Science education and native Hawaiian peoples: a study of the dis/connection between science teaching and being native Hawaiian

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2007-12

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University of Hawaii at Manoa

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The mainstream science education paradigm which permeates many public and private school systems does not recognize the indigenous knowledge of the Native Hawaiian culture as a viable partner in the classroom/laboratory to "traditional" scientific methods. Researchers and scholars argue that many science teachers align themselves to values associated with scientism resulting in an atmosphere where a Hawaiian science teacher's beliefs and cultural identity are viewed as unscientific and unimportant. This creates a situation where teachers are forced to categorize themselves based on a single identity, in this case the choice between being Hawaiian or a science teacher. This singular identity system creates an atmosphere in which Indigenous science teachers, and in tum their students, must choose to either abandon their culture in favor of the "civilized" methods of science or to become disengaged from science as a whole. This thesis approaches the identity from a different perspective, one in which individuals have plural identities at different times. This theory will be supported by literary works such as Amartya Sen's Identity and Violence and Kwame Appiah's Cosmopolitanism as well as three cases studies involving science teachers of Native Hawaiian ancestry.

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viii, 85 pages

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Hawaii

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Theses for the degree of Master of Education (University of Hawaii at Manoa). Educational Foundations; no. 547

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Table of Contents

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