Planting the Seeds for Land-Based Science Education Careers: A Comparison of South Asian and Pacific Islander Educators’ Experiences

• In Event: Roundtable Session 6
  In Refereed Roundtable Session: Climate Change, Sustainability and Education

Proposal

Purpose: As climate change continues to impact Pacific Islanders and South Asians at disproportionately high rates (United Nations Environment Programme, 2024), we uplift opportunities for land-based science education to help undo environmental injustices. Specifically, we identify intersections in the educational experiences of Punjabi Sikh and Native Hawaiian women science educators and critically analyze these interconnections to participate in a shared sense-making about the capacities of womanist and Indigenous knowledge systems to address ecological polycrises that threaten human and more-than-human life. Thus, this study focuses on stories about the ecological possibilities of land-based science education when it centers ethical and respectful relationships with the land and perspectives on the importance of solidarity across contexts if dreams for global sustainability are to become reality.
Conceptual Framework: We foreground a womanist, Indigenous epistemology that disrupts patriarchal, human-centered norms by centering intersectional ways that women come to know and be in relation to land. Consequently, we understand environmental education for social justice as a critical process that dismantles pervasive forms of oppression of self, other, and the natural world (Misiaszek & Torres, 2019). Intergenerational learning is framed as an outcome for critically conscious science educators to persist and transform their respective fields and classrooms (Freire, 1970). Lastly, human relationships with more-than-human life are viewed as essential for the stewardship of womanist and Indigenous knowledge (Simpson, 2017).
Methodology: To explore how two educational landscapes in South Asia and Oceania shape individual entanglements with broader sociocultural and sociopolitical ecologies, we utilize a comparative case study methodology (Bartlett & Vavrus, 2017; Goodrick & Rogers, 2015). In particular, we apply a comparative thematic narrative approach to analyze the experiences of two science educators experiences as intergenerational carriers and transmitters of ecological wisdom.
Collaborators: The collaborators are Dr. Asi Kaur, a Punjabi Sikh plant physiologist researcher, and Hoku, a Native Hawaiian elementary educator. Dr. Kaur is a collaborator in a larger study on intergenerational resilience among Punjabi Sikh women. She completed individual interviews in August 2025. Hoku is a collaborator in a year-long ethnographic study on resistance to internalized oppression among Native Hawaiian families from 2023 to 2024. In this current study, the unit of analysis is stories about these collaborators’ experiences as students and teachers in science education within their respective contexts.
Findings: Our comparative narrative analysis reveals similarities in the structural barriers and negative stereotypes that these women faced while navigating divergent science education learning environments. We also find evidence of resilience among these two educators and synergies in the intimate connection between land-based approaches to science education and civic engagement with wider social justice movements for environmental rights.
Implications: By bridging the stories of two women educators’ experiences with challenging patriarchy in science, this study illuminates the significance of women-led pedagogies that benefit students, social movement causes, and ethical forms of land stewardship. We also identify Indigenous values that contributed to collaborators’ persistence in science and provide connections to policy on the importance of cultural knowledge in the instructional design of land-based and social justice-oriented forms of environmental education.

Authors

• Kourtney Kawano, Berkeley School of Education

• Harmeet Kalsi, UCLA