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 language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 319-332 |
Number of pages | 14 |
Journal | African Journal of Research in Mathematics, Science and Technology Education |
Volume | 19 |
Issue number | 3 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 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