Transformative Educational Research for Culturally Inclusive Teaching

Abstract

How can educational research as professional development enable future educational leaders of recently independent nations to transform the educational policies and practices of their institutions in culturally inclusive ways? In addressing this question I draw on 15 years experience mentoring postgraduate researchers in science and mathematics education from countries in Africa, Asia and the Pacific islands. A major challenge facing research mentors, such as me, is to provide appropriate methods for intercultural research which address the key question of how to design culturally inclusive science/mathematics education systems for preparing young people in transitional societies to enter the modern (globalising) world and, at the same time, respect, celebrate and grow their own local cultural capital. Exciting developments in contemporary qualitative research enable postgraduate researchers to use their own life-world experiences as a primary source of data for examining critically and creatively key philosophical and political assumptions underpinning teaching, curriculum and research practices in their own countries.