STEM Education for Sustainability: Finding Grounds for a

Constructive Dialogue in Indigenous Contexts.

Martín Bascopé Julio, Centro UC de Desarrollo Local (CEDEL UC), Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile,
[email protected]

Abstract: This paper argues that Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM)
education can overcome an instrumentalist perspective on these challenges and provide spaces
for transdisciplinary dialogue to affront the loss of meaning when facing complex and divergent
problems that cannot be solved logically or that rely on ethical assumptions. The present work
corresponds to a section of a doctoral dissertation that provides an inductive and holistic
perspective for early science education (from age 4 to 10), based on local challenges to affront
sustainability dilemmas. The paper provides a five-domain framework to plan and develop
STEM projects that promotes a dialogue with local and indigenous knowledge.

Context and aims of the paper

The physicist and mathematician G.N.M Tyrell proposed the terms "convergent" and "divergent" to distinguish
between problems that can be solved logically from those that are not. The positivist perspective, the reductionism,
and hyper-specialization of science, sometimes fail to provide a practical solution, especially when facing
complex challenges such as climate change or socio-ecological dilemmas. What can science education do about
it? How can the schools become part of the solution? What happens in intercultural and indigenous contexts where
diverse worldviews collide during the educational experience?
Sustainability and complex socio-ecological problems (e.g., climate change, land-use conflicts,
responsible consumption, production) are usually divergent problems that cannot be easily solved instrumentally
or logically. All the frameworks referring to the so-called challenges of the XXI century are aware of this
complexity and the necessity to adapt the educational systems to understand that the instrumental or standardized
scope in science education is neither sufficient nor an adequate path to follow. The present paper makes an effort
to land the global challenges of sustainability in kindergartens and schools. It emphasizes the importance of an
inductive, integrated, and place-based scientific approach to give tools for constructive dialogue and the
development of new localized knowledge in indigenous contexts, providing small solutions for sustainability
challenges. In this way, it presents evidence on how to conduct learning experiences to develop basic
argumentative and practical skills to attend to local sustainability issues and provide the possibility of a fruitful
dialogue in indigenous and intercultural contexts.
Besides the necessity to re-think the scientific scope to affront the complex problems of the XXI century,
there is also the need to reach all students with scientific education, particularly those who have been historically
marginalized for their cultural distance to science. Scientific structure, logic, and scientific narratives are
sometimes far away from real-world situations and could be considered external or imposed in regions with a
colonial history. The idea of initiating a genuine dialogue and open discussion on the ethical and epistemological
foundations of science is necessary to promote change and give tools to the new generations to affront a complex
future scenario.
This paper elaborates how integrated and context-relevant scientific education opportunities can raise
students' motivation and develop agency towards sustainable futures. It also observed how STEM education opens
to local knowledge in indigenous contexts and helps understand how children, teachers, and the community can
benefit from these initiatives. As a result of the research process, this paper will provide a conceptual framework
to guide further research in the area, providing ideas for further research to measure skills, motivation, and
contextual aspects to consolidate what nowadays is an emergent field of research.
The idea of rethinking scientific education at an early stage implies not only proposing new methods to
learn scientific content but also being aware of the importance of the ethical foundations of the scientific
perspective, how permeable sciences are to the diversity of contexts, and assuming the ethical foundations behind
the positivist scope. The scientific evidence about the limits of the earth, and the prediction about climate all over
the globe, urges the necessity of building diverse and contextualized ethical foundations along with solid scientific
skills and integrated educational opportunities.
This does not mean by any chance the idea of replacing the specialized for a holistic scope in science. It
would be naïve to neglect the remarkable progress of scientific knowledge through the reductionist lens. However,
understanding that the new challenges for science cannot be entirely solved by reducing complexity (since we are

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facing many divergent problems) opens a path for transdisciplinary dialogues and collective constructions with
practitioners in diverse contexts.
At the school level, the idea of approaching divergent problems through active STEM methodologies
and the development of inductive thinking to creatively affront real-world problems will be discussed in this
paper. This framework contributes to the relatively new discussion on education for sustainability and STEM
education, providing a theoretical basis for the implementation of coherent and inclusive STEM educational
opportunities based on the latest articles, reviews, international frameworks, and the empirical work conducted
after eight years of implementing a STEM education program in the south of Chile. I will elaborate on the
importance of including the school's context to provide culturally relevant learning experiences, focusing on
indigenous contexts, presenting a five-domain frame to promote a dialogue between scientific and indigenous
knowledge.

Constructive dialogue with Mapuche knowledge

Mapuche means people (che) of the land (Mapu). Like those of many Amerindian and eastern civilizations, their
worldviews and traditional practices are essentially ecological, recognizing humans, plants, bodies of water, and
other beings as co-inhabitants. (Rozzi, 2013). Opening the scholar culture and the STEM education research in
specific, making it permeable to these diverse worldviews under a broad understanding of what STEM education
means, can make a big difference in the challenge of sustainability and environmental degradation.
When talking about Mapuche learning and worldviews, it is vital to avoid falling into stereotypes and
essentialist views about their traditions and ways of living. Nevertheless, there are some previous efforts to
establish a constructive dialogue between scientific education and Mapuche learning traditions. Torres et al.
(2011) stress the importance of a sociocultural perspective on learning, which puts on the center the idea of
learning by doing to incorporate culturally relevant knowledge. Knowledge about nature and society are
embedded in social memory and transmitted from generation to generation, and new pedagogical approaches can
be an opportunity to incorporate new sources to establish a fruitful respectful dialogue.
Studies focused on Mapuche ways of learning have observed interactions between learners and teachers,
finding that the teacher figure does not exist. Instead, there is an image of wise people who share knowledge
through interaction in outdoor spaces and everyday life situations rather than by formal means (Quilaqueo et al.,
2010; Quintriqueo & Torres, 2012). Parents and adults are knowledge managers in children’s environment and
model how to put knowledge into practice, either through play or in the daily chores inherent in community and
home life (King & Schielmann, 2004; Llanquinao, 2009). In this adult-child relationship, the autonomy of children
in resolving the situations they face is privileged, and few instructions or orders are observed (Ibáñez-Salgado,
2015).
School dynamics can dramatically break local epistemologies, approaches to learning, and the
relationship with adults, setting new structures under the umbrella of “good behavior”. As a result, the school
contents can lose their experiential character, often becoming distant, odd, and foreign to the students. Teachers
have a central role in the classroom, giving orders and shaping the practices and ways of learning in the classroom.
However, this situation can be remedied and redirected by the school by using educational approaches that
integrate students' prior knowledge and learning dynamics in their cultural systems. (Bascopé & Gutiérrez, 2019;
Bascopé & Reiss, 2021). Here STEM4S projects with the previously defined characteristics can establish a path
to promote culturally relevant learning and create the spaces for a dialogic and constructive learning experience
for the students to confront complex challenges in their daily lives, both during their school experience and in
their future.
In this direction, we developed a five-dimensional framework to build STEM4S projects (Bascopé &
Caniguan, 2016). After proving its usability during the ethnographic work in 2019, a summary of this five-domain
framework was published (Bascopé & Reiss, 2021). To build this five-domain framework, we conducted
comprehensive fieldwork with a group of five schools and their external communities in 2014 and 2015, covering
different territories of the Araucanía region in Chile. Using a qualitative methodology based on in-depth
interviews with teachers, traditional educators, families, and indigenous community leaders, we aimed to find
suitable sources and topics of local knowledge that might be included in a scientific inquiry-based learning
curriculum (Bascopé & Caniguan, 2016). The five domains were produced after a systematization and coding
process and compared to the Chilean national curriculum to examine curricular objective coverage at the primary
level, revealing many objectives per dimension across the primary curriculum. The following is an overview of
how these domains apply to STEM4S projects, based on the experience of 2019:

Health and the human body

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This domain connects with several UN sustainability goals, being a fruitful space for connecting global with local
challenges. Traditional medicine and knowledge about medicinal herbs are used daily in Mapuche communities,
with profound knowledge connected to the native forests and traditional green gardening practices. Therefore,
recognizing these traditional sources of knowledge to establish a dialogue with the curricular objectives is a
fruitful field to start STEM4S projects. This domain's contents can be developed both inside and outside of the
classroom, and they can be supplemented with specific knowledge of native flora and its peculiarities. The
chemical processes behind the preparation of the medicines, the importance of the relationship between species
for socio-ecological systems’ conservation, and the historical struggles associated with the perpetuation of this
ancient knowledge are just some examples of the fruitfulness of this domain

Traditional foods and culinary processes

Cooking recipes and food preparations represent another area for profound dialogue between scientific and
indigenous knowledge. Processes of dehydration, fermentation, and decomposition of food are linked with
different flavors, textures, and techniques that allow food preservation. The knowledge present in the kitchen is
intrinsically connected with family traditions and everyday routines. It is a trendy topic for the schools’ external
community, especially to generate an intergenerational dialogue with a significant presence of grandparents. The
elders can share their history and the reasons behind the recipes and dishes that have started to be forgotten due
to the scarcity of the ingredients or the replacement of familiar traditions and rituals. Sustainable food
consumption and production are at stake, along with health and alimentary sovereignty topics that can be explored
and discussed in this domain. It provides a solid ground for creating STEM4S projects giving diverse routes for
exploration, all of those with the potential of gaining interest and producing impacts in the community.

Crafts and tools manufacture

Tool manufacture, goldsmithing, and other crafts are connected with local traditions and the ongoing work and
expertise of parents in the school community. For example, the dyeing of wool with vegetable species is a
traditional practice, and it connects the importance of the local environmental conditions with ancestral sources
of know-how that have been losing their strength as working opportunities for the new generations. Same with all
the locally relevant manufacturing techniques that use local resources. This is another fruitful field for starting
STEM4S projects. It connects local environmental challenges with local and scientific knowledge and provides
an opportunity to revitalize ancestral techniques renewing their value and providing opportunities and start new
endeavors based on a solid research path conducted by the school in collaboration with the local community.

Ecosystems and agriculture

This could be the more straightforward domain for the implementation of STEM4S projects. It is not about the
blind incorporation of traditional agricultural practices but rather about exploring local practices with all the
accumulated knowledge on agroecology and sustainable management. Local traditions can be connected with
modern agroecological perspectives, allowing learning about traditional practices and combining them with other
sources to improve land use and diminish the impacts that traditional practices might have on the ecosystems. The
traditional conservation focus of environmental education, which has been criticized in the literature as a “not
good enough scope”, can be combined with a modern technological solution and complemented with perspectives
from the community to provide new ideas for local development. The identification and naming of flora and fauna
and local legends about different species and their relationships are all part of previous generations' narratives and
can be a significant source of constructive conversation and meaningful answers to local concerns. The soil types
found in their territories, for example, will be crucial in deciding the agriculture and varieties of planting to be
established, as well as enabling for activities such as pottery, vegetable fiber work, and others, depending on the
species found in their territories. This topic also gives space for discussing the importance of biodiversity or
understanding the complexity of the ecosystemic balances.

Worldviews and spatial-temporal notions

There are specific ways of measuring and interpreting time to guide domestic work, ceremonies, and other locally-
relevant activities. Learning about ancestral calendars and symbolic representations of time are also fundamental
aspects to connect and understand the local environment and social characteristics around the educational
facilities. These structures are designed to track how much time one spends doing or should spend doing specific
activities. Knowing some natural cycles, for example, can help determine the best times of day to do particular
agricultural or other traditional activities. In addition, local knowledge about space, the stars, and other signs, that
may be related to weather and other social and environmental phenomena is a highly appreciated local knowledge
that can inspire motivating STEM4S projects. Furthermore, local worldviews, myths, tales, and oral traditions

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also reveal the value system of the previous generations, giving sight to the ethical and aesthetic perspectives
grounded in the schools’ contexts that can contribute to the debate about sustainability. Value-based discussion
can help to create a climate of open dialogue and understanding of the moral dilemmas present in the complex
sustainability problems that schools face in their surroundings.
Although the five domains presented here seek to connect local knowledge in indigenous contexts with
STEM knowledge and skills, it is worth noting that local knowledge should not be trivialized or reduced to
scientific thought codes. The inclusion of these topics, on the other hand, creates a place for discourse on historical
and cultural issues, which, despite not directly agreeing with the scientific perspective, allows official learning
opportunities to be placed in dialogue with other worldviews.
This analytic exercise does not intend universality in terms of covering all possible connections with
local knowledge in Mapuche contexts. It is just a way to open the debate about the significant number of possible
connections that can be proposed with an integrated and transdisciplinary scope, to open the schools to their
territories, complexity, and main problems. It also opens the door to educational practitioners to find routes to
transform educational opportunities, generating a real connection of the curriculum with their contexts and
creating a space to build small solutions and make contributions to solve actual local and global challenges.
It is important to remark that this is not by any chance an attempt for a comprehensive understanding of
the Mapuche perspective. Any attempt will end with a reductionist vision of the great diversity present in the
Mapuche community. Instead, this analytical exercise tries to overcome the common essentialisms and provides
opportunities to create constructive dialogues to affront real socioecological challenges. The Mapuche context is
just an example that can be extrapolated to other indigenous and non-indigenous territories, like schools with high
immigration populations willing to work in connection with their communities.

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