Decolonizing secondary school science education through contextualized instruction: An exploration of the nature of science, adaptive expertise, instructional implications and pedagogical frameworks for knowledge integration

In the developing world, particularly in Africa, physics teachers face the challenge of facilitating the acquisition of scientifically relevant knowledge that aligns with the learners’ social and cultural context. This position paper, situated within the ongoing discourse on the decolonization of the African education system, examined how physics pedagogy, which is a vital part of secondary school science education, could be decolonized by integrating Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS) which the students encounter in their daily out-of-classroom experiences, and which is a constituent of their prior experiences of informal knowledge of the subject. The integrative methodology for the review of literature was adopted to examine and comprehend knowledge decolonization within the classroom and the necessary expertise required to achieve such objective. The emphasis of decolonization in this article lays in the promotion of IKS, acknowledgment and integration of students' prior informal experiences of the physical sciences. This is underscored by the necessity to integrate both vertical and horizontal structures of knowledge conceptualization. The article examined the potential of contextual approach to instruction, and adaptive expertise as a potent skill for the achievement of knowledge integration. Adaptive expertise is identified as an essential skill to navigate the challenges of contemporary science and science education. To achieve knowledge integration, the paper proposes a contextualized inquiry approach as a suitable technique.