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Description
This dissertation discusses the findings of an ethnographic exploratory study of Turkana nomadic pastoralist children's sociocultural practices of their everyday lifestyles and science curriculum and instruction in Kenyan early childhood curriculum. The study uses the findings from Turkana elders to challenge the dominant society in Kenya that draws from Western education ideology to unfairly criticize Turkana traditional nomadic cultural practices as resistant to modern education. Yet Turkana people have to rely on the cultural knowledge of their environment for survival. In addition, the community lives in abject poverty caused by the harsh desert environment which has contributed to parents' struggle to support their children's education. Cultural knowledge of Turkana people has received support in research demonstrating the role cultural lifestyles such as nomadic pastoralism play as important survival strategy that enable people to adapt to the harsh desert environment to ensure the survival of their livestock critical for their food security. The study documented ways in which the Kenya national education curriculum, reflecting Western assumptions about education, often alienates and marginalises nomadic children, in its failure to capture their cultural Indigenous knowledge epistemologies. The research investigated the relationships between Turkana children's sociocultural practices of pastoralist lifestyles and the national science curriculum taught in local preschools and first grade science classrooms in Kenya and the extent to which Turkana children's everyday life cultural practices inform science instruction in early childhood grades. Multiple ethnographic methods such as participant and naturalistic observation, focus group interviews, analysis of documents, archival materials, and cultural artifacts were used to explore classrooms instruction and Indigenous sociocultural practices of the Turkana nomads. The findings from the elders' narratives indicated that there was a general congruence in thematic content of science between Turkana Indigenous knowledge and the national science curriculum. However, Turkana children traditionally learned independently by observation and hands-on with continuous scaffolding from parents and peers. The study recommends a science curriculum that is compatible with the Indigenous knowledge epistemologies and instructional strategies that are sensitive to the worldview of nomadic children.
ContributorsNg'asike, John Teria (Author) / Swadener, Beth B. (Committee member) / Luft, Julie (Committee member) / Tobin, Joseph (Committee member) / Brayboy, Bryan (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2010
Description
People in college are made vulnerable to sexual, domestic, and relationship violence by narratives of individual “bad apples” that obscure violence as a cultural condition. Scholars in Gender Studies have worked to name and identify the extent of the problem of sexual, domestic, and relationship violence and argue that victims must be centered in campus-based research. Cultural Geographers have investigated violence as socially re/produced through the relationships between culture, community, and space. However, few works have engaged survivors as research partners to investigate survivorhood, relationality, and trauma to understand how to undo rape culture, thus endorsing survivors as passive subjects rather than active agents for social change. My dissertation asserts that home work is the personal and relational labor of practicing community and enacting justice that survivors engage in to come to feel at home in our bodyminds and relationships. My interlocutors are 10 survivors of sexual violence experienced while attending university in Minneapolis and five survivor-advocacy practitioners. To be survivor-centered and uplift survivor-voice, this project partners with my interlocutors as co-researchers and is built upon critical ethnography and Indigenous methodologies. I utilize semi-structured interviews, walking conversations, and group discussions in which I co-performatively witness survivorhood with my interlocutors. Chapter 1 situates sexual violence in the United States, discusses survivor-voice and the project’s method/ologies, and the significances of Minneapolis as the site of study. Chapter 2 explores “why” my interlocutors “do community”: To meet various needs, to support their growth, and to engage in mutual aid. Chapter 3 explores “how” my interlocutors do community: Showing up, vulnerability, and mutual care. In Chapter 4, my interlocutors and I build our theory of justice as a process of doing community rooted in accountability, responsibility, and relationships that allows us to feel at home in our bodyminds, relationships, and encounters. My research shows that active community engagement is the core variable for pursuing justice, shifting views on community building, campus policies, and processes of justice related to sexual violence. Situated in Minneapolis, my research connects rape culture, white supremacy, and state violence to the crisis of sexual violence on campus.
ContributorsGoldberg, Brett S. (Author) / Shabazz, Rashad (Thesis advisor) / Bailey, Marlon M. (Committee member) / Swadener, Beth B. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022