Decisions by 'Science Proficient' Year 10 Students About Post-Compulsory High School Science Enrolment: A Sociocultural Exploration

Motivated by chronic declines in post-compulsory high school science participation, this research provides a new perspective on the enrolment decisions of science proficient Year 10 students in New South Wales (NSW). The study adapted the 'multiple worlds' model of Phelan, Davidson and Cao (1991) to explore students' perceptions of their family, peer, school science and mass media worlds, for influences on their decisions about enrolling in post-compulsory science courses. A survey of 196 science proficient students, in six schools, provided a context for interviews with 37 students deciding for, or against, taking further science. The study considered influences within each world, and the effects of congruency or incongruency between cultural features of different worlds. The opinions of 24 science teachers regarding the enrolment decisions of science proficient students provided a triangulation of perspectives. The study found science proficient students often cross referenced perceptions of the attitudes and values within family and school science worlds when deciding whether to take science courses. In particular, the resources of cultural and social capital within students' families were strongly influential in many decisions, since experiences of school science alone did not tend to encourage further participation, particularly in the physical sciences. Teachers' opinions that science proficient students were being drawn away from science courses and careers by external influences were not supported by students' narratives

Rethinking Multicultural Science Education: Representations, Identities, and Texts

The last 15 years have seen a substantial increase in the interest in the relationship between science and culture, particularly the possibilities and problems associated with science teaching in culturally diverse contexts. One central element in the debates arising in this area concerns the way school curricula in general and science curricula in particular should respond to cultural diversity, especially the presence in science classes of non-Western, Indigenous, and minority group learners. Within this "crisis of narratives" (Lyotard, 1984, xxiii) some authors such as Good (1995) and Loving (1995) have argued that since science is universal, the concept of multicultural science education is highly problematic. In contrast, many authors believe that Indigenous and minority groups have their own knowledges that can contribute to scientific understandings, their own unique ways of knowing the world, or indeed their own kind of science (e.g. Aikenhead, 1997a, 1997b; Christie, 1991; Gordon, 1990; McKinley, 1996; Ninnes, 1994, 1995, 1996; Roberts, 1998; Snively & Corsiglia, 1998)

The Bhutan Multigrade Attachment Program

The Bhutan Multigrade Attachment Program (BMAP) is a professional development program run by the University of New England in partnership with the Ministry of Education of the Royal Government of Bhutan. The program aims to enhance Bhutanese educators' knowledge of and skills in multi-grade (MG) teaching techniques in primary schools. I have been involved in this program since 1998 as a lecturer/ presenter, and since 2002 as the coordinator of the program. In this chapter I describe the origins, characteristics and developments of the program over the last ten years, and outline the philosophical underpinnings to the partnership. I also take the opportunity to reflect on the program's effectiveness as a professional development model

Discourses of Cultural Diversity in the Science Curriculum: Connections, contradictions, and colonialisms

Cultural diversity is a key concept informing the recently introduced New South Wales Stages 4 and 5 (junior high school) science syllabus. In this paper I undertake a genealogical analysis of the discourses of culture and cultural diversity found in the syllabus itself and in the accompanying syllabus support document. The discourses used in the documents can be traced back to federal government documents from the 1970s and 1980s. I attribute the impetus for specifically and extensively addressing issues of culture and cultural diversity to recent changes in the ways in which state government bodies are required to report progress in matters of "ethnic affairs". I identify a range of contradictions in the discourses, and argue that some of these ways of thinking about culture and cultural diversity are colonial in the sense that they act to contain and constrain diversity. I argue that future versions of the syllabus need to more deftly and appropriately deal with issues of difference. In particular, they need to move beyond culturalist accounts to the provision of a wider range of concepts with which teachers can analyze the social contexts in which they are working

Discursive space(s) in science curriculum materials in Canada, Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand

I examine how science curricula are complicit in maintaining the dominance of knowledge production by major powers, particularly the USA, through their efforts to tell the 'truth' about certain topics, and whether resistant counter-discourses are being mounted, especially in 'peripheral' states such as Canada, Australia, and Aotearoa/ New Zealand. I focus on one set of discourses within school textbooks, namely those about space science. My reading of selected textbooks indicates that students are presented with a limited and sanitized version of space science, with a heavy emphasis on US space-science achievements. Overall, attempts to counter this dominance occur through the inclusion of information about 'local' space-science achievements. Nevertheless, there is very little attempt to criticize, problematize or contextualize space science historically, socially and economically, with the result that the textbooks reproduce the discourses of space science promoted by organizations such as NASA