1994/07/01 by William B. Stanley, Nancy W. Brickhouse · 206 citations
Chemistry · Psychology · Social Sciences · #Argument (complex analysis) #Chemistry #Context (archaeology) #Curriculum #Education and Critical Thinking Development #Educational Strategies and Epistemologies #Engineering ethics #Epistemology #Law #Multicultural education #Multiculturalism #Pedagogy #Perspective (graphical) #Philosophy #Political science #Politics #Science Education and Pedagogy #Science education #Science, technology, society and environment education #Social science #Sociology #Sociology of scientific knowledge #Universalism
paper · pdf · doi:10.1002/sce.3730780405
published in Science Education 78(4), 387-398 (Wiley)
openalex publication_date 1994/07/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Abstract Multiculturalists have recently raised a number of important challenges to the school curriculum, including whose knowledge are we teaching? and who benefits and loses by existing approaches to the curriculum? In this article we examine a number of issues in this debate that are of primary importance to science educators. These issues include: (1) problems with the universalist account of the nature of science that has been the most powerful defense against multiculturalism; (2) an examination of some historical cases that illuminate the consequences of maintaining a universalist perspective on science; and (3) an argument for a multicultural perspective on scientific knowledge. These issues are examined in the context of a national science education reform in which there is considerable consensus that the science curriculum should include teaching about the nature of science. We argue that the nature of science taught in school should reflect a multicultural perspective on scientific knowledge. © 1994 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.