8

THE POLITICS AND PRACTICES OF EQUITY,

(E)QUALITY AND GLOBALISATION IN SCIENCE
EDUCATION: EXPERIENCES FROM BOTH SIDES
OF THE INDIAN OCEAN

Annette Gough
RMIT University, Australia

Abstract: Gender, equity, equality, quality and globalisation are political issues which are inter-
woven into the discourses and practices of science education and education writ large.
In this chapter I firstly review the status of the gender agenda in education, particularly
science education, within a global context, and then explore the complicated curriculum
conversation that constitutes gender in South African (science) education and the ways in
which gender is/is not an educational issue. I then discuss the tensions between equality
and quality in educational discourses in South Africa and Australia, and how the resolution
of social justice issues such as gender equality are so tightly interwoven into issues of
democratic education

Keywords: gender, policy, social justice, science education, quality education, Australia, South
Africa

1. Introduction

Gender has been on the agenda in science education, and in education writ large,
for over three decades now, at least in the Western world. During this time feminist
researchers have experienced a game of snakes and ladders as each advance (up
a ladder) has, sooner or later, been followed by a diminution of status. That
gender issues are often seen as a Western project has many implications for the
work of feminist researchers and curriculum developers in science education in a
globalised, world, particularly when Western feminists are working with colleagues
from different cultural contexts.
In order to consider internationalisation and globalisation in science education
from a feminist perspective, I first chart research and curriculum transformations

B. Atweh et al. (eds.), Internationalisation and Globalisation in Mathematics

and Science Education, 129–147.
© Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2008
130 Gough

around girls and science education in the Western world (with a focus on Australia).
I then reflect on the “complicated conversation” (Pinar, Reynolds, Slattery, &
Taubman, 1995, p. 848) constituted by a confluence of international project experi-
ences, local perspectives and research literature, as I discuss tensions between
equality and quality in South African educational discourses and how the difficulties
of resolving social justice issues such as gender equality are so tightly interwoven
with issues of quality in education, including science education.
Science education from a feminist perspective in a global context shares an
agenda with moves towards a more democratic science education that “may enable
less partial and distorted descriptions and explanations” (Harding, 1991, p. 301),
and is concerned with “pointing out how better understandings of nature result when
scientific projects are linked with and incorporate projects of advancing democracy;
[and that] politically regressive societies are likely to produce partial and distorted
accounts of the natural and social world” (Harding, 1993, p. ix). Such democratic
moves are consistent with the South African Bill of Rights (Mangena, 2006) and
other declarations discussed in this chapter.

1.1 Research on Girls and Science

Research on gender and science education has been a focus of two issues of the
journal Studies in Science Education, in 1982 and in 1998. In the first of these, both
Kaminski (1982) and Manthorpe (1982) observed that the (then) current research
into girls and science education approached the issue from three distinct, though
not unrelated, perspectives:

• the intellectual potential of girls was seen as a significant but untapped labour
source for science and technology, or
• a concern with equity and a desire to identify and reform those factors which
were seen to impede girls’ achievement in science, or
• a concern with the under-representation of women in science, combined with
an argument that the male nature of the practice of science was oppressive for
women, hence their “science avoidance”.

Overall, at this time, the emphasis was on research which would result in getting
more girls to study science and follow scientific careers.
During the 1980s these related concerns associated with gender and science
developed into and alongside a more broadly focused education discourse which
sought to enhance girls’ post-school options by altering their relationship to school
subjects not traditionally associated with girls. When given a choice, girls were to be
encouraged both to select such subjects and to make “non-traditional” choices within
such subject groupings, such as physical rather than biological sciences, or higher
level rather than lower level mathematics. Teachers and others were to develop
educational means by which girls would achieve greater success in and/or a stronger
identification with such subjects when they are part of the compulsory school