Remaking Plant Relatives - Navigating Multiple Epistemologies

Christie Barchenger

Bang, M., & Medin, D. (2010). Cultural processes in science education: Supporting the navigation of multiple epistemologies. Science Education, 94(6), 1008-1026. 

A quote to start:

“Culture” and “science” are two concepts that are strongly subject to stereotyping and simplistic definitions. For example, it may be easy for some people to think of science as a body of knowledge and to imagine scientists as (White) men wearing white laboratory coats and using beakers and test tubes. Similarly, it is easy to think of culture as a set of ideas about what people think or customs rather than as affecting how people think. If these stereotypes and reductionist approaches remain unchallenged, then it is natural to take some preexisting science curriculum and build in a cultural connection by “adding culture to it.” Indeed, this is an approach that has been widely advocated and used but has failed to have the desired impacts (Hermes, 1999; Yazzie-Mintz, 2007). In part, we think this is because it has not addressed the core problems of culture in science and science education nor has it recognized the embeddings of culture in everyday practices." (Bang and Medin, 2010).

In this article, Bang and Medin engage in the conversation of how to open up spaces within science education for students, teachers, communities, and researchers to engage with multiple science epistemologies. One of the foundations to this work is naming and understanding 'science education' as Western science which, far from being acultural, is deeply cultural while being presented in the dominant discourse as 'objective' or neutral. Another related foundation is "understanding learning and development as fundamentally cultural processes" as opposed to seeing learning and cognition as something that ought to be identical across humans with differences being seen as inferior or abnormal. A third foundational piece is the recognition of community-derived knowledge as fundamentally important to students' learning processes instead of an obstacle or source of errors that must be corrected.

A strong conceptual framework, which I've only skimmed the surface of here, sets the stage for the researchers' community-based design research project that worked to structure learning settings for Indigenous students in Chicago and rural Wisconsin which allow for exploration and negotiation of Indigenous ways of knowing the natural world and 'modern' Western science. One of the vignettes shared in the article tells how students were responsible for observing, caring for, and learning more about a particular "plant relative" in an urban setting, then translating that relationship to local forests by looking for the plant and considering its interactions with the rest of the ecosystem. Thi highlights how Indigenous knowing can be centered in students' sense-making about the natural world:

   To begin, the naming of learning about plant ecology as “remaking relatives” places the foundation of student learning in a community-based epistemology in which plants are relatives.

 This vignette and framing made me stop and truly consider what some of the assumptions are going beneath the Western science epistemology about 'relatives' and 'families'. Western science, from my understanding, categorizes the closeness of relationship amongst living things in terms of genetic (and sometimes physiological) similarity. I'm more closely related to my biological parents than to my College of Ed friends because our genes more similar; organisms are organized into different 'families' based on similar characteristics.

Yet, we could think of relatives in a more ecological sense; am I more closely related to my College of Ed friends because we interact on a more regular basis and our lives overlap at more points than mine does with my parents in the Midwest? Is a squirrel actually not related to the acorns that it gathers? This is not to say that this ecological 'relations' idea I put forth here is actually representative of any Indigenous way of knowing (I can't claim that knowledge as something I 'have'). It's a way I'm muddling through thinking about this, by setting up a potential alternative to 'relatives' based on genetics. Another thought that comes to mind is the concept of kin and fictive kin in some African-American communities; this way of thinking about relations and family has historically (and currently still does) come into conflict with dominant culture, genetic-relationship based ways of determining family, in areas such as foster care. Here, though, I'm already falling into a 'trap' that Bang and Medin warn about: thinking of ways of knowing as a dichotomy that oversimplifies both epistemologies.

I'll leave my thinking there for the moment and be honest in saying that this is a difficult article to summarize in some ways because of its complexity and, in my opinion, importance. Designing and opening up spaces where students can engage with science in ways that affirms different ways of knowing about the natural world and different identities within that work is of utmost importance. This article is certainly worth reading in its entirety, several times, and seriously considered in its relevance not just to Indigenous students but all students, including those from a dominant cultural background.

Important Point/Quote:

Given that science instruction is seldom recognized as a set of cultural practices, many Native students may aptly be perceiving a sharp divide between everyday practices and what takes place in school. The lack of recognition of science and science education as being a set of cultural practices may implicitly or explicitly teach Native students that their own orientations and practices are not recognized or appreciated in school contexts or relevant to professional science. Consequently, it may be hard for Native students (as well as others) to resist the view that science is indeed a practice peculiar to White males and that science learning consists of the “received wisdom” of the dominant culture. That is not a prescription for engagement with science. We have attempted to address this and related issues in our community-based science programs.

Question for consideration:

Can space be made within K-12 classrooms (a setting which makes a set of statements about what learning is and where it takes place) for students' navigation of multiple epistemologies? This research was based in a summer program, among other non- 'conventional K-12' classroom settings.