Inclusive Learning in Science Education
摘要
Education is an endeavor meant to include all pupils. However, throughout history, education was marked by exclusion, becoming an instrument of power to produce certain types of adult citizens. In many occasions, exclusion occurs with underrepresented populations affected by various mark ups concerning race, gender, class, ethnicity, educational levels, and disability. Different formulations are also sensitive to this worrying history. For example, inclusive education aims at ensuring that every person can have learning opportunities. In turn, the social and historical perspectives framed by various thinkers attributed to education an important role in ensuring equity through social justice. Critical pedagogy, multicultural education, and critical race theory concur to this line of thought by addressing the need to fight for and in education. Moreover, considering an increasing globalization and interdisciplinarity in the construction of knowledge, fields such as transnational education, global education, and cosmopolitanism are also committed to educating citizens capable of assuming their roles in a world more interconnected while respecting diversity. Historically, science education has failed to fulfill these commitments. Indeed, science education has adopted basic principles and practices that are far from being inclusive. Through a reductionist discourse, science education has privileged content-centered and passive practices. Using inappropriate teaching practices; adopting and applying curriculum models and guidelines with a unique and universalistic perspective; developing content without connecting it with pupils’ cultural and linguistic discourse registers; and/or not allowing several knowledge producing pathways, have impacted negatively on pupils excluded from education. Inclusive science education and related practices can be described as innovative teaching and learning processes that are based on student-focused methods, authentic and creative learning activities, and active engagement of students as producers of new knowledge and not just as consumers. The transformation of education toward diversity and inclusion is complex. It entails addressing very critical aspects, including multiple barriers that extreme inclusion demands. Hence, for teaching and education transformation to promote inclusive education practices, teacher education is crucial by feeding and alarming education and associated conditions that control teachers to reduce or prevent these extreme barriers to face a future with a population that suffers from multiple facets of oppression. This chapter deliberates on inclusive learning in science education.