The development and use of an instrument to investigate science teachers’ views on indigenous knowledge

Annelize Cronje, Josef de Beer, Piet Ankiewicz

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

28 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Science teachers in South Africa and globally experience difficulties with the integration of indigenous knowledge into their science lessons-a requirement of many science curricula. One of the reasons for this may relate to the views teachers hold about indigenous knowledge. Such views can form a barrier against successful inclusion of indigenous knowledge in the science classroom. It was, therefore, deemed useful to investigate teachers’ views on indigenous knowledge. This article reports on the development of a theoretical framework, and a questionnaire derived from it, to investigate teachers’ views on indigenous knowledge. The researchers were informed by the framework developed by Lederman, Abd-El-Khalick, Bell and Schwartz regarding the nature of science (NOS) and their views-onthe-NOS questionnaire. A qualitative study was done to develop and validate the views-on-the-nature-ofindigenous- knowledge instrument (VNOIK). The findings indicate that the VNOIK instrument is suitable to determine a wide range of views of science teachers on the nature of indigenous knowledge. We found that South African science teachers held mainly a partially informed view on the nature of indigenous knowledge. The new instrument can be used to measure the effect of a short learning programme and to identify further development needs of science teachers in addressing the tenets of science and indigenous knowledge effectively in the classroom.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)319-332
Number of pages14
JournalAfrican Journal of Research in Mathematics, Science and Technology Education
Volume19
Issue number3
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2015

Keywords

  • Indigenous knowledge
  • Indigenous knowledge questionnaire
  • Science education
  • Teacher perceptions

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General Mathematics
  • Education
  • General Engineering
  • General Physics and Astronomy
  • Computer Science Applications

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