ABSTRACT
Multiculturalism has made less progress in science education compared with other curriculum areas, reflecting the abyss separating science and culture, and the adherence of school science to a traditional disciplinary view of the curriculum and the canonical science knowledge therein (Duschl, 1985). The nature of science knowledge, purposely aiming to exclude human dimensions such as aesthetics or history, precludes the options available for multicultural reform of the curriculum found in other subjects such as the arts, social studies, or English (cf. Hanley; Morton; Locke, this volume). The nature of science knowledge is also why the very idea of “multicultural science education” creates difficulty for many science educators. This chapter argues, first, that a critical perspective is essential for multicultural science education, and second, that a wider perspective including other traditions of science education reform may help to progress the debates.
