In early February, Ofsted published an extensive review of science education in the UK, highlighting effective teaching and learning practices observed by inspectors in both primary and secondary schools, as well as gaps in provision.
However, according to Haira Gandolfi, a lecturer in education at the University of Cambridge, something is missing: the need to diversify and decolonise the secondary curriculum.
Conversations around decolonising the curriculum have become increasingly common in staffrooms across the UK. When those conversations take place, though, the focus is likely on subjects like English, history and the arts.
That needs to change, stresses Gandolfi, who specialises in decoloniality, curriculum and pedagogy in science education. She believes that science, too, needs to be put under the microscope.
Whether science teachers agree with that or not is another matter. But Gandolfi says there is a legacy of issues related to colonisation, racism and a lack of diversity in all three of the science subjects.
In biology, she highlights the history of eugenics research.
“Several intelligence tests, such as the IQ test, were developed based on ideas from scientists who had an underlying hypothesis that there was a distribution of intelligence levels across different races, ethnic groups and socioeconomic backgrounds,” she explains. “Later research tells us this is not true, but that assumption is still present in society.”
In chemistry, there is a long-standing connection between mineral extraction and metallurgy with the exploitation of natural resources in indigenous lands, she continues. Peru, Bolivia and Brazil, for example, were colonised with the intent of getting access to resources like silver, gold and iron.
“We can still see the legacies of these colonial histories in several of these countries; the Democratic Republic of Congo, for example, is one of the most important sources of tin, tantalum, tungsten and gold, which end up in electronic devices, like our mobile phones,” Gandolfi explains.
Similar links can be made in physics, especially around energy generation and consumption.
“Many global environmental issues we face nowadays, including our overreliance on fossil fuels, can be traced back to the history of thermodynamics and the industrial revolution. The use of coal across the world was heavily expanded by the British Empire, for instance,” she says.
It’s important that young people are aware of these connections, she continues - it’s part of what helps to debunk myths brought about by “bad” science - and school may be the only opportunity many get to explore this.
“Are we using school science as an avenue to bring those conversations and challenge some of those misconceptions that were created by racist perspectives within science? I’m not convinced,” Gandolfi says.
But what do science teachers think? George Duoblys is a school improvement lead for science at Greenshaw Learning Trust, and he agrees with a “good deal” of what Gandolfi is advocating for.
“Too often, science teaching ignores the means by which scientific knowledge was produced, leaving students with a bewildering array of seemingly disconnected information,” he says.
“Whatever one’s position on wider debates around decolonising the curriculum, it is surely a good thing to teach students more about the sociohistorical trajectories of science, so that they may develop a more meaningful relationship to the knowledge the scientific disciplines have produced.”
However, he is cautious about a few things: he stresses that the science curriculum should not be replaced with a sociology of science curriculum, and says that schools need to be clear about the distinction between scientific knowledge and the scientists who generated it.
“The scientists themselves are a different matter, but we should not ignore the truths they handed down to us,” he says. “Sir Isaac Newton, for example, apparently had links to the slave trade. However reprehensible you think this is, it would be a grave mistake if it became the basis on which we downgraded his insights into the forces on moving bodies.”
Gandolfi agrees that there are barriers to this work - some of which have been put there by the national curriculum.
“The way science is framed in England’s curriculum, the teaching specifications, the assessments and the questions asked of students, all pushes for a drier perspective of what science really is, and a perception of science that is devoid of context and nuance,” she says.
“Decolonising science is about understanding this more nuanced science in relation to the rest of society, making that history, and current examples, visible. It’s not necessarily about changing the science curriculum itself, but how we talk about science in a lesson.”
She’s not looking to pile more work onto teachers’ plates, but hopes to see a change in the distribution of time spent on different areas - with traditional content knowledge and practicals being mixed with nuanced conversations about the links between science and society.
Embedding those changes needs to happen at a national level, over time, she suggests - but there are things that science departments can do now if they are interested in beginning this work sooner.
Decolonising the science curriculum: what teachers can do
It all starts, she says, with teachers developing a broader awareness of their subjects (with a particular focus on the sociohistorical trajectories of science, and how this relates to other subjects, like history, politics and economics) through engaging with wider reading, documentaries and podcasts. Forming partnerships with colleagues in other departments can also help here, she adds.
Once staff feel confident in their extended awareness, Gandolfi recommends that subject teams work together to conduct a curriculum audit. This is about identifying opportunities to incorporate conversations about cultural and historical context into the existing schemes of work.
For example, she encourages teachers to think about positive contributions from people from diverse backgrounds to illuminate key concepts - both historical and contemporary. She also suggests exploring power imbalances and ethical complexities behind the links between science, development and society, as in the examples discussed earlier in this article.
It’s best to start small, she recommends: choose a topic or area you feel more comfortable with and think about how you would go about decolonising it.
“The best way to do this is through collaboration,” Gandolfi says. “We know from years of research on school-based curricular innovations that they have better results (and are more sustainable) when done by a group of teachers and not in isolation.”
Only once all this groundwork has been laid should teachers start to bring these ideas into their classroom practice, she adds. This should be done in a measured way.
“Be pragmatic: you don’t have to do that in every single lesson, in the same way we don’t do experiments in every science lesson,” Gandolfi says.
“In addition, consider including students’ voices as part of this, making use of dialogic teaching to create a safe space for students to contribute ideas, or their own experiences and conceptions about some of the complex ideas involved in exploring issues of oppression, race and so on, within lessons.”
It’s a lot of work for science teachers, and some may argue that they simply don’t have the time within the existing demands of the curriculum.
However, Duoblys says he does believe there is room for this work, if “careful thought” goes into how it’s related to more traditional content.
In his view, time isn’t the issue: expertise is.
“Where English and history teachers, say, have tended to do this very well, science teachers often have very little knowledge of the history and philosophy of science. I think this is a big problem, not least in debates around race and ethnicity,” he says.
“The worst thing we could do as a profession would be to wade clumsily into complex debates, making sweeping, unsubstantiated statements that trivialise the work carried out by those who have devoted their lives to generating knowledge.
“If any of us are serious about introducing social and historical aspects of science into the curriculum on a large scale, then we have to look at the training required to become a science teacher and what options we can offer to those already in the profession.”
Gandolfi appreciates that all of this might not be an easy shift for science teachers - but points out that they will soon have more support, as groups such as the Institute for Physics and the Royal Society of Chemistry are stepping into the conversation about decolonisation, along with some exam boards.
“There are people at particular exam boards who are listening and starting to engage with decolonisation and diversity in science. They are thinking about what that means for assessment, and the textbooks and resources they produce,” she says.
Going forward, then, it looks as though conversations around decolonisation won’t be restricted to the humanities - and Gandolfi is hoping her advice might help science teachers to get ahead of the curve.
