Paper presented at the 2005 NARST Annual International Conference, April
4-7, Dallas, TX. 

# Developing a Sense of Place and an Environmental Ethic:

# A Transformative Role for Hawaiian/Indigenous Science in Teacher Education?

**Pauline W. U. Chinn**

# University of Hawaii-Manoa

## Abstract

This exploratory study reports findings from a professional development
workshop on curricular trends in Hawaii. Nineteen secondary mathematics
and science teachers from Japan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Korea,
Philippines, U.S. and People's Republic of China were asked to write
about the role of indigenous science in science. Responses showed most
ethnic Asians from Asia nations viewed indigenous practices negatively.
After reflective written and oral exercises to develop a personal sense
of place and a presentation on indigenous Hawaiian practices related to
place and sustainability, most evaluated indigenous practices more
positively. Teachers discussed environmental issues affecting their
communities and critiqued the absence of locally relevant science and
ecological knowledge of indigenous peoples in their national science
curriculum. Teachers identified local issues of air and water quality
due to industrialization, fires, deforestation, and resource
exploitation. These findings suggest professional development that
includes indigenous, sustainable practices and personal, place-based
activities provides a conceptual framework for transforming mainstream
science curricula into meaningful, problem-based curricula relevant to
environmental literacy.

## 

### Introduction

Contemporary mainstream science education shares similarities with
global marketing campaigns inducing individuals to consume the same
products and aspire to similar lifestyles regardless of local cultural
and environmental contexts. Western modern science (WMS) curricula
oriented to preparing students for an increasingly technological,
urbanized global economy provides a universalistic view of science that
separates learners from their experiences with local environments and
their host culture's traditional ecological knowledge (Snively &
Corsiglia, 2001; Kawagley, 1999). For learners, science studies provide
a range of opportunities for inquiry and place- based learning involving
the analytical, science based knowledge that is fundamental to
environmental literacy. Instead in many schools, science learning is
driven by needs for students to perform well on standardized science
tests and international tests such as TIMMS, Trends in International
Mathematics and Science Study, that lead to increasingly uniform
curricula as nations, including the United States, compete on student
performance (<http://timss.bc.edu/timss2003.html>).

Students in Hawaii's schools have a unique natural laboratory to explore
fundamental biological questions involving evolution, adaptation and
interactions of humans and the environment on isolated island systems.
But Hawaii's students historically study mainstream, textbook-based
science. They may become literate in school science but seldom learn
about issues of endangered and invasive species or soil and water
pollution in their own communities. At the secondary level, science
classes that address locally relevant marine science and natural history
tend to be targeted towards lower academic track students, while college
bound students enroll in mainstream biology, chemistry, and physics
courses recognized and required by many colleges.

Middle class students who are likely to pursue postsecondary schooling
are served reasonably well in Hawaii's mainstream schools. They take
college preparatory classes and enter universities where their science
and science education professors achieve professional status through
research and writings assessed by peers who belong to nationally and
internationally recognized knowledge-based professional subcultures. It
is ironic that specialists studying Hawaii's flora, fauna, terrestrial
and marine ecosystems, archeology, and geology may be located in
research institutions anywhere in the world.

In college, Hawaii's future teachers, especially those in elementary
programs, are unlikely to gain the science knowledge and tools to
integrate their familiar environments into their curricula. Even
nationally accredited elementary teacher education programs require only
two semesters of introductory biological and physical science. A few
years ago, one of my science methods students said teachers at her
public school on Kauai had decided on bears as the theme of second grade
science. Even when teachers are knowledgeable about Hawaii-oriented
science, school administrators' desires to raise standardized test
scores by adopting mainstream curricula tends to impede the teaching of
standards-based, locally relevant science.

This is unfortunate as public school teachers in Hawaii primarily work
with students whose worlds are largely limited to their immediate
families and neighborhoods, and communities. Teacher education programs
and science teaching standards stress the importance addressing student
diversity through student-centered lessons, but once in the schools,
teachers find that the emphasis on preparing students to perform well on
standardized tests of reading and mathematics contradicts National
Science Education Standards (National Research Council, 1996) directing
teachers to:

> Select science content and adapt and design curricula to meet the
> interests, knowledge, understanding, abilities, and experiences of
> students. In determining the specific science content and activities
> that make up a curriculum, teachers consider the students who will be
> learning the science (p. 4).

An elementary teacher with the academic preparation to teach Hawaii
relevant, standards-based science lessons critiqued the mainstream
language arts, mathematics, and science curricular programs her school
purchased:

> With the curricula that we have to cover there is little time for
> science and the content seems so "mainland." Discussing woods such as
> oak or redwood is okay, but yet kind of silly because who has seen an
> oak or redwood tree, much less one in Hawaii? We have our own woods
> here, but if you follow the \_\_\_\_\_\_\_ science content, you do not
> get to cover that...There are a lot of great ideas from *Malama*...but
> I am afraid to do too much of it for fear that I would be accused of
> not following the curriculum (which they paid a lot of \$\$ for).

These comments reveal teacher disempowerment and a critique of school
policies that put scarce financial and teaching resources into curricula
unrelated to students' lives and experiences. An outcome of focusing on
improving reading and mathematics test scores to meet the No Child Left
Behind Act is a reduction of scientific and environmental literacy.
Environmental literacy, the ability to understand, monitor, and maintain
or restore the integrity of environmental systems all life relies on is
marginalized in hopes of producing what Sternberg (2003) calls
pseudo-experts:

Conventional methods of teaching may, at best, create
pseudo-experts---students whose expertise, to the extent they have it,
does not mirror the expertise needed for real-world thinking inside or
outside of the academic disciplines schools normally teach (p. 5).

Sternberg's research shows that teaching and assessment that include
analytical, creative, and practical thinking enables students from more
diverse racial, ethnic, educational and socioeconomic backgrounds to be
successful learners whereas the analytical approaches of mainstream
schools reduces diversity. He thinks teaching "must relate to real
practical needs of students" and that practical, creative, and
analytical teaching leads to the "successful intelligence" needed in
fields such as teaching and science (*ibid*, p.5). Sternberg notes that
reducing democratic outcomes and producing pseudo-experts incapable of
real-world problem solving has serious societal implications. His
current work examines the role of successful thinking in wisdom defined
as "the use of successful intelligence and experience toward the
attainment of a common good" (*ibid*, p.7). He worries that test-driven
schools will not educate citizens and leaders with the real world
experience needed to make wise decisions in an increasingly complex,
interrelated world.

### A World of Difference 

The history of western science as a cultural enterprise suggests that
knowledge-building and technological innovation are driven by the
interests of dominant elites (Gould, 1993; Takaki, 1993). Science as an
objective quest for knowledge developed in the context of European
imperialism and the quest for new lands and resources. Western science
methods of knowledge building that involve measuring, classifying,
collecting, dissecting, and mapping of everything in a material world
are antithetical to a Hawaiian world view that understands humans and
nature in a familial relationship.

Hass (1992) writes that Hawaii's schools began as a vehicle for
monoculturism, "the practice of catering to the dominant or mainstream
culture, providing second-class treatment or no special consideration at
all to persons of non- mainstream cultures" (p. 161). Culture may be
defined as "a system of values, beliefs, notions about acceptable and
unacceptable behavior, and other socially constructed ideas
characteristic of a society of a subgroup within a society" (p.377,
Garcia, 1999). Cultural differences provide a way for dominant groups to
portray others as outsiders of lesser importance. Negative stereotypes
may lead educators to devalue and exclude the cultural knowledge,
perspectives and practices of marginalized groups and hold lower
expectations for these students. A review of the history of education in
Hawaii shows that Hawaiian language and culture were largely excluded
from mainstream schools after Hawaii became a territory of the United
States in 1898. Cultural and economic marginalization contribute to
statistics showing that Native Hawaiians in public schools, at 26% the
single largest ethnic group, experience the lowest school success of any
group (Kanaiaupuni & Ishibashi, 2003).

But Hawaiian cultural practices and perspectives have much to contribute
to environmental literacy and an ecosystems understanding of human
interactions with the natural world. Until a monetary economy and
policies allowing private ownership of land developed in the 19^th^
century, most Hawaiians lived and married within *ahupua'a,* a land
division extending from mountaintop to the edge of the reef containing
freshwater and the resources necessary to sustain the population. Those
living upland, *mauka*, exchanged products with those living *makai*,
towards the sea (Abbott, 1992). Dependence on the resources of the
*ahupua'a* produced long term, detailed environmental knowledge revealed
in place names of winds, rains, springs, and other environmental
features (Pukui, *et al*, 1974).

Traditional Hawaiians view humans as part of a world in which plants,
animals, and natural features are alive with ancestral and spiritual
significance. Close observation and a worldview based on interdependence
support an ecosystems understanding of the world. Many land animals and
plants had counterparts in the sea, such as the pairing of pig, *pua'a*,
and triggerfish, *humuhumunukunukuapua'a (Rhinecanthus rectangulus*) or
Polynesian rat, '*iole* (*Rattus exulans*) and the seaweed, *waiwai '
iole* (*Codium edulis*). Hawaiians developed a binary naming system
similar to the Linnean nomenclature system, as seen below in *naupaka
kahakai*, *Scaevola sericea*, the indigenous coastal species adapted for
heat, dryness, and seawater dispersal and *'ohe* *naupaka, Scaevola
glabra,* an endemic upland species adapted for higher rainfall and bird
dispersal of fleshy fruit
(<http://www.botany.hawaii.edu/faculty/carr/scaevola.htm>).

![](media/image1.jpeg){width="2.060416666666667in"
height="1.667361111111111in"}
![](media/image2.jpeg){width="2.3333333333333335in"
height="1.6555555555555554in"}

Figure 1. *Naupaka kahakai*, *Scaevola sericea*, indigenous to Hawaii
(left), *'ohe* *naupaka, Scaevola glabra,* endemic to Hawaii (right).

The Hawaiian proverb, *He ali\'i ka \'aina; he kaua ke kanaka*
translated as \"The land is a chief, man is its servant\" indicates
Hawaiians recognized that active care (*malama 'aina*) and respect/love
(*aloha'aina*) for all that sustained them enabled their survival (p.
62, Pukui, 1983). The impact of humans on the natural world and human
reliance on intact ecosystems has only recently begun to be appreciated
in technologically advanced nations as limits to resources and global
impacts of human activities become evident. Reinforcing their economic
value to society, the energy capturing, nutrient cycling, and
environmental cleansing processes of natural ecosystems are framed in
economic terms as *ecosystem services* (Daily, 2003).

A place-based, environmental literacy focus in science teacher education
and curriculum development takes on urgency in the light of evidence
that human activities have become the most important evolutionary force
in the world (Palumbi, 2001). Emerging as an interdisciplinary
theoretical field in education (Gruenewald, 2003; Perez, Fain, & Slater,
2004), learning associated with place produces the ecosystems knowledge
integrating humans and nature that characterizes sustainable cultures
(Orr, 1992; Cajete, 1999, 2000; Kawagley, 2001). Disinger and Roth
(2003) stress the active problem-finding, problem-solving, place-based
nature of environmental literacy: "Environmental literacy is essentially
the capacity to perceive and interpret the relative health of
environmental systems and take appropriate action to maintain, restore,
or improve the health of those systems."

When Hawaii revised its science content standards in 1999, a Hawaiian
saying *Malama I Ka 'Aina, Sustainability,* to care for the land that
sustains us was included as a standard. With 300+ plant and animal
species, the highest number of candidates for protective status; about a
fourth of those already protected under the Endangered Species Act, 107
of 286 (Song, 2005); and a 90% of endemic species found nowhere else in
the world, environmental literacy is an immediate issue for everyone in
Hawaii.

Kanahele's (1986) writing speaks to Native Hawaiians and residents of
Hawaii today:

> If we are to be truly consistent with traditional Hawaiian thought, no
> one really owned the land in the past...The relationship was the other
> way around: a person belonged to the land...We are but stewards of the
> *'aina* and *kai,* trusted to take care of these islands on behalf of
> the gods, our ancestors, ourselves, and out children (pp. 208, 209).

### Culture and Perception of the Natural World

Sociocultural theory assumes that learning cannot be dissociated from
interpersonal interactions located in cultural frameworks (Lave &
Wenger, 1991; Cole, 1996; Gee et al., 1996). Socially situated learning
recognizes that values, emotions, experiences and cultural contexts are
integrally related to learning. The recognition that different cultures
have different ways of understanding how people relate to each other and
the world is the foundation for explicitly addressing cultural contexts
in teacher education programs. If not brought to awareness mainstream
teachers may only become familiar with superficial, even contrived
cultural elements such as the addition of pineapple to make a Hawaiian
pizza.

Cross cultural research by Nisbett and his Asian colleagues (2003)
yields insights into the role of culture in shaping views of nature.
Comparisons of Asian and American perceptions suggest that Asians are
more likely to see humans and their surroundings as part of a complex
system while Americans tend to see individual actors. Nisbett suggests
that *feng shui,* the study of how a structure relates to its
environment, reveals Asians perceive the world as composed of complex
relationships while the American tendency to problem-solve with series
of steps indicates rule based, atomistic, universally applicable
thinking. His results indicate that \"Westerners are more analytic,
paying attention primarily to the object and the categories to which it
belongs and using rules, including formal logic, to explain and predict
its behavior.\" Nisbett warns educators that \"it might be a mistake to
assume that it\'s an easy matter to teach one culture\'s tools to
individuals in another without total immersion in that culture\"
(<http://www.umich.edu/news/Releases/2003/Feb03/r022703a.html>).

Cultural differences ranging from superficial to ideological provide a
context for examining school success of students from different cultural
groups. In Hawaii, for example, a host culture emphasis on relational
identity grounded in family and place differs from the dominant American
emphasis on personal identity. In mainstream classrooms, students learn
science in a culture of individualistic, competitive practices leading
to individual rankings. Hawaiian worldviews establishing humans in
familial, caring relationships with the natural world are antithetical
to mainstream ideologies grounded in scientific progress, individualism,
and capitalism. Influenced by Descartes (Orr, 1992) and Isaac Newton's
shaping of scientific communication (Bazerman, 1988) mainstream WMS and
its product, school science, tend to portray science as the discovery of
universal truths based on data gained through objective, reproducible
experiments stripped of emotion, cultural contexts and values.

One outcome of being socialized in WMS is a tendency for science
teachers to be less aware of issues of culture in education (Greenfield,
2005). But some scientists are beginning to recognize the importance of
grounding science, especially environmental science, in experiences and
emotions leading to an environmental ethic seen in Hawaiian values of
*malama 'aina,* active care for the land and *aloha 'aina*, love for the
land. David Orr (1992), an environmental scientist criticizes WMS for
separating people from the natural world:

> Cartesian philosophy was full of potential ecological mischief, a
> potential that Descartes' heirs developed to its fullest. His
> philosophy separated humans from the natural world, stripped nature of
> its intrinsic value, and segregated mind from body. Descartes was at
> heart an engineer, and his legacy to the environment of our time is
> the cold passion to remake the world as if we were merely remodeling a
> machine. Feelings and intuition have been tossed out along
> with...love. A growing number of scientists now believe, with Stephen
> Jay Gould, that "we cannot win this battle to save \[objectively
> measurable\] species and environments without forging an \[entirely
> subjective\] emotional bond between ourselves and nature as well---for
> we will not fight to save what we do not love" ("Enchanted Evening,"
> *Natural History*, Sept. 1991).

### Transformative Learning and Curricular Restructuring

If mainstream school science is viewed as immersion in the culture of
western science, perhaps immersing mainstream teachers in their
students' indigenous or sustainability-oriented cultures and communities
holds the potential to help them teach a more complex, systems oriented
science that supports environmental literacy and recognizes the role of
culture in learning. Over the past 4 years, support from awards under
the Native Hawaiian Education Act has enabled approximately 100 K-12
Hawaii teachers to enroll in EDCS 433 Interdisciplinary Science
Curricula, *Malama I Ka 'Aina, Sustainability*, a class which includes a
multiple day culture-science immersion co-instructed by Native
Hawaiians, science educators, and scientists (Chinn & Sylva, 2000,
2002). Through this class, teachers develop and teach culturally
relevant, place and standards-based curricula (see
[http://malama.hawaii.edu](http://malama.hawaii.edu/)).

Place-based culture-science immersion supports teachers in developing
personal and professional connections to their *ahupua'a*, the bioregion
that landscape architect Thayer (2003) terms a *lifeplace* and defines
as the region sustaining the unique human-natural community in which one
lives and works. As teachers' environmental literacy develops, they
learn how to use their immediate environments for interdisciplinary,
experiential lessons that lead to an ethic of care and personal
responsibility, *kuleana,* as indicated in the state science standard
*Malama I Ka 'Aina, Sustainability*.

Establishing a personal connection and acquiring the tools to study
one's lifeplace can lead to transformative teaching and learning in
science. Hall (2004) defines transformative learning as "the process of
learning, whether in formal or informal educational settings which is
linked to changing the root causes of environmental destruction or
damage" (pp. 170-171). Transformative learning relevant to environmental
literacy creates "pedagogical spaces for adults to learn to transform
their lives and the structures around them" (*ibid*, p.190). This is in
line with Science Teaching Standards urging teachers to translate
science goals "into a curriculum of specific topics, units, and
sequenced activities that helps students make sense of their world and
understand the fundamental ideas of science (p. 4, NRC, 1996)" and has
much in common with Disinger and Roth's (2003) definition of an action
oriented environmental literacy. It can be seen from Hall's list of
elements of transformative environmental education below that
environmental education leading to environmental literacy has as much to
do with culture and society as science:

-   developing a sense of place;

-   recognizing the importance of biodiversity;

-   connecting with nature;

-   revitalizing traditional and indigenous knowledge, values, and
    practices;

-   building social networks;

-   understanding power-knowledge relationships; and

-   learning from elders.

Teachers who value and incorporate indigenous knowledge and voices into
their teaching broaden the knowledge base for thinking and acting
critically in the world and provide a conceptual bridge, though one not
always easily negotiable due to ideological and ontological differences,
between indigenous and mainstream cultural systems. Research
collaborations involving indigenous and non-indigenous individuals with
expertise in tradition knowledge and western science provide models of
the synergies to be gained when traditional and western science
knowledge bases are combined to understand particular environmental
issues (Poepoe, *et al*, 2003). Until Hawaiian became a written
language, carefully conserved knowledge was transmitted through
apprenticeship and participation in cultural practices. Hawaiians were
absolutely dependent on the wisdom of old people as "the equivalent of
libraries" (Diamond, 2001). This transmission was broken with the
institution of compulsory schooling in an English only environment after
Hawaii became a territory. Understanding the role of language, place and
contextualized, interpersonal experiences in cultural transmission
provides insight into indigenous peoples' determination to shape
education from their own cultural perspectives (Cajete, 1986; Kawagley,
1999; Smith, L. 1999; Smith, G. 2003). Authentic, personalized
environments and authentic, experience-based learning are still critical
factors for success in the schooling of native Hawaiian students
(Kawakami and Aton, 2000).

### Connecting Informal Learning to School Science

I learned to love science because my father, a science teacher, exposed
his children to informal science through outdoor activities that led to
interest-driven study of Hawaii's natural history. Virtually none of my
learning and experiences translated into school science, but I never
questioned it. As a secondary science teacher, it took me years to
recognize the irony in Native Hawaiian students being least successful
of all Hawaii's ethnic groups in school science though coming from a
culture sustained through broad-based environmental literacy. Years
later I interviewed a Native Hawaiian female engineering student who
reported that her friends' academic paths were shaped by elementary
teachers who grouped them by perceived academic ability and behavior,
setting the stage for academic peer groups that persisted through high
school and beyond (Chinn, 1999b). Research with my culturally diverse
preservice teachers (Chinn, 2003) revealed that their views of teaching
are shaped by life experiences interpreted through the lenses of culture
and schooling. These findings support socio-cultural theories of
learning that are the rationale for Hawaii Teacher Standards
([www.htsb.org/standards/index.html](http://www.htsb.org/standards/index.html))
and Science Teaching Standards (NRC, 1996) that stress connecting
students' informal learning to school learning.

Isabella Abbott, the first Native Hawaiian woman to earn a doctorate in
science became interested in botany not through science classes but
through her mother's knowledge of plants and her principal's support of
her interests (Chinn, 1999a). She listened as her mother, born and
brought up on Maui discussed local differences in knowledge and
practices with cultural expert Mary Pukui from the Ka'u district of
Hawaii (Abbott, 1992). Abbott chides "scholars (who) would be tempted to
make a determination of which one among the various viewpoints was
correct or normative," noting that "Hawaiian culture was diverse, more
pluralistic than monolithic." She asks her readers to be researchers of
family knowledge,

We Hawaiians have mostly lost our once-great talent for the oral
transmission of culture, so if stories of the old ways still reside in
your family, search them out and treasure them---and make sure they are
preserved in written form" (p. x).

Linda Smith (1999), a Maori researcher, describes 25 research projects
being undertaken by indigenous peoples with "(t)hemes such as cultural
survival, self-determination, healing, restoration and social justice"
(p. 142). Story telling, indigenizing, connecting, writing,
representing, and naming are 6 research projects implicitly embedded in
Abbott's suggestion to Native Hawaiians to seek out, treasure and write
their cultural stories.

A Native Hawaiian preservice teacher's assignment to write about her
personal place produced the excerpt below that includes the joy of
childhood experiences, the internalized voices of elders, Hawaiian place
names and cultural uses of land, and a critique of recent changes in her
personally lived environment. It suggests that asking teachers to
reflect on a personal place could begin a transformation from thinking
about science education as the delivery of impersonal content to
thinking about it as experiential, real-world learning using a range of
research methods and methodologies including those of mainstream science
to develop environmental literacy and interest in science.

Hanalei has all the elements that remind me of my youth in *Pupukea* on
O'ahu---beautiful bay to swim in, valley to explore and to \[play\]
around in. My cousins and I would explore all over the back country and
visit *Pu'u Mahuka* and clean up the trash up there for fear that if we
saw the trash and didn't pick it up, our ancestors would punish us. We
would head down the hillside into *Waimea* Valley and quickly find
ourselves playing in the stream. We would look for any sort of creature
to look at and float around toward the sea. The best was floating out to
the ocean and being able to see the lush valley behind us. We are unable
to do those sorts of things now since there are homes in the backcountry
and there is ever-present danger of rockslides on the hillsides as well
as *leptospirosis* in the stream that we used to play in...*Hanalei*
reminds me of how things were in *Pupukea*, it has the beautiful lush
valley with impressive and majestic mountains that surround it, (one
peak fascinates me, *Hihimanu*, the giant manta ray). There is the
*Hanalei* River to play around in and it also flows into the *lo'i*
(taro pondfield) which is a reminder for me of what was important to my
ancestors.

### Study Population and Research Questions

Nineteen experienced secondary science and mathematics teachers, 8
females and 11 males, from Japan (3), Malaysia (5), Indonesia (1),
Thailand (1), Korea (2), Philippines (2), United States (5) attended a
10 day workshop in Honolulu, Hawaii of which 2 days focusing on science
curriculum were led by the author. The workshop topic, Trends in Science
Curriculum, presented an opportunity to explore science and mathematics
teachers' views of indigenous knowledge and sense of place from a
cross-cultural perspective. Would a sequence of exercises exploring
personal views and an introduction to indigenous cultural practices from
a Hawaiian perspective provide a conceptual framework for
transformational learning? The study explores three questions:

-   What initial views do mathematics and science teachers hold of local
    and indigenous knowledge and how do these views influence teaching?

-   Do reflective activities and exposure to Native Hawaiian practices
    oriented to sustainability lead to evidence of transformative
    learning with elements noted by Hall above?

-   What environmental issues relevant to place-based curriculum are of
    concern to teachers?

## Methodology

Five of 25 indigenous research projects described by Smith (1999) were
employed in this study: indigenizing, connecting, writing, representing,
and discovering. Indigenizing refers both to the re-visioning of
cultural landscapes from the perspective of indigenous peoples and
opposition to colonization through indigenous identity and practices.
Connecting "positions individuals in sets of relationships with other
people and with the environment" (*ibid*, p. 148). Writing and
representing empower indigenous peoples to represent their realities,
issues, and identity. Discovering refers both to "development of
ethno-science and the application of science to matters which interest
indigenous peoples" *(ibid*, p. 160).

To develop texts for personal reflection and stories for group
discussion, writing prompts directed teachers to write about: 1) views
of indigenous science and relevance to curricula before and after seeing
a presentation on Hawaiian cultural practices; 2) a personal sense of
place; and 3) personal development of expertise. Following each writing
exercise, groups of 3-4 teachers from different countries, discussed
their writings, looking for similarities and differences. Groups
reported their findings for whole class discussion. At the end of the
inquiries, teachers were asked to think of topics that could be
developed into place-based curriculum relevant to their students and
communities. Teachers' writings were collected and notes taken of group
discussions.

## Findings

### Writing, Representing, Discovering and Indigenizing Science Knowledge 

Before seeing the presentation on Hawaiian cultural practices oriented
to sustainability, teachers wrote for a few minutes on the prompts: "I
think indigenous science is..." and "The role it has in curriculum
is...."Following a PowerPoint presentation of traditional Hawaiian
ecological practices related to farming, aquaculture, and conservation
practices, teachers responded again to the same prompts.

A male Chinese teacher from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, wrote before seeing
the presentation:

Science has no or little place in (lives of) indigenous people -- if at
all they are used without being understood. Many herbal medications
being used are passed down from generation to generation, knowing how to
use but not why. The role it has in science curriculum is erroneous.
Many traditional or herbal medicines required studies to have a full
understanding and may have a great impact on modern medicine.

Following the presentation, the same man wrote:

It is about a balance between the mountain, the land and the sea -- a
diverse ecological balance. The role it has in science curriculum is to
do things correctly and show the ways and means to sustain modern life.

A male teacher from Japan wrote before the presentation:

I think indigenous science is when catfish are nervous, big earthquake
is coming. Every natural thing, tall tree, mountain, river, pond, large
rock is house of Gods (spirit). Therefore we had 2,000,000 Gods all over
Japan.

After the presentation, he wrote:

The idea of 'respect to the Nature' was gone when Japan meets Western
culture and they found Japan is way behind the West. 'Gods are gone' for
100 years, 1867-1967. When we suffered serous air pollution, 'Gods came
back' through education. After 1960, 'environment' and 'natural
conservation' became major issues in science education. If you talk to
professional people, carpenters, engineers, mechanics, you will find
their own traditional and very practical math and science which is not
taught in school and it is very interesting.

The groups synthesized and developed generalized analyses of their
discussions. The following writing is typical of group reports:

The earth is our small and only livable planet. We should treat it with
care so that the resources it provides for the human race are manageable
and sustainable. Many traditional practices are invariably one way or
another (related to) very effective ecological cycles one must pay
attention to. The culture of indigenous people must be recognized and
respected for its continued perpetuation.

### Connecting to Others: Learning as Socially Situated

The writing prompt to describe how personal expertise develops asked
teachers to examine their own stages of learning from initial interest
to expert performance. After writing for 5 minutes, teachers from
different countries met in small groups to discuss their writings and
look for similarities and differences. Groups then reported their
findings for class discussion.

Although the skills described by individuals ranged from teaching to
skiing to cooking and growing hibiscus, the common patterns that emerged
were: 1) Whatever was learned was important to one or more significant
others in their lives; 2) learning was supported and encouraged by
significant others; 3) practice, feedback and encouragement were
important for improvement; 4) enjoyment, interest, and other emotions
were important to learning; and 5) active and hands-on learning
complemented learning from books and lectures.

As small groups shared their personal stories of developing expertise,
international teachers who had only met each other a few hours earlier
and were still uncomfortable speaking in English, for most a second even
third language began to relax, offering nonverbal encouraging nods,
smiles and laughter at each others' stories. These secondary science and
mathematics teachers were recognizing how important positive emotions,
affect, and connectedness to others are in learning.

### Connecting to Place: Discovering A Sense of Place

The exercise intended to sensitize teachers who were initially critical
of indigenous peoples' emotional and spiritual connections to place to
the emotional aspects of their writings on personally important places.
As in the other exercises, teachers responded to a prompt to write for 5
minutes about a personally meaningful place. They shared their writings
in small groups and reported similarities and differences to the whole
class. Although specific places with personal connections and meaning
ranged from natural settings such as a beautiful beach to being inside a
father's house, the places shared some common characteristics. The
places were described in emotional terms as being comfortable, familiar,
peaceful and secure.

### Transformative Learning: Implications for Curricular Change

The final writing assignment employed the preceding exercises and
discussions as a springboard for planning place-based, teacher-developed
curriculum. Teachers who initially had not favored inclusion of
indigenous knowledge and practices in the curriculum now thought it had
value, as noted by Abbott earlier to teach students to stay connected to
elders and traditional knowledge. Students would continue to learn and
value their own cultural practices, connect to their environment through
cultural practices and learn to treasure instead of exploit local
natural resources and raw materials. They regretted that children in
their rapidly developing nations already did not know how it used to be
just a few generations ago. They faulted test-driven curricula for
eliminating the joys of teaching and learning and having little
connection to students and their lives. They thought national science
and mathematics curricula should not be generic across countries and
were of the opinion that individual countries should be proud of their
own indigenous knowledge.

Asian teachers commented frequently on the loss of respect for the
elderly and the displacement of traditional knowledge by modern, western
models of science and mathematics education. As a group, the
international teachers expressed frustration at the irrelevance of the
curricula and assessment adopted from former colonizers. They complained
about feeling trapped in covering an extensive body of content. They
said the curriculum was disconnected from real issues of students and
their communities. Both international and U.S. teachers agreed that
test-driven curricula did not support independent thinking, encourage
learning about traditional knowledge and practices, or address local
environmental issues.

Though the 2-day workshop did not allow time to develop ideas into
written units or lesson plans, teachers identified issues of
sustainability in their localities that potentially could be included in
their curricula. Major issues were air pollution from unregulated
vehicles and uncontrolled brush and forest fires (Malaysia), soil
erosion and water pollution (Philippines), and dangerous driving
behaviors on inadequate roads in the rapidly developing nations (Korea
and Malaysia). A woman from the Philippines spoke about exploitative
logging that left hillsides denuded and eroded and the people below
vulnerable to landslides, flooding, and water pollution following heavy
rains. The group discussed ways to incorporate local environmental
issues into their curricula and discussed how data could be collected,
analyzed and reported to policy makers to make changes leading to the
common good.

## Discussion

The findings of this study suggest that a presentation on indigenous
practices and reflective writings on personal place, patterns of
learning, and traditional practices provide opportunities for western
trained science and mathematics teachers to bring culture and personal
experiences into discussions of curriculum and pedagogy. Written
comments by several Asian teachers initially devalued traditional
practices, indicating the cultural dominance of western science and
marginalization of indigenous science knowledge. Following a
presentation on Hawaiian environmental practices oriented to
sustainability that interpreted cultural practices from Western science
perspectives, the same teachers appeared freer to speak as indigenous
persons trained in Western modern science but still connected to and
familiar with traditional, indigenous practices.

The Chinese teacher from Malaysia who initially dismissed indigenous
science ("Science has no or little place in (the lives of) indigenous
people -- if at all they are used without being understood...The role it
has in science curriculum is erroneous.") was still willing to consider
the potential value of traditional herbal medicines following discovery
of active principles through science research. After the presentation on
indigenous Hawaiian practices he understood indigenous science in a
completely different light. He still wrote predominantly from the
perspective of a non-indigenous person, but now thought indigenous
science's role in science curriculum would be to connect students to the
natural world from an ethical and ecosystems standpoint: "It is about a
balance between the mountain, the land and the sea -- a diverse
ecological balance. The role it has in science curriculum is to do
things correctly and show the ways and means to sustain modern life."

Before the presentation on indigenous Hawaiian practices, the teacher
from Japan gave a folk science example of indigenous science, "when
catfish are nervous, big earthquake is coming," and referred to
traditional Shinto animism that imbued natural features with "2,000,000
gods." After the presentation he noted that "respect to the Nature (sic)
was gone" and "Gods are gone" for 100 years while Japan was
industrializing to catch up with the West. "Gods came back" through
education only after the country began to suffer serious air pollution.
His writing suggests that becoming westernized separated people from
traditional beliefs and practices connecting them to their environment
in a relationship of respect and reverence with negative consequences.
The return of the gods represents re-indigenizing and discovery of the
positive ecological effects of indigenous perspectives and behavior in
the natural world.

This teacher knew and was proud that "professional people, carpenters,
engineers, mechanics" were still using "traditional and very practical
math and science which is not taught in school and it is very
interesting." Writing as an indigenous person from a nation with its own
cultural knowledge and practices, he implicitly critiqued his country's
WMS school programs for excluding traditional, indigenous math and
science knowledge. He represented this knowledge as so "very practical"
that "professional people" even engineers with WMS training knew and
used it. It appears from his comment "it is very interesting" that he
also knew about it but unfortunately, there was not enough time to
elaborate further.

As teachers shared and discussed their stories, traditional belief
systems connecting people, places and natural phenomena were reevaluated
in a more positive light as the wisdom and ethics of environmental
ethno-science became apparent. In discussions following the sharing of
cultural and personal experiences, teachers touched on the elements of
transformative environmental education listed by Hall (2004) and began
to formulate the concept of a lifeplace (Thayer, 2003) connected to
cultural and ecological issues affecting their lives and the lives of
their students. This study suggests that transformative learning (Hall,
2004) "the process of learning...which is linked to changing the root
causes of environmental destruction or damage" (pp. 170-171) develops
when teachers connect their personal experiences and understanding of
place to their professional roles as teachers and curriculum developers.
Hawaii's teachers employ science and social studies standards concerned
with the environment as a framework for curriculum development: *Malama
I Ka 'Aina*, Sustainability and geography standard Environment and
Society focus on limited resources, fragile ecosystems, active
care-taking (*malama*) and stewardship
([www.doe.k12.hi.us/standards/hcps.htm](http://www.doe.k12.hi.us/standards/hcps.htm)).

Unfortunately, even if teachers develop locally relevant,
standards-based curricula, administrators fear that standardized tests
will not overlap with curricula including local environmental issues and
indigenous knowledge. These fears may lead to policies restricting
teachers to mainstream texts covering content likely to be tested. As in
the case of the elementary teacher who felt obligated to teach science
foreign to Hawaii, teaching for environmental literacy and more
democratic outcomes is marginalized to produce pseudo-experts
(Sternberg, 2003). McNeil (2003) notes that teacher education and
professional standards promoting student-centered pedagogy,
constructivism, collaboration, problem solving and inquiry conflict with
accountability as measured by standardized tests produced by "business
\[with\] a new vision that there is money to be made...in meeting the
clamor for choice, privatization, and testing" (p. 34). In the current
test-driven climate in the U.S., localized, place-based curriculum is
not likely to be sustained unless it also raises test scores. Whether it
meets the needs of students and local communities or leads to
environmental literacy may be considered of lesser importance.

## Conclusion

At the start of the workshop, teachers tended to critique indigenous
knowledge as possibly erroneous, based on superstition and empty ritual,
and serving only as a negative example in science. After the
presentation of Hawaiian cultural perspectives, teachers began to openly
acknowledge the value of indigenous and traditional practices in
teaching environmental sustainability. Written exercises followed by
small group and whole class discussion helped teachers develop the
concept of a personal sense of place and an awareness of the social
contexts of learning. Discussions of the impact of WMS on their science
and mathematics curricula led to critiques of western, test-driven
models of science and mathematics curricula as colonizing and irrelevant
to pressing environmental issues related to economic development,
globalization, exploiting of natural resources and marginalization of
indigenous peoples.

The evidence of transformed views of science education was the teachers'
recognition of a need for reinhabitation, "learning to live-in-place in
an area that has been disrupted and injured through past exploitation
(Berg and Dasmann, p. 35 cited by Gruenwald, 2003: 9). Negative
attitudes toward indigenous knowledge and practices changed in the
direction of respecting cultures that understand and care for their
environments.

Gruenewald (2003) writes:

If reinhabitation involves learning to live well socially and
ecologically in places that have been disrupted and injured,
decolonization involves learning to recognize disruption and injury and
to address their causes. From an educational perspective, it means
unlearning much of what dominant culture and schooling teaches, and
learning more socially just and ecologically sustainable ways of being
in the world.

Developing a personal sense of place and reflecting on traditional and
indigenous knowledge oriented to place and sustainability appear to play
a critical role in transformative learning leading to environmental
literacy. For the highly diverse science and mathematics teachers in the
workshop, revisiting traditional practices led to understandings echoing
the Hawaiian proverb "*He ali'i ka'aina, he kaua ke kanaka*, the land is
a chief man is the servant (Pukui, 1983).

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