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Multiculturalism and Science Education

Chapter · January 2006

DOI: 10.1007/1-4020-3770-8_13

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 CHAPTER 13

MULTICULTURALISM AND SCIENCE EDUCATION

Science educators and theoreticians of science education who have embraced

multiculturalism proceed as if multiculturalism is a univocal and non-
problematic approach that can be fruitfully applied to science education. We
believe, however, that neither the existence of a distinctly multiculturalist
interpretation of scientific activity nor a consensus about the meaning and the
practical consequences of multiculturalism itself can be taken for granted.
Multiculturalism is not a single and unproblematically formulated theory or
strategy waiting to be applied to science education. A philosophically
informed consideration of its implications for science education would have
to address both what is valuable about it and its inner tensions and
limitations.
Before we proceed any further, it will be useful to make a distinction
between ‘multiculturalism’ and ‘multicultural education’. Both of these terms
have been used in so many different senses that it would be impossible to
give an exhaustive list. For example, The International Encyclopaedia of
Education defines ‘multicultural education’ as
an educational process or strategy involving more than one culture, as defined by
national, linguistic, ethnic or racial criteria… It is supposed to create an awareness,
tolerance, understanding and knowledge regarding different cultures as well as the
differences and similarities between cultures and their related world views, concepts,
values, beliefs and attitudes. It is intended to provide cognitive, verbal, and non-
verbal skills in coping with different cultures or cultural groups, and skills in
communicating with members of these groups. It is also intended to promote
academic and social achievement in intercultural settings (Ekstrand 1994, p. 3963).
While this definition emphasizes communication and understanding between
cultures, the entry on multicultural education in The Encyclopaedia of
Educational Research emphasizes equal opportunity to students with diverse
social, racial and ethnic backgrounds:
As an idea, multicultural education espouses the notion that male and female
students, students from diverse racial, ethnic and social-class groups, and students
with disabilities should have an equal opportunity to learn in schools, colleges, and
universities… Multicultural education is also a process whose major aim is to change
the social structure and culture of schools and other educational institutions, so that
students from all cultural, racial, ethnic, gender, and social-class groups will have an
equal opportunity to experience academic success (Banks 1992, p. 870).
It would be more accurate to say that the ideal of multicultural education
incorporates both concerns above, as the following passage emphasizes:
 394 PHILOSOPHY, SCIENCE, EDUCATION & CULTURE Chapter 13

Education of diverse cultural groups, through a wide range of culturally impregnated

experiences, for life in a multiracial and multiethnic society at both local and global
levels. The ultimate goals are the promotion of social cohesion through critical
awareness and the establishment and maintenance of a socially just society through
the acceptance and celebration of diversity, the enhancement of the self-esteem of all,
and the elimination of racism. (Hodson 1993, p. 689; emphasis original)
Multicultural education as described in these passages is a need that has
emerged because today’s modern, complex societies are multicultural
societies: they consist of people with different native languages, religions,
and ethnic origins. This creates the need for mutual understanding and
tolerance regarding different cultural beliefs and practices among the
members of a society. Moreover, those cultural groups that form a minority
in a given society are often disadvantaged economically, socially and
politically due to various reasons. Education is an effective way of creating
conditions for equality as well as mutual tolerance and understanding among
members of different groups. “Multicultural education’ is the name given to
the policies of education that address these issues in multicultural societies.
It seems obvious to us that education should certainly be available to all
regardless of their gender, ethnicity, religious, cultural and class
backgrounds, and the aim of critical inquiry which we defend in this book is
certainly compatible with creating awareness and understanding regarding
different cultures provided that they are not sealed off from criticism.
On the other hand, the term “multiculturalism’, as it appears in theoretical
literature in the social sciences, is used to refer to a certain kind of politics of
recognition. What this means will be made clear below. In the science
education literature, however, ‘multiculturalism’ has acquired a meaning of
its own; it refers to a certain constellation of epistemic doctrines that form an
alternative to the universalist conception of science. To distinguish it from
other forms of multiculturalism, we call it epistemic multiculturalism.
Since there is little discussion of multiculturalism in a broader theoretical
context in the literature on science education, we begin, in Section 13.1, by
introducing multiculturalism as it has emerged in the social sciences in the
last two decades and relate it to issues in science education. Multiculturalism
in this broader context is a kind of politics of recognition. We discuss what is
valuable and what is problematic in it both generally and specifically from
the viewpoint of science education. In Section 13.2 we present an alternative
to multiculturalism, an alternative which avoids what is problematic in
multiculturalism as a politics of recognition. We then turn to epistemic
multiculturalism and its conception of science in Sections 13.3 and 13.4. We
argue that epistemic multiculturalism is even more problematic than
multiculturalism as a politics of recognition; we reject it categorically. Many
epistemic multiculturalists claim that indigenous and ecological knowledge
developed by indigenous peoples (what is sometimes known as “ethnoscience’)

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