Need of Culture Based Science Education in Sri Lanka

Need of Culture Based Science Education in Sri Lanka

There are plenty of multicultural societies in the world. Sri Lanka is a one of multicultural country. Different culture has more dissimilarity. Education is basic need of people. How to manage teaching and learning process without bias of the multicultural society?  Science education is very important for the future. After that science teacher has main role of cultural base science education.

Multiculturalism is the existence of multiple cultural traditions within a single country, usually considered in terms of the culture associated with an aboriginal ethnic group and foreigner ethnic groups. This can happen when a jurisdiction is created or expanded by amalgamating areas with two or more different cultures or through immigration from different jurisdictions around the world. Multicultural societies, in which there is a mixture of different ethnic peoples, bring more benefits than drawbacks to a country. It is believed that multicultural environments bring many advantages for many people, since the variety of races, cultures and traditions will make the country become unique and attractive

Sri Lanka is a multicultural society. There are Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim people. Mainly there are three languages as a Sinhala, Tamil, and English. Many schools are only Tamil language or only Sinhala language. Some schools have separate Tamil, English medium or bilingual classes. And also have international schools.      

India is a good example more than Sri Lanka. According to the 1961 Census of India, there are 1652 indigenous languages in the country. The culture of India has been shaped by its long history, unique geography and diverse demography. India's languages, religions, dance; music, architecture and customs differ from place to place within the country, but nevertheless possess a commonality. The culture of India is an amalgamation of these diverse sub-cultures spread all over the Indian subcontinent and traditions that are several millennia old. The Indian caste system describes the social stratification and social restrictions in the Indian subcontinent, in which social classes are defined by thousands of endogamous hereditary groups, often termed castes. Religiously, Hindus form the majority, followed by Muslims. The statistics are: Hindu (80.5%), Muslim (13.4%), Christian (2.3%), Sikh (2.1%), Buddhist, Jain and Jew populations. Linguistically, the two main language families in India are Indo-Aryan and Dravidian. In India's northeast, people speaking Sino-Tibetan group of languages such as Meitei recognized by the Indian constitution and Austro-Asiatic languages are commonly found. India follows a three-language policy. Hindi (spoken in the form of Hindustani) is the official federal language, English has the federal status of associate/subsidiary official language and each state has its own state official language. Further, India does not have any national language. (wikipedia, 2016)

 Multicultural education, also viewed as a way of teaching, promotes principles such as inclusion, diversity, democracy, skill acquisition, inquiry, critical thought, value of perspectives, and self-reflection. It encourages students to bring aspects of their cultures into the classroom and thus, allows teachers to support the child’s intellectual and social/emotional growth. Multicultural education was found to be effective in promoting educational achievements among immigrant’s students. Thus, it is also attributed to the reform movement behind the transformation of schools. Transformation in this context requires all variables of the school to be changed, including policies, teachers' attitudes, instructional materials, assessment methods, counseling, and teaching styles. Multicultural education is also concerned with the contribution of students towards effective social action

Sri Lankan school have integrated curriculum. It has already included some multicultural education content. But all are in non science subject for examples history, literature, social study and art. In that syllabus explain more examples about different culture. But in Science curriculum still flow alone without cultural knowledge. Sri Lanka science education still depend colonial era. Some science text book (grade 07) contain as an extra knowledge about ancient Sri Lankan iron technology process. Then teacher should explain it well. If there lot of cultural science ideas not use or mentioned. But teacher can reduce those drawbacks. In grade 7 science text book have unit as a food and health. Teacher can use cultural knowledge for it. Some Tamil students and Muslim students will be given different answers. For example: The food with much protein. For Tamils answer may be pork or beef and Muslims answer may be mutton. But Muslims are neglected pig. Also Sinhala people cannot like beef. Like that situation teacher should have given general example for it. And suitable briefly explain about different culture behaviors.           

Multicultural education has advantages and disadvantages:  1) advantages, There have been changes in the syllabus of subjects, like history, to accommodate a more comprehensive and broader version of the past events. This can be seen as giving more exposure to children, wherein they learn about different perspectives on a given topic. Kids are educated about equality, and thus develop an attitude against racism.2) disadvantages, Children from ethnic minorities or immigrant families would take time in getting accustomed to a new environment. This may get reflected in their academic performance, when compared with that of the local children.

Multicultural education is a set of strategies and materials in education that were developed to assist teachers when responding to the many issues created by the rapidly changing demographics of their students. It provides students with knowledge about the histories, cultures, and contributions of diverse groups; it assumes that the future society is pluralistic. It draws on insights from a number of different fields, including ethnic studies and women studies, but also reinterprets content from related academic disciplines. Multicultural education, also viewed as a way of teaching, promotes principles such as inclusion, diversity, democracy, skill acquisition, inquiry, critical thought, value of perspectives, and self-reflection. It encourages students to bring aspects of their cultures into the classroom and thus, allows teachers to support the child’s intellectual and social/emotional growth.

Implementation of multicultural education in the classroom:

Multicultural education encompasses many important dimensions. Practicing educators can use the dimensions as a way to incorporate culture in their classrooms.

1)Content Integration: Content integration deals with the extent to which teachers use examples and content from a variety of cultures in their teaching. 2) Knowledge construction: Teachers need to help students understand, investigate, and determine how the implicit cultural assumptions, frames of reference, perspectives, and biases within a discipline influence the ways in which knowledge is constructed.

Multicultural teaching strategies and practices:

Another important consideration in implementing multicultural education into the classroom is how deep to infuse multicultural ideas and perspectives into the curriculum. There are four different approaches or levels to curricular infusion. They are: 1) The Contributions Approach – Dubbed the “Heroes and Holidays” approach; it is the easiest to implement and makes the least impact on the current curriculum. It does however have significant limitations in meeting the goals of multicultural education because “it does not give students the opportunity to see the critical role of ethnic groups in US society. Rather, the individuals and celebrations are seen as an addition or appendage that is virtually unimportant to the core subject areas” 2) The Additive Approach – Called the ethnic additive approach; it is slightly more involved than the contributions approach, but still requires no major restructuring of the curriculum. While this approach is often a first step towards a more multicultural curriculum, it is still very limited in that it still presents the topic from the dominant perspective. “Individuals or groups of people from marginalized groups in society are included in the curriculum, yet racial and cultural inequalities or oppression are not necessarily addressed” 3) The Transformative Approach – This approach requires pulling in multiple perspectives while discussing a topic. This approach is significantly more challenging to teach than the previous two: “it requires a complete transformation of the curriculum and, in some cases, a conscious effort on the part of the teacher to deconstruct what they have been taught to think, believe, and teach” 4) The Decision Making and Social Action Approach – This approach includes all of the elements of the transformative approach but also challenges students to work to bring about social change. The goal of this approach is not only to make students aware of past and present injustice, but to equip them and empower them to be the agents of change.(NARST, 2014)

Biology, chemistry and physics subject part also included grade six to eleven local curriculum. Normally its goes from simple level to most advanced level. At the simple level only explain topic and example. After at higher level explains theory and procedures. Teacher can easily engage multicultural student at the simple level stage. However teacher can generate different example by student with their cultural base knowledge. Sri Lanka grade 6, 7 and 8 syllabuses have suitable idea imagine their owned schemas. Teacher always should be aware multicultural concept and different cultural knowledge. Multicultural society teacher’s self regulation is very important. And also psychological child development strategies and education sociological knowledge background are help to manage multicultural science education procedures.       

Possibly one of the most difficult issues for a science teacher to deal with is developing ways to encourage learning through facilitating students' use of extant knowledge, which includes culture, and language, in a multi-cultural setting. Adding to the complexity of a multi-cultural classroom is the notion that the discipline of science has its own culture and language, and so does the science teacher. The key to comprehending this background is to understand that learning, which is the process of making sense, is culture dependent. Specifically, if we provide students with opportunities to make sense of science phenomena through diverse, multi-sensory incidents, learning will take place. Therefore, students would be able to use their experiences, which include language and culture, as they interpret science phenomena. Students would then be able to compare what they know to these new experiences and find ways to make sense of them.

Challenges to culture based science education in schools:1) Teacher should carefully handle very sensitive issues and conflict of interest when planning the unit. Example: Some units in biology genetics, human reproduction, blood groups, classification of human, environmental adaptations of rural versus urban children. Therefore, examples should select inconsistent with Sri Lankan condition. 2) Time schedule not flexible to adapt culturally relevant science education. Curriculum is general and school leadership considered only the syllabus achievement not the quality of the delivery. Very rigid education system not allowed thinking freely and incorporating culture components. 3) Skill, knowledge and attitude of the teacher. Totally depend on the teacher and his willingness influence the culture based education.To overcome these challenges in schools teacher would consider student center learning method. 

Furthermore teaching methodology can use seeing that effectively for the cultural base science education. In that case can use integrated curriculum models. All ten models are can design for multicultural science education. Teacher can give a chance for students communicate their own concept, experience about cultural back ground. So teacher can take opportunity discover all hidden skills. That integrated model built-in connections, inter connections and correlations among each others.

Finally above mentioned all things can summarize. Sri Lanka is a multicultural society. It has different culture. So their needs and thoughts are different. But as a multicultural society we want develop integrated cultural based curriculum for the science education. Therefore science teacher have big responsibilities.  

Reference:

Wikipedia .(2016).Multicultural education.Wikipedia

NARST. (2014). Creating multicultural learning environment in education. Sunrise publication

Bibliography:

Mentor, I (2015) advantages and disadvantages of multi cultuaralism.IELTS publication.