Racism and the science classroom : towards a critical biology education.
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Date
2005
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Abstract
This study explores how students experience oppression and subordination in and
through biology education. The exploration is guided by the following questions: how
is racism/discrimination played out in my biology classroom; in what way/s are the
classroom practices of both the students and the teacher racist/discriminatory; and
what reinforces such racist/discriminatory practices and why. Since the critical
perspective allows for oppressions, subordinations and discriminatory practice to be
named and challenged this then became the perspective within which the study was
located.
The methodology, guided by the critical perspective, and used to generate the data in
this search is therefore a critical ethnography within which a critical self ethnography
is also employed. Through foregrounding the oppression of race and racism, this
methodology made it possible to generate data on the various oppressions and
subordinations that are perpetuated in and through biology education. The data was
generated from biology lessons on cell division, human reproduction, genetics and
biological determinism in a Grade 11 class. This class had in it 34 fe/male students
from three different race groups viz. Indian, Black and Coloured. Ten students who
volunteered to be interviewed also contributed to the data generated in this study.
At a first level of analysis, the data generated from the lessons and the interviews
were written up and presented as factionalised stories. This was then used to provide,
at a second level a descriptive cross-case analysis grounded in the data of the stories.
This cross-case analysis generated categories of oppression, subordination and
discriminatory practice that included race and colour; gender and patriarchy; bodies
and sexuality; class, poverty and sexually transmitted diseases; institutional power
and hierarchy; religion; and language. These categories of oppression and
subordination, although described separately, are mutually inclusive categories. From
this description it became possible to name and theorise, at a third level of analysis,
oppressions and subordinations within biology education. The theorisations
deliberated on issues of race, class, gender, language and power. The naming and
challenging of existing oppressions, subordinations and discriminatory practice
required that a traditional contemporary biology education be replaced by a critical
biology education.
This study, in engaging a critical biology education, shows how biology may be
taught differently when the agenda is social transformation in efforts towards social
justice. Whilst it is accepted that social justice in all forms may never be attained, this
study shows possibilities for how that contained within current Life Sciences policy
for human rights and social justice, could be realised.
Description
Theses (Ph.D.) - University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2005.
Keywords
Theses--Education., Biology--Study and teaching (Secondary)--South Africa., Discrimination in education--South Africa., Multicultural education--South Africa.