Representations of indigenous knowledges in secondary school science textbooks in Australia and Canada

In recent years there has been a growing recognition that presenting princi pally western perspectives in science texts is a form of ethnocentrism, rac ism or cultural imperialism. In order to address this problem, a number of science texts have appeared which attempt to incorporate greater diversity of knowledge types. This paper employs discourse analysis techniques to exa mine the approach taken to minority group knowledges in two recently publis hed sets of junior secondary science texts, one used in Australia and the o ther in Canada, with a specific focus on the incorporation of indigenous kn owledges into the tests. An evaluation is provided on the kinds of indigeno us knowledges incorporated in the texts and the strengths and weaknesses of the approaches used.