Beneficiaries are actors too.pdf - Southern Institute of Peace ...

affairs and ultimately the adoption of completely different
perspectives towards social phenomena in pursuit of challenges
characteristic of human life. It is imperative that students have an
opportunity to experience the hermeneutic and critical sciences
in the context of formal education in science (Kyle, 2006). The goal
of science education should be to facilitate both students and the
public's ability to identify possibilities, seek challenges, use their
imagination and transform communities. Students' experiences
with science ought to be self-involving, socially just and
emancipatory.
According to Greene (1995) in Kyle (2006) the main point of
education (in the context of a lived life) is to enable a human being
to become increasingly mindful with regard to his or her lived
situation and its untapped possibilities. Science education must
be contextualised and must be linked to the life world experiences
of learners. These multiple images of science education ought to
be open to multiple forms of research and knowledge production
and take issues of locality, cultural values and social justice
seriously. Surely, this challenges the science educators in Africa
in general and Zimbabwe in particular to tap into indigenous
scientific knowledge reservoirs and assist young learners to
produce scientific innovations with local roots for the
consumption for their own kith and kin so as to avoid a situation
where Africa consumes what it does not produce while conversely
producing what it does not consume. With the contextualisation
of science education, the continent will quickly move away from
relying on imported scientific solutions or interventions in the
face of challenging social phenomena. Harding (1996) argues
that a transformed science education would be personally
relevant to people living in naturalistic environments; would
acknowledge the political, social, and cultural forces at work in
scientific labour; and would be linked to local contexts and issues
of sustainability.
The notion of locality and the social construction of science,
according to Kyle (2006) can facilitate a far more reflective and
insightful science education. Science education ought to enable
learners to: (a) understand how the natural world works, (b)
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