Module II Essential Question

How is everything connected from the perspectives of indigenous peoples and Western scientists? What are the advantages to knowing both ways?

As a 7th grade teacher here in Anchorage I found some of the content of Module II actually went against my instinct a little because our course is titled "Integrated Science 7" and I spend a lot of energy designing and delivering lessons that DO show the connections between not only all science disciplines, but other disciplines as well, whereas one of the main tenants of the lessons that a lot of argument is built upon, is that science education by nature DOES NOT teach holistically. My main foci for this are the Principles of Nature and teaching science through inquiry. As I listened and read throughout the module, I found many, many connections to these two ideas that I will discuss later.

First, here are some thoughts on the essential question. As Western science continues to push into new frontiers, both studying smaller and smaller things and larger and larger things, more and more we are discovering how everything is connected. Even if we are never able to truly design a nice, elegant equation like Einstein wanted, we are seeing it more and more every day, and have since the beginning of time. As our world gets closer together through technology, we discover seemingly disparate parts of the Earth and the universe are strikingly similar. The module brought up a few items in Western science that illustrate this. Being able to more quickly and precisely study the planet through satellites and interconnected systems of data collection and reporting have provided a much clearer picture of Earth as a system. We now have amazing bodies of knowledge about how moisture and heat move through our system and the effects they have as they do. This has provided science with the most obvious example of everything being connected as opposite sides of the planet are interconnected through this. This has spread out from science into politics and sociological studies with international conferences of world leaders to discuss climate change and the economics and cultural impacts that go along with it. So as Western science has increasingly discovered the interconnectedness of our system (and it certainly started long before satellites, that was just an example) it has also brought together many different disciplines in researching and proposing solutions to the worlds problems. Another big interconnectedness point in Western science that I have found fascinating lately, is the surge in our knowledge of the brain. Not only how it works, but how it relates to how people think and act, really matching science, psychology, and sociology, to learn more about the "people system" of Earth. After all, we are still just a species, albeit one with a heck of a big ecosystem! Through some of these breakthroughs in neuroscience, we have shown the interconnectedness of genetics, neuroscience, and traditionally non-science disciplines like spiritual studies and theology. This has aided in how we practice medicine as well as relate to our fellow species members.

In a way, the discovery of the interconnectedness of our system and our species by Western science is driven by a similar motivation to that of indigenous peoples, that is the motivation of survival and usefulness. Western science does have a lot of simply knowledge-based research, but at the end, that knowledge is ultimately applied in some way and it then becomes application-based science. Indigenous knowledge has always been driven by experience and usefulness. This is not to say that philosophy and other seemingly non-practical knowledge bases do not exist in indigenous knowledge, just that they are gathered through experience and practice rather than the artificial knowledge acquisition of many (some could argue most) Western science knowledge bases (as well as other Western disciplines.) Indigenous knowledge has always been interconnected because it has always been built around experience and practice. There is no other way to see anything but that everything is connected when you are living the "research" and the empirical data is constantly around you for first hand gathering, directly through the senses and over a long period of time. What you experience one season is related to the next and what happens to one species is easily viewed as connected to other species. In Western science you may have a study of both species, but appearing in separate journals and needing some kind of bridge to be created to connect them. Rather than living in a world where everything is obviously connected, Western science has created a world where we break everything down to it's component parts to study and then built it back up to show how it is all connected. Indigenous knowledge is built around that same journey, but all at the same time. One is both thinking of the individual species, for example, in terms of a certain food source, but also simultaneously and without any division, thinking of all other elements of the system.

As an educator I feel it is very important to not only know both ways, but have a human connection to the world you are studying. We receive students in 7th grade when they are 12 years-old, most often with very limited formal science education. However, like indigenous cultures in a way, they have been scientists their whole lives without formally calling themselves such. They have been studying and collecting data since the day they were born, all from the perspective of their own lives. Rather than interrupt this and say, "Welcome to science, finally!" I choose to continue with the story of their lives. Western science is, after all, just our way of trying to understand all that is around us. We make up names for things and formulate equations to make sense of a natural system that existed long before us and will exist, one assumes, long after we are gone. Two big ideas that have aided in keeping science personal and human for my students have been the Principles of the Nature of Science and teaching science through inquiry, including the use of science notebooks.

The Principles of the Nature of Science are published in many forms, but Project 2061 has a good site explaining the main tenants.


http://www.project2061.org/publications/sfaa/online/chap1.htm

The ones I use have been whittled down, mainly by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, WA, and their wonderful science education department, but overall keep the same big ideas of science not being absolute, science ultimately being done by humans, science needing creativity and imagination, and science being influenced by and influencing society and culture. To me, these tenants are a good bridge between the indigenous and the Western ways of studying the natural world and a good opportunity for students to experience science a lot differently that it was taught to their parents and is portrayed in our society and by other disciplines.

The other way that emphasizes the importance of knowing both ways is inquiry. Here is an online PDF version of a great text surrounding inquiry, one that most teachers have probably read:

http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=9596#toc

What inquiry does is create that experiential, practiced way of acquiring knowledge and, depending on the experience provided, interconnectedness. It is a way to use the Western system of knowledge acquisition but broaden that out so it comes through discovery, rather than being didactic. This is then backed up by the Western body of science knowledge. This is the same framework through which one might learn indigenous knowledge. A student would experience the world around them, making observations and inferences and beginning to put that together themselves and then gain further knowledge to assimilate with their own by tapping into the indigenous knowledge base that already exists in elders and others who have already had those experiences.

Overall, I feel that although there are certainly major differences between the two ways of knowing in the big picture, both have their interconnectedness (one inherently more obvious than the other), and learning for both needs to come through experience and putting together ones own knowledge, whether it is a kid in Anchorage using his experiences with different ski waxes in different snows or a young fisherman in Chevak helping his family get the summer catch.