Infusing Indigenous Knowledge in the Life Sciences Classroom: Design Principles for Creating an Ethnobiological Matrix

Abstract

A perennial problem facing South African science education is how to better contextualize curriculum content to a diverse student population. South Africa, who is often dubbed the 'rainbow nation' because of its racial and cultural diversity, also has to deal with a large spectrum of students in terms of socioeconomic status. In especially rural parts of the country, where indigenous knowledge is thriving, the 'western' science curriculum is not always accessible to all learners. By infusing relevant indigenous knowledge into curriculum themes, students will be able to better understand and appreciate the value of science in everyday life. Despite fundamental differences between the natural sciences and Indigenous Knowledge (IK) (e.g. the holistic nature of IK versus the reductionist nature of science), similarities in the processes also exist, e.g. the empirical, tentative and inferential nature of both. The responsibility thus lies with teacher educators to train teachers on how to effectively infuse IK in the classroom. This paper describes a rigorous method to create science context by means of ethnobiological studies which will be implementable in teacher education and ultimately infused in science classrooms. The research draws on the Matrix Method that was developed by De Beer and Van Wyk in the field of ethnobotany, and in this paper, the authors show how ethnozoology could also be included. The Matrix Method affords students the opportunity to, as scientific sleuths, engage in project-based learning, while also developing more nuanced understandings of the role that science plays in everyday life. Although the context is South African, the heuristic developed has universal application and could be used in any country.

Defining research focus in self-directed learning: An autoethnographic reflection

“…Vadigi (2016) advocates for an all-inclusive research model that acknowledges diverse knowledge systems. The latter author highlights the fact that the amalgamation of IK systems with modern scientific systems is likely 'to strengthen socio-ecological resilience through the development of sustainable environmental management strategies' (Kruger & De Beer 2019;Vadigi 2016:148). In science education literature, several scholars (Cronje 2015;De Beer 2015; Le Grange 2019) advocate for the border-crossing between 'western science' and IK in the Natural Sciences classroom.…”