Towards Being Wounded by Thought: Indigenous Metaphysics Is (Still) Waiting in the Wings of Science Education

The purpose of this concluding chapter is to summarize and synthesize of the book, highlighting the ways in which Indigenous science is (yet-)to-come within science education. Following a short musing on conclusions, (fore)closure, and the importance of being wounded by thought, each chapter is revisited to (re)articulate the significance of their contributions with the triple(d) understanding of to-come explored within the book in mind: (a) Indigenous science, in the context of science education, has not yet (wholly) arrived; (b) where and how science education might be (re)opened towards hospitably receiving Indigenous science; and (c) the types of deconstructive practices that support this work. The chapter, and in turn the book, ends with an affirmative message that the potentiality of Indigenous ways-of-living-with-Nature in science education remains, even if not fully actualized; thus, an invitation to continue labouring the space of responsiveness towards Indigenous science.

Unsettling Metaphysics in Science Education

The purpose of this chapter is to introduce the relation between Western modern science and Indigenous ways-of-knowing-in-being as it manifests within spaces of science education: as simultaneously co-constitutive and othering. In turn, unsettling science education is presented as a double(d) approach to address the ways in which settler colonial logics linger and lurk within sedimented and stratified knowledge-practices. As a more nascent approach to the question of Indigenous science within science education, this is expanded upon by drawing from decolonizing and post-colonial approaches. Further, drawing across the two, deconstruction is highlighted as a (meta-)methodological approach to bear witness to the ways in which settler coloniality often manifests as absent presences and to (re)open the space of response within science education towards Indigenous ways-of-knowing-in-being.

The Homework of Response-Ability in Science Education

The purpose of this chapter is to introduce response-ability as a concept and practice to (re)open science education’s understanding and enactments of responsibility towards Indigenous ways-of-living-with-nature (IWLN) and traditional ecological knowledge (TEK). This is significant as even well-intentioned forms of responsibility are often and inadvertently over-coded by the (neo-)colonial logics that it sets out to refuse and resist: responsibility and the ability to respond are often not one and the same. Within this chapter, I revisit a significant personal pedagogical encounter in which this distinction made itself felt and known. Thinking with the work of Sami scholar Rauna Kuokkanen, this narrative provides a platform to explore practices of epistemic ignorance and its (co-)constitutive relation to knowledge, as well as what she refers to as “the homework of response-ability” required to (re)open the norms of responsiveness towards the possibility of heeding the call of Indigenous science from within the structure of science education. Concluding thoughts underscore the promise of deconstruction (rather than destruction) as a theoretical, methodological, and ethical tool to resist the (fore)closure of responsibility towards hospitably receiving Indigenous science on its own terms.

Tinkering with/in the Multicultural Science Education Debate: Towards Positing An(Other) Ontology

The purpose of this chapter is to address the ways in which ontology, as an absent presence, is always already (re)shaping science education. Particularly, this chapter uses and troubles Cobern and Loving’s reminder that attention to ontology is uncommon within the multicultural science education debate. As they call for a (re)consideration of how epistemology aligns with ontology, concluding that knowing nature through WMS is universal and “common sense”, an ethic of deconstructive tinkering—using concepts, categories, and constructs that are uncommon to the context of science education to explore that which is common—is employed herein. Latching onto the binary co-constitution of common and uncommon, and moments in which they vacillate as a lever to (re)open spaces of science education to other meanings (e.g., Indigenous science to-come), Cobern and Loving’s criteria of ontological alignment is unsettled, (re)situating their claim of “common sense” towards (re)opening the logics of the multicultural science education debate.

Positing Cartesianism as an Ontology Within Science Education: Towards a More Response-Able Inheritance with Dr. Frédérique Apffel-Marglin

The purpose of this chapter is to archeologically dig into the historicity and operationalization of science education’s ontological inheritance: Cartesianism. Attention is brought to how Cartesianism plays, has played, and will play an active role in the (fore)closure of response-ability. To undertake this work, I draw from a series of expert interviews with Dr. Frédérique Apffel-Marglin that unpack the historical, geographical, political, economic, and religious forces of the “birth of modernity” and reveal the ways in which this “common sense” went from being uncommon to common and continues to persist. In turn, these insights are read, through the multicultural science education debate in order to (re)open the space for responsiveness therein. In thinking with Apffel-Marglin, it is argued that the making common of Cartesianism not only (fore)closes the possible possibilities for responding to Indigenous science to-come, but also to account for and be accountable to the ontology of WMS and what it produces.

Mirrors, Prisms, and Diffraction Gratings: Placing the Optics of the Critical Gaze in Science Education Under Erasure (After the Critique of Critique)

The purpose of this chapter is to explore what Foucault refers to as “the” critical attitude and its relationship to science education. Drawing from the insight that the critical attitude is but a critical attitude, the possibility of critique as plural and multiplicative is explored herein; positing that (an) unsettling criticality is not only one which critiques settler colonial logics and practices but also the taken-for-granted ways-of-critiquing which can undergird these very efforts. In turn, the possibility of critique as plural is significant as the mode of critique within the multicultural science education debate (re)produces Indigenous science as yet-to-come. Building on the insight that scientific knowledge-practice is always already situated, the ways in which criticality in science education is always mediated by conceptual apparatuses, whether real or imagined, is considered. In particular, three optical apparatus—the mirror, the prism, and the diffraction grating—are employed to analyse and inform how the critical gaze might be differentially configured within science education to (re)open the space of responsiveness.

Serious Play: Inflecting the Multicultural Science Education Debate Through and for (Socratic) Dialogue

The purpose of this chapter is to differentially revisit the multicultural science education debate, a central curricular location that acts as both a potential entry point and problematic gate-keeping device for Indigenous science to-come, by inflecting it with a potentially less oppositional mode of meaning-making: serious play. Within this debate, it is generally agreed upon that there is a clear moral imperative to respect students from diverse cultural backgrounds within the multicultural science education classroom. However, what constitutes respect and how it is enacted continues to be hotly debated due to differing considerations of “what counts” as science. This has produced two largely incommensurable positions around the inclusion of Indigenous ways-of-living-with-Nature (e.g., ethnoscience, Indigenous science): those who contest its status as scientific knowledge and those who champion it. However, as the process of debate enacted is commonly one of opposition, there is little room for meaning-made across positions. Above and beyond addressing the sources of knowledge that continue to uphold this serious debate, this chapter plays with/in the debate processes as a means of opening these foreclosed spaces in science education as both form and content lead to the excluding, differing, and deferring of Indigenous science to-come.

Response-ability Revisited: Towards Re(con)figuring Scientific Literacy

The purpose of this chapter is to revisit and expand upon the concept of response-ability, shifting from the deconstructive homework of previous chapters to working towards a reconstructive response which renders science education more hospitable towards Indigenous science to-come. Braiding in the work of Torres Strait Islander scholar Martin Nakata’s theorizing of the cultural interface, which accounts for the ways in which hybridity between ways-of-knowing-in-being are unequal, problematic, and yet rife with possibility, this response takes the form of re(con)figuring scientific literacy. In four movements, this response: a) identifies scientific literacy as a central yet uncertain concept whose critical inhabitation is ripe for other meanings and enactments; b) explores Karen Barad’s subversion of scientific literacy as agential literacy as a productive location to rework the connectivity towards IWLN and TEK; c), utilizes agential literacy as proximal (yet differing) relation to bring in Gregory Cajete’s conception of Indigenous science as ecologies of relationships; and d) explores the generative points of resonance between agential literacy and ecologies of relationships. The chapter concludes with a cautionary note on points of convergence and points of divergence, wherein the proximal relation between agential literacy and ecologies of relationships is productively troubled.