociocultural theories that hold that building knowledge and relationships among individuals from different cultural backgrounds entails joint activity toward common goals and cultural dialogues mediated by cultural translators. Sixty P-12 pre-and in-service teachers in a year long interdisciplinary science curriculum course shared the goal of developing culturally relevant, standards-based science curricula for Native Hawaiian students. Teachers and Native Hawaiian instructors lived and worked together during a five day culture-science immersion in rural school and community sites and met several times at school, university, and community sites to build knowledge and share programs. Teachers were deeply moved by immersion experiences, learned to connect cultural understandings, e.g., a Hawaiian sense of place and curriculum development, and highly valued collaborating with peers on curriculum development and implementation. The study finds that long term professional development providing situated learning through cultural immersion, cultural translators, and interdisciplinary instruction supports the establishment of communities of practice in which participants develop the cross-cultural knowledge and literacy needed for the development of locally relevant, place and standards-based curricula and pedagogy.

This qualitative study uses narrative methodology to understand what becoming a scientist or engineer entails for women stereotyped as``model minorities.'' Interviews with four Chinese and Japanese women focused on the social contexts in which science is encountered in classrooms, families, and community. Interpretation was guided by theories that individuals construct personal narratives mediated by cultural symbolic systems to make meaning of experiences. Narratives revealed that Confucian cultural scripts shaped gender expectations even in families several generations in America. Regardless of parents' level of education, country of birth, and number of children, educational expectations, and resources were lower for daughters. Parents expected daughters to be compliant, feminine, and educated enough to be marriageable. Findings suggest K±12 gender equity science practices encouraged development of the women's interests and abilities but did not affect parental beliefs. The author's 1999 study of Hawaiians/Paci®c Islander and Filipina female engineers is included in implications for teacher education programs sensitive to gender, culture, ethnicity, and language. ß

There is an urgent need to develop the underlying theory and principles of ''sustainability science,'' based on an understanding of the fundamental interactions between nature and humans. This requires a new research and education paradigm that embraces biocomplexity, integrates the physical, biological, and social sciences, and uses a coupled, human-natural systems approach. An initiative aligned with this paradigm and approach, and centered on the Hawaiian Island's unique mountain-to-sea ecosystems, is developing at the University of Hawai'i. These ecosystems, extending from upland tropical forests to the fringing coral reefs, correspond to the roughly wedge-shaped catchments, traditionally called ahupua'a in the Hawaiian language. Despite the collapse of the ahupua'a system and, tragically, the Native Hawaiian population, its legacy of ecological and cultural stewardship remains. This legacy, and the potential of these ecosystems as microcosms for addressing the core questions of sustainability science, has provided the impetus for a growing number of projects employing a socialecological systems perspective. An overview of three projects that employ a ''learning community'' approach and cultural stewardship perspective inspired by the ahupua'a system is provided. These include the Ecosystems Thrust Area of Hawai'i EPSCoR, a U.S. National Science Foundation research infrastructure program, focused on ecosystem research and monitoring activities; a sustainability curriculum program, M alama I Ka 'Aina, of the College of Education; and a project that builds on programs of the Division of Ecology and Health and its affiliated AsiaPacific Center for Infectious Disease Ecology, linking ecosystem resilience and infectious diseases.