Postcolonial Construction of Self: Two Immigrant Secondary Science Teachers from Nigeria and Kenya Explore the Role of Cultural and Indigenous Beliefs in their Teaching

The purpose of this study is to understand how two African immigrant teachers to the United States experience cultural conflicts and whether/how their cultural and indigenous beliefs are brought forward into science classrooms. While there is a wealth of research conducted on the experiences of various immigrant groups, there is a dearth of literature on beliefs and the meaning making processes among immigrant science teachers. These exclusions have potentially made an impact on the curriculum, culture and processes of science. Including the beliefs of immigrant science teachers will provide a richer and more diverse understanding of how issues of identity and immigration influence beliefs and ways in which these beliefs manifest within the science classroom. In this study I use a co-participatory life history method to explore interconnections between culture, immigrant experiences and teacher identity. My co-participant and I offer our stories as units of analyses for this work. Evident from our stories is the ongoing tension between Western mainstream United States culture and our African cultures. This study reveals that my co-participant and I experienced transformative consciousness of hybridized identities and ideologies