Appropriately Diverse? The Ontario Science and Technology Curriculum Tested Against the Banks Model

Authors

  • Donatille Mujawamariya Faculté d'éducation Université d'Ottawa C.P. 450 Succ. A 145, rue Jean-Jacques-Lussier Ottawa (ON) K1N 6N5 CANADA Tél.: (613) 562-5800 poste 4127 Fax.: (613) 562-5146
  • Amani Hamdan College of Education Curriculum and Pedagogy University of Dammam KFMMC 31932 PO Box 946 Dhahran Saudi Arabia Tel: (03) 847-8778 Fax: (03) 333-3702

Abstract

The growing diversity of Ontario’s population is increasing pressure on the education system to ensure that all students receive equal opportunities to excel academically and develop personally. Students are more likely to succeed if their own racial, ethnic, and cultural identity is reflected in the classroom. This observation applies no less to science than it does to the humanities and social sciences. While science has a universal quality, flowing from its ability to transcend geographic and cultural frontiers, it is also diverse in origin. Science is a global story of achievement in which nearly every racial, ethnic, and cultural group has played a vital role. This diversity is not adequately appreciated in Ontario, Canada, or the Western world because the default assumption of most Europeans and European descendants is that science is fundamentally Western. Science curricula must therefore direct, convince and equip teachers to rebut this assumption
and thereby engage the interest of students of all backgrounds. This paper uses classical content analysis to test the 1998 and 2007 versions of the Ontario science curriculum for Grades 1 to 8 against James Banks’s four approaches for ensuring racial, ethnic and cultural diversity in school programs. Our findings show that neither the 1998 nor the 2007 curricula, despite the latter’s claim to implement the principles of an anti-discriminatory education, challenge the perception of science as fundamentally Western in origin.
Keywords: Multiculturalism, science education, anti-discrimination, history of science

 

Author Biography

Amani Hamdan, College of Education Curriculum and Pedagogy University of Dammam KFMMC 31932 PO Box 946 Dhahran Saudi Arabia Tel: (03) 847-8778 Fax: (03) 333-3702

Amani Hamdan is an award winning scholar her book:Muslim Women Speak

A Tapestry of Lives And Dreams won the Canadian Women’s Studies Association Book Prize in 2011. She has obtained her MA in Education and Doctorate of Philosophy in Education Studies specializing in Curriculum and Pedagogy from Canada in 2006. Her research interests are multifaceted include education and curricula in Saudi Arabia, online education and cultural manifestation, higher education, narrative research, critical multicultural education. Dr. Amani has over 17 years of teaching experience in Canada and Saudi Arabia. She presented in many national and international conferences and is widely published in American and Canadian.

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Published

2014-07-04

How to Cite

Mujawamariya, D., & Hamdan, A. (2014). Appropriately Diverse? The Ontario Science and Technology Curriculum Tested Against the Banks Model. Canadian Journal of Education/Revue Canadienne De l’éducation, 36(4), 416. Retrieved from https://journals.sfu.ca/cje/index.php/cje-rce/article/view/1534

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