Year: 2017 | Month: June | Volume 8 | Special Issue

Cultural Incongruence in Science Class: Implication for Science Education


DOI:Coming soon...

Abstract:

Science is a systematic and controlled extension of common sense where common sense is a series of concepts and conceptual schemas culturally sanctioned and considered as satisfactory for practical purposes. The belief in ordered nature that can be objectively observed with a rational outlook and
emphasis on verificationism are significant characteristic of the culture of science. Although science has been an inseparable part of all cultures, the modern science that emerged as a dominant culture in the past two and an half century is by and large considered by many and even projected by several nations as western in origin. Such delimiting of science obviously leads to sort of cultural wars specifically in the classrooms of young children. There are numerous instances where the ideas and beliefs in science are presented in the classroom colored by the western background of the proponent of the scientific claim and without any attempt to develop congruence between the universally accepted scientific view and the local views on the scientific phenomenon. Thus cultural war arises in the mind of the young learners. The mind war is even more prominent in the eastern countries where spiritualism and religious beliefs plays a major role in the life of young students and many often they find the scientific knowledge incompatible with their own cultural beliefs. The chasm therefore necessitates innovating and developing such strategies that are useful in the classroom in bridging the scientific claims and the cultural beliefs so that the students are able to better understand the universal nature of science rather than viewing it as a prerogative of certain part of the world. A multicultural perspective must be followed in a science classroom and help them in bringing cultural incongruency.





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