An Emerging Understanding of Science Literacy:

Moving Toward a Curriculum of Inclusion

Elaine Hampton and Miguel Licona

University of Texas at El Paso

Abstract

With the emerging emphasis on standards in science education comes the potential to open science curricula to rich and inclusive learning experiences or to confine science curricula to narrow factoid approaches. This paper examines the emerging definition of science literacy from the authors of the science standards, from policy makers’ desire to standardize, and from inclusive education perspectives. Education practices such as standardized testing and the selection of content in textbooks limits and restricts science curricula. In a call for change, we propose designing science curricula in light of inquiry learning, cultural and local relevance, an inclusive approach, and a real world setting that brings personal benefit to the learner and leads to science literacy for all. Examples of science curricula in schools in the southwest are described to illustrate this understanding of education that leads to a new vision of science literacy.

Introduction and Purpose

If we go upstairs from our offices and around the corner, we can look out the windows of the Education Building on the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) campus and see the very point where Oñate crossed the Rio Grande. However, when Oñate crossed, the river was so big that his men had to search for a point where the horses could cross. A bosque or woods surrounded the banks of the river and the conquistadores fished and killed ducks and beaver. It was a natural and healthy ecosystem. The river meandered and flooded, providing rich soil, seed dispersal and water for a large wooded area. Many species of plants and animals lived in the area. The trees shaded the river to prevent water loss from evaporation. A variety of depths and speed of water provided spawning grounds appropriate for a large variety of water species.

Now, we have "tamed" the river. We have dug a straight, narrow channel. We have dammed it and its flow is minimal for the predetermined use. We dry the river up by stopping the flow at the dams for several months in the year when farmers are not irrigating. The native species have all but disappeared, and dominating the banks is a non-native, invasive salt cedar whose roots take large amounts of water from the river. Just downstream, we have made a series of concrete lined ditches and divided what once was the mighty Rio Grande into a series of constrained and inhibiting delivery pipes for the water to travel to the designated user. A few fish and other water dwellers survive in this unhealthy ecosystem, but people are advised not to eat the fish nor swim in the river.

We standardized the river. We made it predictable and controlled so we can test it, chart it, measure it, and determine where it will be and when it will be there. It has become a precise and narrow line to meet our requirements of an international border that will not overflow or change.

Across our nation educators from all levels are joining the standards movement and aligning their science curriculum, assessment, professional development, and content with a standards document. Most of these changes have their roots in the National Research Council (NRC) document, National Science Education Standards (NSES) (NRC, 1996). Science curriculum leaders must be cautious about the standards movement so that we do not sacrifice the health of our science learning to make it predictable and controlled in order to test it, chart it, measure it, and determine where it will be and when it will be there. The NSES, like any tool, can be used or misused. Educators should view these standards as a description of suggested expectations for designing science curricula. If educators extract the content descriptions from the standards documents and turn them into fact-centered curricula and tests, science education reverts back to the traditional practices that have been unsuccessful for most learners. Limiting the scope of knowledge creation through these practices is detrimental.

Science education can look at the standards movement as an opportunity to make the long-dreamed-of changes to a quality program for all of our students. The self-described intent of the science standards is supportive of a rich and healthy science curriculum. The NSES describe a science education program with the goal of scientific literacy for everyone -- a quality science education program for all students, "regardless of age, gender, cultural or ethnic background, disabilities, aspirations, or interest and motivation in science" (p. 2). Foundational to the standards movement is improving the future and options for all students. Rather than the traditional reason of preparing some students to enter science careers, the standards movement emphasizes personal fulfillment and preparing citizens to make wise decisions about our increasingly complex world as well as being prepared for careers. This inclusive thinking impacts educators as we design our curriculum to align with the goal of scientific literacy for everyone.

Science Literacy Defined: Content and Process in Teaching and Learning Science

Through the years, education has defined its purpose broadly. Chomsky (2000) cites Dewey’s central theme for a liberal and democratic education with the ultimate aim not of the production of goods but the production of free human beings associated with one another on terms of equality, especially in terms of education. The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) (1990) document, Science for All Americans says that, "Education has no higher purpose than preparing people to lead personally fulfilling and responsible lives" and that science education should enable students "to develop the understandings and habits of mind they need to become compassionate human beings able to think for themselves and face life head on" (1990, p. xiii). Ultimately, science education means being able to participate in a democracy in order to pursue the good life. It’s not just about being a doctor or a scientist, it’s being science literate to the level of being able to participate successfully in the democratic life and to sustain a self-directed educational journey.

Science education is moving from a special education which values student competence in some occupation to a general education that values the experience and learning common to all students. The search for scientific literacy is best served by a general education perspective, as a number of science educators would agree (Fensham, 1986/87; Hlebowith & Hundson, 1991; Hurd, 1970; Layton, 1973; Showalter, 1974 as cited in Bybee, 1997). There is a clear distinction being made between teaching science to produce future scientists and engineers and teaching science to produce a scientifically literate citizenry. The kind of science education implied in the phrase "science for all" is general and liberal rather than specific and vocational and moves the learner beyond the role of spectator, as often relegated by traditional science education, to a position of active participation. Just as a healthy river has different depths and speeds, so should the science experience for students. Their science encounters in school should spawn new knowledge by embedding and dispersing seeds for future growth and understanding that will support a self-selected life style by every individual.

The emerging framework of scientific literacy subsumes and surpasses nominal literacy to a multidimensional literacy that recognizes the importance of integration and contextualization. This multidimensional literacy includes the philosophical, historical and social dimensions of science as they are practiced in a cultural context. This should give direction to those responsible for curriculum, assessment, research, professional development, and teaching science to a broad range of students. This emerging framework, unfortunately, can be and is being narrowed, channeled, and restricted in its natural flow by powerful policy makers. The understanding of scientific literacy as described in the NSES can be a guide for science education programs that will lead to a rich understanding of science practiced in an active and democratic environment. However, policy makers extract specific and isolated content factoids, assign them a grade level, and then build textbooks, curriculum guides, and tests to enforce the carefully managed, standardized and predictable science education program. This practice is well documented in Linda McNiel’s (2000) Contradictions of School Reform. She demonstrates how policy makers’ standardization of education has negatively impacted quality of the curriculum, has harmed teaching and learning, and has reduced educational quality for children of color. We shall examine the NSES and the emphasis on inquiry learning and then the powerful impact of textbooks and testing programs on narrowing this new approach.

National Science Education Standards

The NSES define science in seven domains, only three of which are traditional science content: life, physical, earth and space. The other domains open the content to new and broadened opportunities for curriculum design. Three of the new standards have great potential for designing quality learning explorations within fields that have been unexplored in most science curricula. The exploration that is described in the inquiry standards, the process of designing that is described in the technology standards, and the societal connections that permeate the social and history standards should be used to create rich integrated curricula. One of the content standards is History and Nature of Science requiring learners to examine science from the human perspective. Only three (Life, Earth, and Physical Science) of the seven content standards describe science content. The emphasis then is on using inquiry thinking, design, social, and human implications in the curriculum while understanding basic concepts. Unfortunately, the emphasis in most curricula is still on the content.

This emphasis on the three content standards to the expense of the four more global standards makes it difficult to achieve curriculum relevance. In practice, the three NSES content standards of Life, Earth, and Physical Science are narrowed even farther by state or district standards or fact-based testing programs. Curriculum designers must continually question the content they are advocating. What important concepts are missing in order to prepare children to improve their own well-being and the well-being of their society and their culture? What important concepts are missing that are relevant to the community and the environment surrounding the learner? How will these important expectations be included in the science education program? The National Science Teachers Association’s (1993) analysis of the quality of the U.S. science program is that it "discourages real learning not only in its overemphasis on facts, but in its very structure which inhibits students from making important connections between facts" (NSTA, 1993, p.2).

The river is an integrated community with biotic and abiotic factors that are inextricably interrelated. The science experience must also be contextualized in the learners’ real world providing opportunities to understand the social, cultural, political and the economic implications of new knowledge. Science is neither a static nor sterile body of knowledge. It is an interdisciplinary integrated process that can result in the understanding of extant knowledge as well as the creation of new knowledge.

In the NSES, the standard of inquiry presents science as a process of exploration and investigation rather than the linear steps of the traditional scientific method. It emphasizes the kinds of thinking required to do science and the critical thinking processes required to solve problems. Scientists still observe and experiment, gather data and communicate, but these processes are non-linear, scattered, and complex. Science is fluid and uncertain, and scientists make decisions knowing all variables cannot be controlled and all answers are not transferable. Science processes are reconceptualized as tools for exploration and making meaning rather than formulas for finding answers. Inquiry in science is a rich exploration where ends emerge from within the process and are not external to it.

Although this focus on inquiry and critical thinking has been a goal in science education for many years, there is little evidence that typical science courses have been successful in teaching students these abilities (National Science Teachers Association [NSTA], 1993). Most science curricula fall short of inquiry and rely on labs that are more like recipes that yield the "right answer." Open-ended exploration is seldom encouraged. Students do labs and science projects that are forced to result in clean conclusions within a very short time frame. Inquiry in science is often a long-term exploration resulting in more questions. When students attain the ability to design investigations that inquire into complex issues that are relevant to and interesting to them, they will be able to navigate toward a deeper understanding of science content. The results will allow students to see themselves in a world filled with science, both as content and as process.

Textbook Driven Content

One of the traditional tools in science education, the science textbook, must be examined for its impact on quality inquiry science programs. The textbook is a tool or a resource. Throughout centuries we have allowed the textbook to rise to the level of the science curriculum, and we have institutionalized this practice. The role of textbook publishers as the dominant player in the design of science curriculum throughout history must be examined.

The Third International Mathematics and Science Survey (TIMSS) (U.S. Department of Education, 1997) identified the role that textbook publishers play in defining a shallow science curriculum in U.S. schools. Because most textbooks are designed for large-scale sales, publishers select content to satisfy their largest customers, states like California and Texas. Some of these states adopt one text to serve all the schools in the state. So that a large customer's favorite content is not excluded, the publishers include all the content the customers specify. As a result, the books usually contain much more material than should be covered in a classroom during a year. Some science textbooks are encyclopedic in nature and contain more new vocabulary than foreign language texts. The teacher, interpreting the textbook as the curriculum, rushes to cover the content and finish the book at the expense of depth and understanding. The TIMSS report describes U.S. science education as "a mile wide and an inch thick." To make the problem worse, most schools in the U.S. use these textbooks and most of these textbooks contain numerous errors (U.S. Department of Education, 1997).

This textbook driven content caters to the perennial and essentialist traditions, where science curriculum has been reduced to a linear, simplistic, fact-filled body of knowledge. The result is often that educators are led to believe that there is a clearly defined body of content that students should know in order to graduate. They envision an accumulation of information in a specialized area with the expected endpoint of economic gain. Beyond their consideration are the impacts and consequences of the science actions they take and the importance of other fields of knowing. Blurring of the boundaries of science content areas can be accomplished through curriculum integration in a real world fashion so that students and teachers can move toward deeper understandings of science. This has the potential to increase science literacy as well as increase the "pool" that produces scientists and engineers.

Science embodies a critical perspective that must examine deeper and broader issues. Critical questions should continually arise as curricula are designed. What are the effects of the science/technology interactions? Who has access to the benefits of the science knowledge? Who does not? What indigenous sources of science knowledge are being ignored or eliminated? The science curriculum must move beyond the scientific domain to include the social/cultural, political and economic domains. With more access to meaningful science experiences, conceptual understanding can be strengthened so the learner can see the value of an "uncontrolled" process as a way of making additional and new neural and conceptual connections. The river, left in its natural state, meanders and continually comes in contact with new territory allowing nutrients and other materials to flow into its ecosystem. Some of these "new inputs" are significant, some are not. All are part of the process. Much of what occurs in the mind during the learning process is undetectable. It may take years or a lifetime to gain evidence that a particular event had an impact on learning. A student moving through contextualized science will encounter a rich source of input fostering an unpredictable emergence of making meaning of the world.

Test Driven Content

Standardized testing also impedes curriculum transformation. A testing focus often forces educators to select narrow, disembodied factoids and design a curriculum around them complete with the trappings of lecture, predictability, tracking, artificial rewards, and more tests. In the 1950s and 1960s, evaluation became the tool designed to organize, classify, and justify the wave of federal intervention into education. The assumption that the infusion of these new resources into local school districts would lead to educational reforms had to be tested, and a "rational, systematic evaluation" became part of the national mandate. These "objective" measures of educational achievement took on more power, as they became the tools to report to Congress on the success of the educational interventions Congress funded. This pattern escalates today. Policy makers accept the view that effective educational reform will come about by a strong state-testing program, based on the content standards. Now, they believe, they can tame education, channel it, make it straight, measure it, chart it, and ensure that it is only used for the designated purpose. Forty-five states currently have state-mandated testing of some sort (Bond, L.A., Ploeg, A., Braskamp, D., & Roeber, E, 1995). Popkewitz (1984) describes the acceptance of evaluation as a management tool designed for efficiency, therefore, elevating efficiency as the most important standard of educational judgment.

By focusing only upon that which is observable and quantifiable, accountability obscures and trivializes our view of life by creating a one-dimensional lens. To consider history as a ‘list of three major factors causing a war’ is to mystify the process of doing history - - the human drama and adventure involved in cross-examining documents and the conflict that exists within scholarship about the interpretation of events and people (p. 171).

The result of this shallow and linear approach to science is that many children do not accept science content as a part of their lives. It has been presented as a collection of isolated facts and concepts rather than a process of inquiring critically about the world that surrounds them and constructing new understanding with each encounter. Children perceive that science only exists in textbooks, and that the language of science is too complicated to access and so far removed from life as to be incomprehensible to them. Science, in reality, occurs in the home, in the car, in the park, in the arroyo behind the school, in the classroom, in the laboratory, and in the mind of the learner. The language of science is the language of life -- a way of deriving meaning. It is the natural vocabulary of the toddler as she stops to closely examine every leaf, every bug, every rock, and to question incessantly the workings of science.

Consequences of Science Illiteracy

The underlying forces that move and affect the river are large and powerful. These forces give the river its ability to bring in the new and recycle the old while perpetually reproducing itself. The philosophies that drive curriculum and teaching are just as powerful on the learning process. Are we educating in order to indoctrinate while favoring the western science epistemology? Or, do we create learning contexts that allow for equal access, participation and benefit? Moving away from domesticating practice can open the door to Freirian possibilities that serve to liberate students in pursuit of a meaningful life journey. It is these epistemological forces that can create spaces with plenty of inflow and opportunity to process, recycle, modify and create knowledge.

The scientifically literate citizen has the potential and ability to influence public life and contribute to the social good. This citizen is empowered through her/his understanding of the world and ability to explore and address problems and issues. Freire implemented this inclusive and interdisciplinary approach to education in Sao Paulo empowering illiterate children and adults to become citizens who knew how to "read the word and the world" (Macedo and Freire, 1987). On the other hand, the consequences of scientific illiteracy are severe. If we do not provide this empowerment through literacy, we continue our role as gatekeepers. We select for the learners their job opportunities, opportunities for higher education, ability to communicate and problem solve in society, and their ability to confidently contribute to home and society. How many teachers stop to realize the impact of their decision to set a pass/fail line on a test of questionable design, and then deny to all those below their line an opportunity to enter an advanced class, go onto the next level, or take advantage of the better opportunities provided in the higher "track" programs. We cannot mimic the pervasive practice of gatekeeping. When the river is blocked, channeled and controlled, it loses its natural identity. It is recreated in the image of a dominant perspective. We cannot allow our students to give up their cultural identity in order to conform to the science curriculum or to decide not to participate due to some narrow-minded gatekeeper that is pushing for a non-natural perpetuation of status quo science.

Policy makers in government and education have the power to design the curriculum provided to the students. Those who have this responsibility must understand that it is a god-like task and must consider the ethical implications of the task and approach it with humility. The curriculum in an education system is established for nothing less than to alter the mind of the learner. Educators and policy makers who have control over the curriculum have the awesome power over society to determine what curriculum will be accessible to which learner. The curriculum provided to the students, to a large extent, determines more than their success in school. It will open or close doors to their future decisions and successes. The way this curriculum shapes the learners will shape the culture in which the learner lives (Eisner, 1994). Inevitably, the foundational beliefs of policy makers and curriculum designers will permeate the decisions made about science curriculum. These beliefs can result in either raising barriers to students' access to quality or providing broader avenues to quality for all students.

Science curriculum is situated in the political decisions curriculum developers or educators make about who should be taught what. These decisions, in turn, rest upon educators' beliefs about science education and equity in education. Science educators in many places and in past and current settings have endorsed the belief that only a select few will be able to access quality science curriculum, and only this select few can become scientists (Oakes, 1985). That belief, when implemented, has resulted in an inequitable structure for science success. Minority children, girls, children in poverty, and children who do not learn at the approved pace in traditional settings have been denied the opportunity to be the decision makers, the leaders, and the powerful. The power of science literacy is particularly relevant in a society so impacted by technology. We must have every mind primed to address the complexities of using fetal cells to attack diseases, genetically altering foods, global warming, and human population impact on the environment. Science can no longer be used in the self-selection mode where students are not only denied access to particular careers, but are relegated to lives with limited benefits brought on by science illiteracy. Unfortunately, those who are marginalized and assigned to scientific illiteracy are often those who have been underrepresented throughout history in science education.

For example, across the nation today, university students take general education science courses in large lecture halls. Those students who persevere ultimately are the ones this system self-selects to participate in science. These courses are used to "weed out" non-science students. This is a key time when alternative methods and curriculum could have a major positive impact on students’ attitudes towards learning science. Seymour and Hewitt (1997) have provided a study that clarifies this process from the students’ perspective. Students and researchers feel that public school and university introductory science courses make science mysterious and difficult to grasp. Students who move into higher-level coursework find a curriculum filled with deeper explorations of fewer concepts with much more participation in their learning. If this participatory curriculum were implemented in the first semesters of the students’ experience, how might science participation change?

A Call for Change:

Inclusive Science Curriculum and Scientific Literacy for All

The amount of scientific information is exploding. Scientific and technical information is increasing at unmanageable rates and existing information is being redefined. We struggle to organize and utilize the new data as we unfold the intimate genetic structures of life or the vastness of planets orbiting distant stars. The speed at which new technologies apply scientific discoveries has also increased. Ethics and laws strive to keep up with controversies such as cloning organisms and new computer and network uses. The impact of these technologies on the people and the environment are yet to be discovered. In the wake of this information boom, society and schools have moved further from a congruent path than ever before. Society has moved into the Information Age while schools still linger in more of a Factory Model founded in the Industrial Revolution. Reform initiatives are calling for curriculum to be based in experiences that allow for student meaning-making.

Today, we have much more knowledge about the biology and chemistry of learning. Candice Pert (1997) has established a link to the biochemical basis for learning and the lack of learning due to the production of molecules of emotion that can enhance or inhibit learning. Diamond and Hopson (1999) have established some rich resources for educators with regard to the impact of the environment on the anatomy and function of the brain. Technology and research have produced insightful windows that can help educators feel support towards moving away from traditional transmission and compliance models of teaching. The emphasis is now being placed on learning rather than teaching. With the proliferation of knowledge, it has become even more problematic to "cover the curriculum" and increasingly important to provide students with rich meaningful experiences with science concepts that are developed in a deep and thorough manner. When students develop a deep conceptual understanding, they are able to transfer the science learned to other situations. The "spawning grounds" of the river provides a metaphor for the new life that can emerge from science literacy.

The impact and importance of science curricula is amplified when the learners are students from cultures and home languages other than mainstream United States. Latinos and other minority groups must be fully able to participate in science for personal fulfillment and to make informed decisions. Our future depends on improving the quantity and quality of human resources. A poor understanding of science and its implications is a disadvantage for any individual or community in the dynamic society of the future. Low-income students and disproportionate numbers of African-American and Hispanic students are in less than optimal educational settings. They are using curricula designed for low-ability or non-college bound students, and they have less contact with the best qualified science and mathematics teachers (Oakes, Ormseth, Bell, & Camp, 1990). In multilingual communities, science education is often eliminated as schools focus on teaching the students English (Mason & Barba, 1992). The inequities are even more obvious in certain areas. On the 1996 National Assessment of Education Progress, 45% of Texas eighth graders were below the basic level in science achievement. Of the Hispanic eighth graders in Texas, 67% were below the basic level in science achievement (O’Sullivan, Reese, & Mazzeo, 1997).

In light of the changes in our society brought on by the tremendous rush of new knowledge and the ever present under representation of children from many economic and cultural groups in our schools, we propose three key lenses to examine science curricula: personal and cultural relevance, inclusive science, and real world context. Curriculum designers and educators who understand the importance of these criteria are better prepared to direct and implement science curriculum that leads to science literacy for all. 

Personal and Cultural Relevance

Personal and cultural relevance must be a part of the curriculum especially when student populations have traditionally been underrepresented in science education, science careers, and science applications in their personal lives. All students need curriculum that presents science content and language that they can identify with and are familiar with. Because students from minority cultural communities and female students have not been equally represented in science fields, educators must keep the ideas of cultural and personal relevance in the forefront of curriculum design. Educators must move from a prescriptive curriculum to one that is generative in the sense that the community is involved in the curriculum design and planning. Local and indigenous knowledge must be sought and valued. There are alternatives to western science that can serve to make the science learning experiences more inclusive and multicultural. Educators must be aware of the concepts in the schools’ adopted framework, but other community members must be included in the conversation in order to support this transformation. Administration, teachers, parents, students and other community members must participate in the endeavor. This transformative plan is based in the ideological beliefs that education can serve to liberate subordinate students from the yoke of poverty, social injustices, racism, sexism, and other discriminatory practices that characterize their reality (Macedo, 1995). Its major goals should include democratization and access along with new quality of teaching. We suggest this will move our schools to be competent, serious and joyful.

Paulo Friere explains the need to use the students’ cultural universe as a point of departure in curriculum so that students recognize their cultural identity in the content. Only after they have a firm grasp on their own world can they acquire other knowledge (Macedo, 1994). Chavez-Chavez (1997) describes a concept of curricular place as the location where the culture, language, and history of a student from a minority social group meets the educational curriculum design. In order for that curricular place to be conducive, the students’ language, family, and home context must be recognized and valued in all school interactions. No student should be made to feel inferior and deficient because she/he is different. Other criteria Chavez-Chavez recommends are that it encourages the learner to re-evaluate thinking, attitudes, and actions that will exude successfulness for all learners and that it "provides a discourse for the laboring of a democratic and liberating pedagogy for the learners that captures possibility and hope" (p.2). Students can emerge as citizens that participate in our democracy rather than become mere spectators.

Traditional classrooms ignore cultural identity. Indigenous ways of knowing have been supplanted by a monolithic western science perspective. Science applications from family and community histories are denied entrance into classrooms where students are drilling on test-specific content. Lost to the children are the opportunities to learn science in a cultural and integrated context. How did grandparents process their meats, grow their crops, and clean their clothes? How were native plants used in the past? What environmental changes have occurred over time in the community? The river cannot survive with damaged or missing components. The community needs all aspects to interact naturally allowing for its healthy and sustained development. Science literacy from this perspective has the greatest potential to serve the majority.

Inclusive Science

Science curriculum must include authentic representations of those local groups who have not traditionally been included in the written record. Educators and science curriculum designers must continually monitor resources to ensure that they do not present a biased view of science. Curriculum should be designed with the consideration of the population for whom it is intended. The history of science discoveries and knowledge is still presented mostly from the western European view. This tells only a small part of the story. Women and people from different cultural groups have done science throughout history. However, these minority and female scientists were not valued, and therefore, they were not recorded in historical accounts.

In the book, The Double Helix (1968), James Watson tells about hiring a trained crystallographer to assist on the research team that set out to discover the structure of DNA. The crystallographer was Rosalind Franklin. She was to assist Maurice Wilkins because he was a beginner in X-ray diffraction work. Watson describes his role in denying Rosalind the chance to be recorded in history.

· Rosalind "...would not think of herself as Maurice's assistant.... By choice she did not emphasize her feminine qualities... There was never lipstick to contrast with her straight black hair, while at the age of thirty-one her dress showed all the imagination of English blue-stocking adolescents.... Clearly Rosy had to go or be put in her place...because it would be very difficult for Maurice to maintain a dominant position that would allow him to think unhindered about DNA…. There was no denying she had a good brain. If she could only keep her emotions under control.... The thought could not be avoided that the best home for a feminist was in another person's lab" (Watson, 1968, p. 20-21).

Another example of denied access is the story of molecular biologist, Candice Pert. Her work at the National Institute of Health was instrumental in identifying the molecules of emotion, i.e., endorphins and enkephalins. She was miffed when the Nobel Peace Prize was given to her contemporaries who took credit without sharing her name with the world and science history. Pert’ s short pulled back hair, wearing of pants and scientist robe and the like did little to combat the sexism that has been rampant in the traditional curriculum to date (1997).

Real World Context

We have made a case for integrated, inclusive learning and a more encompassing definition of science literacy contextualized in real-world complexity. What context could provide the stage for understanding and science literacy better than the students’ local environment? The local environment is the source for content and context as children build their concepts and understandings through investigations and explorations of real aspects of their world. With more sophistication, the learners investigate the complex social interactions in their local environment and can apply what they have come to understand to society and the global environment. They learn how science is connected in an intra- as well as interdisciplinary way. At this level of learning science, students should practice within the contextual overlap of the socially constructed science disciplines as well as within the borders of the domains we have mentioned before, i.e., science, economic, social/cultural, and political.

The potential to develop an ethic of equality will be enhanced when students not only have access and are able to participate, but also attain benefit from the schooling experiences. A caution about the impact of the standards movement (and thus the standardized testing movement) is that educators will select content from these national documents and ignore local issues and content. However, these local issues make science relevant and meaningful for the learner. One of the pueblos along the Rio Grande was concerned about environmental decay on their lands. An educator from the community told us, "We don’t need aerospace. We need to know about our environment." Students at one high school noticed deformed frogs in the pond behind the school. The teacher designed curriculum explorations about toxic chemicals and biological evolution. Another high school is located close to a local landfill. The students wanted to investigate what was dumped in the landfill, how it was treated, and what were the long-term effects on their environment. An ongoing community involvement project emerged. Some of the content that was learned in these curricula can be found in standards documents, but some of the valuable learning cannot. We could lose the priceless knowledge about the attitudes of our ancestors about the land, decisions about locations of landfills and waste water facilities in our community, the long term effects of dumping RV waste or dry cleaning chemicals, and the personal role in preventing or trying to correct harmful practices.

Examples of Culturally Relevant Curriculum

In spite of the traditional models for science education and the restrictive power of textbook curricula and test driven programs, there are inquiry science classrooms where the inquiry emerges from the students’ experiences and culture. Students involved in these and similar programs are well on their way to becoming scientifically literate and having the knowledge and skills to make informed decisions about their future and their society.

Teachers at the Santa Clara School in the Santa Clara Pueblo in New Mexico created an exemplary relevant curriculum project. They and their students created a community survey of the use of plants in the history of the pueblo. Through the survey and interview, parents and grandparents described how they have grown and used corn, squash, chile, tomatoes, and herbs. Next the children worked with parents, teachers, and university staff to design and create a garden that incorporated these traditional plants in the pattern of a wheel. A pole at the center of the wheel was decorated with students' art depicting the growing of a garden. The pole served as a sundial, and the children recorded the path of the sun during the day and the seasons. The harvest festival was a community event where the children prepared and served the foods from the garden.

An example of culturally relevant curriculum development tools leading to community inquiries and community actions was developed by Stapp, Wals, and Stankorb (1996). They guide educators through the process of Action Research for Community Problem Solving (ARCPS). This process leads to interdisciplinary curricula defined by the students based on their interests and tied to the local community. The students address global issues while the learning experiences are rooted in their everyday lives. Taking action to improve their community and their environment are embedded in the curriculum. In one school, students involved in the ARCPS program through Project del Rio (1998) selected the lower Rio Grande as their context area. Throughout their investigation with community historians and grandparents, they learned about the local environment along the river before the dams were built on the river. They explored the purposes of the dams and irrigation practices in their community. As a community action, the students met with local farming organizations to request stricter monitoring of the amount of water used for irrigation.

There are other published tools that can assist a teacher or a curriculum designer to develop culturally relevant learning experiences. An example of aligning content with students' interests and environment in a teacher-friendly format can be found in Insights curriculum materials by Educational Development Center (1994). The sixth grade unit, Structures, begins with a walk around the neighborhood. Students gather data about the structures they see. They look at the shape of the structures, their use, their construction, etc. The homework involves observing a structure near their home and describing it. Then the class shares all this information together and looks for connections and questions. From there, the unit explores important design concepts of support, tension, compression, and load. Students design their own structures, reflect and share, redesign them, and gather data on these structures. The learning experience culminates as the student teams design playground equipment for a local school or park.

Interns in the teacher preparation program at the University of Texas at El Paso modeled a way to make the existing science curriculum more relevant to the children’s culture. In one example, the interns used the third grade unit, Structures of Life unit from Full Option Science System (Lawrence Hall of Science, 1995). In some of the lessons students were observing and comparing properties of seeds and fruits, investigating the effect of water on seeds, germinating seeds and recording the properties, and growing plants hydroponically. The interns brought seeds that were familiar to the children for the observations. Papaya is common in the border community and chile and cotton are grown in surrounding communities. These seeds were exchanged for some of the fruits recommended in the curriculum guide. Because El Paso is in the Chihuahuan Desert, seeds and cuttings from desert shrubs were used for germinating. Some of the seeds did not germinate which led to further investigations about how seeds have adapted to specific conditions in the harsh desert climate.

Conclusion

This article has examined an understanding of science literacy from the controlled and standardized point of view and from the inclusive and contextualized point of view. Quality science curricula support and sustain the designing of relevant learning experiences that explore concepts in depth, allow for students to devise and implement strategies for problem solving, allow for dialogue to formulate scientific thinking, and allow students to carry on the learning and inquiry indefinitely. Curriculum design can only strive for the best possible link of material, content, experiences, and strategies to connect the learner to the world.

By engineering a more "efficient" Rio Grande, the waters and the life cycles have been controlled. The river’s nature has been changed and restricted to "fit" a system of designated use. We derive little meaning and pleasure from the river’s existence in our community. Students in a narrowly defined, standardized science curriculum, too, are being controlled and restricted. They are relegated to narrowly channeled arenas where intellectual development is reduced or eliminated and the purpose and enjoyment in life is diminished or removed. We made them "fit" a system. But in the long term, even if education gives students access and allows them to participate, unless they derive benefit from it, their schooling experiences mean little more than indoctrination and domestication -- just like the river.

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