A New Paradigm for Implementing Culturally Responsive Pedagogy to Pre-service Science Teachers
Teaching teachers the nature of science and the process of inquiry is challenging, even if the teachers hold bachelor degrees in the sciences (Capps and Crawford, 2017). Compounding this challenge is the need to develop teachers’ social, cultural, economic, and political competencies for educating the next generation of youth in the increasingly competitive global economy (McFarlane, 2013). Traditional methods of teaching future science teachers from a positivist’s perspective that science is largely a construction of knowledge no longer suits the needs of today’s global learner. Science teachers must understand the new habits of mind in today’s youth and design appropriate, supportive instructional learning environments, whether it is to empower students to act (in the case of capitalistic societies) or design for a more multicultural and socially integrated scientific literacy. In either case, the is a need for a more learner centered approach to instruction rather than a scholarly academic perpetuation (scientist begets scientist) of the content specific disciplines. In this paper, I propose a new paradigm: we must raise the critical consciousness of our teachers to think and live in a diverse global society by promoting equally ontology with epistemology in order to foster inquiry as a form of praxis.
Keywords: Inquiry, cultural competency;
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New Perspectives in Science Education
