Science and Society in the Classroom: Using Sociocultural Perspec ...

peoples in relatively nontechnological societies with a direct dependence upon local resources (pp. 432–433). This knowledge base comes out of the long and deep association of a group of people who are integrated with their landscape. As Kimmerer shared, “TEK is being recognized as having equal status with scientific knowledge and has been termed as the intellectual twin to science. This long intellectual tradition exists in parallel to Western science, yet has been historically marginalized by the scientific community” (p. 433). This brings up the question that Gaskell (2003) posed about the privileged epistemological position modern science occupies with respect to alternative beliefs. In this context, he considered the role of students and teachers in the science classroom and their struggles as students are “moving back and forth between knowledge systems” (p. 244). Due to the misalignment between the science classroom and family's knowledge systems, many of these children feel the need to draw upon border crossing (Aikenhead, 1997) in the science classroom. Border crossing is a “metaphor for the experience of many third-world and immigrant students in the modern science class” (Gaskell, 2003, p. 244). As Ninnes (2004) argued, “the ownership of particular knowledges, the nature of the representations of minority and Indigenous groups in science curriculum materials, and the extent to which appropriating minority and Indigenous groups' knowledge into the curriculum acts as a form of colonial control of these groups” (p. 262).

Therefore, using sociocultural perspective in science education begins to acknowledge the students' transitional or hybrid positions vis-à-vis Western science claims in the science classroom, thus arguing for the importance of using cross-cultural science-technology-society (STS) curricular approaches. Conversations in science education that draw upon the STS curriculum of the 1980s, connected science, science in contexts, socioscientific issues (SSI) conversations, TEK, and science for sustainability allow for integrating the “funds of knowledge” ideas that originate outside of the science education field. Moll, Amanti, Neff and Gonzáles (1992) referred to the term funds of knowledge as “historically accumulated and culturally developed bodies of knowledge and skills essential for household or individual functioning and well-being”