A Decolonial Moment in Science Education: Using a Socioscientific Issue to Explore the Coloniality of Power

Abstract

Decolonialism as a politically engaged endeavour interrogating enduring colonial knowledge production is essential to any discussion of global injustices including those that sociocultural approaches to science education seek to challenge and ameliorate. This paper describes a decolonial moment in my own science teaching to undergraduate primary (elementary) preservice teachers around a socioscientific issue of Ethical Clothing/Fashion. The decolonial moment consists of a semiotically guided reading of some of fashion designer Vivienne Westwood’s promotional photographs for The Ethical Fashion Initiative (EFI), a development project in Kenya. Through this reading, differing social and power relations emerge than probably intended, aimed at unsettling the Eurocentric colonial discourses that many students carry with them into the classroom. The paper concludes with a review of both my own, and the pre-service teachers’ reflections on our learning.