Twenty-five years of Multicultural Science Education: Looking backward, looking forward

Abstract

This paper provides a focused (not comprehensive) review of multicultural science education research in order to determine whether it “has arrived” as a field of inquiry from its meager beginnings over twenty-five years ago. While the answer is yes given the exponential growth of research in the field, only a qualified yes is allowed given the weaknesses identified: a tendency to polemical, hypothetical work; over-extrapolation from the data that do exist and little transference to the classroom—the latter partially due to policy positions and lack of explicit help for teachers in complex contexts—. The paper concludes that there is, however, an optimistic future.