Cross-cultural science education: A cognitive explanation of a cultural phenomenon

TLDR

Recent work in concept learning and science‑for‑all curricula has focused on how students navigate between their everyday life‑world and school science, conceptualizing this transition as a cultural border crossing and explaining cognitive conflicts as collateral learning. The article aims to synthesize the cultural border crossing framework with collateral learning and to demonstrate, via reanalysis of existing interpretive data, the efficacy of this integrated approach. It achieves this by combining the two concepts into a unified model and applying it to reanalyze interpretive data from prior studies. The synthesis yields new intellectual tools for understanding science‑for‑all in 21st‑century classrooms across developing and industrialized countries. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc., J Res Sci Teach 36: 269–287.

Abstract

Recent developments in concept learning and in science-for-all curricula have stimulated our interest in two fields of study: how students move between their everyday life-world and the world of school science, and how students deal with cognitive conflicts between those two worlds. In the first field of study, Aikenhead conceptualized the transition between a student's life-world and school science as a cultural border crossing. In the second field, Jegede explained cognitive conflicts arising from cultural differences between students' life-world and school science in terms of collateral learning. This article (a) synthesizes cultural border crossing with its cognitive explanation (collateral learning) and (b) demonstrates by its example the efficacy of reanalyzing interpretive data published in other articles. The synthesis provides new intellectual tools with which to understand science for all in 21st-century science classrooms in developing and industrialized countries. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 36: 269–287, 1999