Intersection of opposing pedagogical frameworks: native Hawaiian ancestral stories and scientific inquiry in a high school science class

Abstract

Inquiry is defined as "an examination into facts and principles." In science education science inquiry is a process through which important discoveries are made by students through scientific methodology. The most important step in this process is forming the right question. The questions formed by students are usually the wrong questions which deem the remainder of the inquiry process impotent. This research will look at the pedagogy of ancestral stories for a solution. For the researcher, ancestral stories were a source of wonderment and learning not only from the lessons the stories revealed but mainly from the questions that still remained after the stories were told. Questions such as "why does the eel only swim near that part?," or "why does the story only talk about the uhu?" are examples of questions that remained after experiencing an ancestral narrative. The research questions were composed for the purpose of finding compatibility between the two pedagogies. The first research question which reads how can Native Hawaiian ancestral stories encourage an increased level of student driven interactions at all levels of feedback from Native Hawaiian students in science classrooms focuses the research on the level of student feedback that initiate questions. Question two, "how can teachers of Native Hawaiian students facilitate the construction of science inquiry projects from ancestral stories," addresses the skill of the teacher and imbeds the concept of pedagogical knowledge into the literature. The last research question, "how do analysis and discussion of the stories connect Native Hawaiian students to their ancestral intelligence," examines the role of identity and identity to ancestral intelligence. The method intended for this research was grounded theory which allows the researcher to develop principles, concepts and theories based on the data presented. Another method utilized in this research is an undocumented but culturally imbedded method identified as the Native Hawaiian research method for lack of a better title. The result of the data analysis was the development of the intersection of story and science that occurs when the story line is stripped away to reveal an interconnection of natural phenomena.