European Identity - Individual, Group and Society - HumanitarianNet

324 EUROPEAN IDENTITY. INDIVIDUAL, GROUP AND SOCIETYWe need to recognise that Science itself is a subculture of Westernor Euro-American culture, and so Western science can be thought of asa “subculture of science”. Scientists share a well —defined system ofmeanings and symbols with which they socially interact. The dominantfeatures of Western science are the following: mechanistic, materialistic,masculine, reductionist, mathematically idealised, pragmatic, empirical,elitist, impersonal, rational, universal, decontextualised , etc.Closely associated with subculture science is school Science culture,which expects students to acquire scientific norms, values, beliefs,expectations and conventional actions and to make them a part oftheir personal world to a greater or lesser extent. School science hasbeen observed by educational researchers as attempting, but oftenfailing, to transmit an accurate view of Science. Unfortunately, thescience curriculum provides students with a stereotyped image ofscience that could be not imperialistic but certainly so, discriminatory.Disparities abound between the subculture of science and the student’scultural background. Other subcultures emerge from different spacesthe students are associated with: family, colleagues, the media...However, despite the fact that students have to cross cultural bordersin their Science lessons, these borders seem invisible to educators.With regards to curricular implications, Aikenhead proposesScience teaching as an attempt at enculturation or assimilation (thecultural transmission that either respectively supports or replaces eachstudent´s subculture).From a multicultural Science to a multi-science perspective in Scienceteaching. A point of view from Eastern countriesBeyond multicultural science education, a new curricular movementcoming from the East has emerged. Masakata Ogawa, AssociateProfessor of Science Education in Abaraki University, Japan, publishedon 1995 a famous paper in which he proposes the relativisation ofscience in the science education context 20 . A multi-science perspectiverecognises two levels in science, the personal and the social and, as aconsequence, the existence of various types of science which are at playin all science classrooms. They are called: indigenous science, personalscience (from the personal level) and Western modern Science (social20Ogawa, M. “Science Education in a Multiscience Perspective”. Science Education,79, 5, pp. 583-593.