Indigenous Knowledge Systems : implications for natural science and technology teaching and learning

Abstract

Given the growing multicultural composition of South African classrooms, educators of science and technology, like educators across the spectrum of all learning areas, are increasingly challenged to reflect how they and their learners conceive of and, as a result, construct knowledge. The reality is that in an expanding globalised world, learners can easily become alienated from what is taught in science and technology, as well as the way it is taught. Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS), as a broad framework of thinking about our local context, seeks to problematise the insufficient integration of the cultural-social and the canonical-academic dimensions of natural science and technology education. In this article I conceptualise and clarify IKS vis-a-vis knowledge production, particularly towards educational transformation in which educators may assume that all learners are the same in terms of identity and cultural dynamics. Natural science and technology, in particular, have assumed a definite culture of power, which has marginalized the majority of learners in the past. IKS strategically wishes to transform this view and therefore holds valuable implications for educators in the learning areas of natural science and technology.

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