Epistemological Dominance and Social Inequality: Experiences of Native American Science, Engineering, and Health Students
Epistemological Dominance and Social Inequality: Experiences of Native American Science, Engineering, and Health Students
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DOI：
10.1177/0162243916687037
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发表时间：
2017-09-01
影响因子：
3.1
通讯作者：
deVries, Karen
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Cech, Erin A.;Metz, Anneke;deVries, Karen
认识论能锚定社会不平等的进程吗？在这篇文章中，我们考虑了认识论在科学、工程和健康(SE&H)领域的主导地位如何使那些以另类认识论进入高等教育的学生的劣势永久化。通过对两所美国研究型大学的美国原住民学生的深入访谈，我们发现，在SE&H学位项目中，认识论的主导地位通过三个过程对学生不利。首先，它使土著认识论合法化，并边缘化和压制那些珍视它们的学生。其次，在传授这些占主导地位的科学认识论的过程中，SE和H课程有时要求学生参与挑战本土知识方式的教学实践。第三，学生遭遇认识论帝国主义：样本中的大多数学生都在努力获得SE&H学位，以便回到部落社区回馈社会，然而，由于美国规范SE&H实践的法律延伸到部落土地，学生必须获得认识论证书，这些认识论贬值、取消资格并威胁到土著知识，才能在部落土地上实践。我们考察了学生如何驾驭这些经历，讨论了这些发现对SE&H教育的影响，并描述了认识论优势如何作为一种更广泛的不平等再生产机制。
Can epistemologies anchor processes of social inequality? In this paper, we consider how epistemological dominance in science, engineering, and health (SE&H) fields perpetuates disadvantages for students who enter higher education with alternative epistemologies. Drawing on in-depth interviews with Native American students enrolled at two US research universities who adhere to or revere indigenous epistemologies, we find that epistemological dominance in SE&H degree programs disadvantages students through three processes. First, it delegitimizes Native epistemologies and marginalizes and silences students who value them. Second, in the process of imparting these dominant scientific epistemologies, SE&H courses sometimes require students to participate in pedagogical practices that challenge indigenous ways of knowing. Third, students encounter epistemological imperialism: most students in the sample are working to earn SE&H degrees in order to return to tribal communities to give back, yet, because the US laws regulating the practice of SE&H extend onto tribal lands, students must earn credentials in epistemologies that devalue, delegitimate, and threaten indigenous knowledge ways to practice on tribal lands. We examine how students navigate these experiences, discuss the implications of these findings for SE&H education, and describe how epistemological dominance may serve as a mechanism of inequality reproduction more broadly.