Toward a Decolonial Approach to Science Epistemology

• In Event: The Intellectual Struggle to Be Human: Reading Wynter for Rethinking/Reimagining Equitable Educational Opportunity in STEM

Abstract

In this paper I apply Sylvia Wynter’s theorization of Man and ethnoclass to science and science education to argue for decolonial approaches to science education. Locating science in Wynter’s work uncovers and foregrounds the value-laden, subjective nature of science, alongside its inherent coloniality. This in turn forces us as science education researchers to approach equity and justice in science education with newly acquired anti- and decolonial frameworks.
Wynter argues that the concepts of Man and ethnoclass were developed and refined during European conquest of the Americas, the enslavement of African peoples, and Asian subjugation under imperial rule, so that the White, European man came to over/represent what was human (Wynter, 2003). The Euro-descendent White man thus came to be equated with intelligence and rationality (and hence conceived as superior), whilst those that were positioned as savage, irrational and barbaric came to be viewed as inferior. Thus, the epistemologies and ways of knowing exercised by Europeans were legitimized at the expense of African and Indigenous people’s differing epistemologies and ways of knowing. And yet, not only is science and science education not objective, it is in fact embedded in a heteropatriarchal, racist paradigm based on European ontologies, axiologies and epistemologies (Wynter, 2003). For this reason, science will henceforth be referred to as Westernized Colonial Science (WCS) and, since science education is based on WCS, it will similarly be referred to as Westernized Colonial Science Education (WCSE).
Structurally, I will begin by first connecting science and science education to Wynter’s theory of Man and concept of ethnoclass (or what Wynter also refers to as the ‘descriptive statement’), and then subsequently outline the tenets of WCS and WCSE. Next, I will explore the ways in which coloniality is manifest in WCSE curricula, content, and pedagogy, and how these factors marginalize minoritized populations. Resulting from the failure to adequately address the colonial nature of WCSE, I will then discuss three common approaches to equity in science education: Assimilationist models, Neoliberal/Economic models, and Savior Complex models. Finally, I will offer a possible strategy for deconstructing WCSE and moving towards an anticolonial science education.

Author

• LaToya Strong, The City University of New York