Volume 32 Number 1
October 1992

Gerry Haukoos and Dorothy LeBeau

In the decades to follow, philosophers and writers presented a case for less conformity and sought greater expression of the social uniqueness of culture and ethnicity. They argued that a cultural pluralistic society would enrich the nation and all would benefit from its many diverse people and their contributions. Yet, it wasn't until the cultural revitalization movements of the last two decades that cultural pluralism was truly considered a viable alternative to cultural and ethnic conformity. Now, cultural pluralism has been translated into what the public and educators alike call, multiculturalism. Like the philosophers from the turn of the century, the purpose of multiculturalism is to create in the person an ability to look at the world through her or his own eyes, and then, make decisions that will enhance personal achievement and self-identity (Baldwin, 1988). Even though its composition and meaning may still be argued globally, it appears this view of culture and ethnicity has developed an acceptance in some institutions of the American society.

Typical of the past century's changing national views of culture and ethnicity were educational policies and programs serving various minority populations. For American Indians, educational policy vacillated between assimilation and self-determination much like the larger population. While the Immigration Acts were being successfully argued during the 1920s, the Meriam Report (1928) was arguing for massive reform in the administration of American Indian education. Yet, it wasn't until 1969 that Congress learned the Meriam Report recommendations had never been put into operation (U.S. Senate, 1969). Ironically, however, the same goals proposed by the Meriam Report, build a school curriculum that reflects the local culture and educational values, have now become the foundation to the new multiculturalism some 60 years later.

Within the changing educational perspectives on culture and ethnicity have also come changes in human acquired knowledge during the past century. For exampie, science has made unprecedented breakthroughs in its interpretation and understanding of the natural world. Accompanying those discoveries have also been pedagogical changes in how science is to be taught in the schools. Prior to the Sputnik revolution, science was taught more as a body of facts that needed to be committed to memory and understood. Even though remnants of pre-Sputnik science teaching still exist, emphasis now is placed on the importance of presenting science to children as inquiry by using manipulatives with direct experience in problem solving. Not only does this instructional philosophy create greater interest among children, but it also provides them an intellectual scheme for understanding the underlying philosophy and nature of science.

While changes have been occurring in science and science teaching, there are few reports that actually demonstrate the integration of science and culture into local culture and curricula. For example, science is still taught in most American Indian community schools using the conformity and assimilation strategies from the turn of the century. Yet, American Indian cultures do not accept the separation of science from other aspects of their life as do most Anglo-Americans. In fact, there is no word in any traditional American Indian language that can be translated to mean science as it might be defined by Western culture (Cajete, 1986). Yet, expressions of science thinking are abundant throughout traditional American Indian agriculture, astronomy, ecology, and medical practices. In addition, processes of science which include rational observation of natural events, classification, and problem solving are woven into all aspects of American Indian culture (Cajete, 1986). So ultimately, if the goals of multiculturalism are to be achieved in a more pluralistic society, then increased racial and cultural awareness must be translated into programs that meet those goals. One such program was the Bureau of Indian Affairs' Math and Science Institute, sponsored by the Office of Indian Education Program; Suite Gleska College, Rosebud, South Dakota, and Haskell Indian Junior College, Lawrence, Kansas.

Normally, inservicing activities seek to provide curricular and method updates as previously described, but here, the institute objectives were designed to:

This task was accomplished through an intensive hands-on science portion of the institute that used a number of basic persuasion strategies suggested by Ross (1985). Foremost among these was to persuade the participants to recognize their current teaching behavior as it related to hands-on science and the integration of science and culture. Then, alternatives to the former behaviors were provided through intensive institute activity. These alternatives contained enough examples of integrated culture and science in their content to influence change in individual attitudes, behaviors, beliefs, and emotions. Following the institute presentations and activities, each participant had to personally internalize and voluntarily accept the new proposed patterns of behavior if they were to change. Substantive changes were based upon each participant:

In other words, these delivery strategies sought to respect the spirit of each person coming from the many nations across North America.

At the beginning and end of the intensive hands-on science portion of the two Math and Science Institutes, participants were asked to respond to the assessment inventory, "Toward a Philosophy for Teaching Science to American Indian Children." The instrument consisted primarily of different instructional strategies teachers may use to teach elementary school science. Strategies like:

• Presents science information to students using a lecture-discussion method.
• Science process skills are an integral and prominent part of the teaching and learning process.

However, embedded in the instrument's 30 items were seven strategies that specifically integrated science and the American Indian culture. Such included representatives like:

• Community elder resource people are an integral part of the science program where they talk about how ancestors inquired and solved problems for everyday living.
• Medicine Men are appropriately used to reinforce the integration of health, nutrition, and spirituality.

Items from the latter group were placed in the instrument to determine the amount of current curriculum integration, and also, to seek participants' view toward integrating science and culture in the future.

The assessment procedure required cooperatively grouped consensus on determining the value of each science teaching strategy as it related to participants' dispersal of personal and professional resources (e.g., time, energy, money). In essence, how much value did they place on using a particular strategy in their teaching. The assessment task was accomplished through placement of "value dots" behind each item. Value dots were simply small, red-punched construction paper pieces that could easily be added or subtracted from items as assessment views changed during the activity. All 60 dots were to be used among the 30 assessment items with at least one item receiving a five-dot value. Pre-assessment values centered around participants' view of current curriculum integration and activity, while post-assessment emphasized what participants thought should and could be accomplished as a result of institute activity. Once the task was completed, group generated data were placed on the chalkboard so all could assess the current status of science teaching among attending participants.

Pre-assessment and post-assessment data generated from the two institutes were statistically analyzed using descriptive statistics (central tendency, variability) and one-way analysis of variance. Overall, individual and grouped instrument items were analyzed in the study. Grouped items selected for analysis fell into three primary areas: (1) integration of science and cultural strategies, (2) content/teacher-centered strategies, and (3) hands-on/student-centered strategies.

Analysis of data from the study indicate participants made important shifts in a number of desired areas related to change dynamics for teaching science to American Indian children. Such shifts occurred with items pertaining to integrating science and cultural strategies, content/teacher-centered strategies and hands-on/student-centered strategies. More specifically, five of the seven strategy items pertaining to the integration of the American Indian culture and science showed statistically significant pre-assessment/post-assessment gain (Table 1). Such gains occurred in:

• Community elder resource people are an integral part of the science program where they talk about how ancestors inquired and solved problems for everyday living.
• Medicine Men are appropriately used to reinforce the integration of health nutrition, and spirituality.
• Field trips to local areas are used to study where resources have been harvested for meeting and solving daily needs (e.g., sage, soap weed, skins).
• Literature of science-related events in the culture (e.g., star stories) is used for its scientific value.
• Activities to demonstrate science concepts are rewritten to make use of culturally relevant materials and practices.

When mean values for culturally related items were grouped together, there was a shift from a 1.73 mean value points upon institute entrance to 2.78 at exit (Table 2). Such significant gains can be contrasted with change ratios for all assessment items grouped together (2.05 to 2.45), and all noncultural items (2.15 to 2.35). These results suggest that institute activity contributed to persuade participants to change their understanding of how science and American Indian culture could be integrated through hands-on activities.

Equally important changes occurred with shifts in items related to content/teacher-centered strategies vs. hands-on/student-centered strategies. There were significant declines in value through institute activity (1.67 to .81) (Table 2 & 3) through content/teacher-centered strategy items like:

• present science information to students using a lecture-discussion method;
• conduct demonstrations in front of class so students learn a scientific approach to investigating the natural world around them;
• and students memorize definitions of science words

Table 1

Changes in Assessed Values for All Items Denoting

Curriculum Integration of Science and Culture

Significant level, Alpha=.05

Table 2

Changes in Pre-Assessment and Post-Assessment

Grouped Item Value Points

In contrast, there were significant offsetting gains in value (2.48 to 3.25) (Table 2 & 4) in hands-on/student-centered strategy items like:

• activities are taught that allow students to explore science materials before they invent concepts to explain them;
• written materials include liberal quantities of hands-on investigations and activities that children can actually do;
• science process skills are an integral and prominent part of the teaching and learning process;
• and increased permissiveness within exploration and inquiry activities is used to increase the emphasis on creativity rather than on achievement.

These mean value changes that showed statistically significant increases in integrating science and cultural strategies, decreases in content/teacher-centered strategies and offsetting increases in hands-on/student-centered strategies, substantiate relative success of overall institute objectives and activities.

The objective of the intensive hands-on science portion of the institute was to persuade participants to teach science using a direct-experience or handson approach that incorporated all aspects of American Indian culture. Analysis results from three areas of the supporting study indicate that significant progress had been made toward reaching those goals. First, there was an increase in score values for understanding the need for hands-on science. Accompanying those scores were parallel gains in the incorporation of culture into the hands-on strategies, as well as, declines in the need for use of content-oriented teaching strategies. Together, those results provided greater understanding of the overall inservicing task needed to improve science teaching for American Indian children.

In 1977, an American Association for Advancement of Science report stated that the primary barrier to American Indian participation in science was its lack of relevance to Indian lives and their survival as a culture. This institute and accompanying study took steps to remedy those barriers through positive integration of culture into the inservicing process. However, when a review of literature in this area was conducted, few examples concerned themselves with the nature and culture of the teacher involved in the inservice process. This may not appear to be significant for European-Americans, but those unspoken messages for American Indians can only propagate the misnomer that the user of science is a servant to its preordained doctrine. That mind-set parallels that of the assimilationists' Anglo-conformity doctrine, and in either instance, integration of science and culture do not benefit.

Table 3

Changes in Assessed Values for All Items Denoting

Content/Teacher-Centered Strategies

Table 4

Changes in Assessed Values for Items Denoting

Hands-on/Student-Centered Strategies

Today, American Indians are the least represented culturally different population in science-related fields of study. This has been a concern of those seeking to see greater participation; however, examples from the literature again only substantiate the lack of understanding for the level and degree of integration that normally exists between science and traditional American Indian cultures (Haukoos & Beauvais, 1985; Robbins, 1983). If the perceived lack of relevance is to be overcome, responsible educators must continue to find ways of integrating culture and hands-on science within a multicultural philosophy of education. As Hodgkinson (1985) pointed out, one in every three Americans will be a minority by the year 2000. While this large non-White population will add a high level of energy and creativity to the nation, their failure to participate in the educational process could lead to diminished futures for all. Similarly, if American Indian values and cultural views of science are not woven into the more global fabric of the philosophy of science, all aspects of science and technology will be diminished in years to come.