Octaviana V. Trujillo (Yaqui), Founding Chair and Professor of the Applied Indigenous Studies Department at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Arizona; and Teresa Newberry

Introduction

According to Vine Deloria (1999), “life is not scientific, social scientific, mathematical, or even religious; life is a unity, and the foundation for learning must be the unified experience of being a human being.” In this article, we propose that transdisciplinary education is a decolonizing methodology since it serves as an antidote to the reductionism that is an artifact of Western scientific approaches to knowledge whereas traditional knowledge is holistic, synthetic and multi-contextual. This article seeks to uncover educational approaches that transcend standard reductionist and analytical approaches in favor of Indigenous methodologies (Smith, 1999). We introduce a transdisciplinary climate change education module that can serve as a model of “true learning” which, according to Cajete (2005), incorporates technical knowledge as well as an emphasis on reciprocal relationships with both human and natural communities. The movement toward a culturally responsive understanding of global climate change interpreted through an Indigenous lens has been limited and this work aims to shed light on methodologies and approaches that incorporate Indigenous worldviews in the context of education of American Indian/Alaska Native students at tribal colleges. We believe that these approaches are critical to providing holistic, culturally sustaining science education and it is our hope that this work will serve as a guide for others engaged in this work.

Global climate change is inherently a transdisciplinary problem that requires input from multiple scientific disciplines and consideration of socio-ecological systems in order to achieve sustainable, long-term solutions. While the differentiation and fragmentation of science into separate disciplines over the past several 100 years has yielded essential knowledge, methods and tools, an integration of knowledge is now required to address complex scientific problems (Buizer, Arts, & Kok, 2011; Holm et al., 2013; Lang et al., 2012; Mauser et al., 2013). This can explain the current trend toward transdisciplinary research in climate change science (Hellstein & Leydesdorff, 2016). Transdisciplinary research is defined by Brandt et al. (2013) as research that incorporates multiple scientific disciplines as well as input from practitioners outside of academia. Similarly, transdisciplinary education goes beyond interdisciplinary content and includes the interactions between knowledge from academics and knowledge from practitioners in order to promote a mutual learning process (Mitchell & Moore, 2015; Steiner & Posch, 2006). The need for diverse perspectives underscores the paramount importance of incorporating traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) or Indigenous knowledges (IK) in understanding and finding solutions to global climate change. In addition, leading scholars in science and environment education for Native Americans agree that pedagogy that incorporates traditional Indigenous knowledge is a crucial component of Native American student success in math and science courses.

TEK is “a cumulative body of knowledge, practice, and belief, evolving by adaptive processes and handed down through generations by cultural transmission, about the relationship of living beings (including humans) with one another and with their environment” (Berkes, 2008). TEK is a form of knowledge based on relationships and connection (ways of being in the world), in contrast to the “parts and wholes” reductionist approach typically employed under Cartesian-influenced aspects of Western science (Pierotti & Wildcat, 2000). This means that TEK can provide insights into the functioning of local ecosystem processes and to organismal responses to changing environmental conditions, both of which are important in understanding some of the major environmental problems facing all societies in today’s changing world. One of the strengths of TEK is that it assumes that local environments and climate are continuously changing in a non-equilibrium fashion and that living organisms, including humans, must be flexible in their ability to respond.

IK is a bit broader than TEK and refers to a complete body of knowledge and practices maintained and developed by peoples who are locally bound and Indigenous to a specific area (Battiste & Henderson, 2009; Berkes & Berkes, 2009; Brayboy & McCarty, 2010; Nakashima, 2000; Sillitoe & Marzano, 2009). IK is situational, tacit, culture and context specific knowledge that is orally transmitted from generation to generation, and is dynamic, adaptive and holistic in nature. IK is rooted in the community and incorporates Indigenous goals of living “a good life”, which is sometimes referred to as striving “to always think the highest thought.” This metaphor refers to the framework of a sophisticated epistemology of community-based, spiritual education in which the community and its traditions form the primary support for its way of life and quality thinking. Thus, the community becomes a kind of center and context for learning how to live spiritually (Cajete, 2000) and Indigenous education is always situated within a community context.

Indigenous cultures possess vital place-based knowledge, which includes a history of adapting to highly variable and changing social and ecological conditions, concepts of adaptation and change at much longer time scales than sometimes available via methods in the natural sciences (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2014; McNeeley & Schultzski, 2011; Maldonado et al., 2016). Transdisciplinary approaches that incorporate TEK and IK ensure its inclusion in the generation of new knowledge (Gould, González, Walker, & Ping, 2010).

Ways That Transdisciplinary Approaches Promote Student Educational Success

Legitimizing Traditional Knowledge

Transdisciplinary research and education reflects a move from the investigation of science on society but with society and a shift toward equivalencies of competencies from academic expertise and expertise of non-scientists including values (Steiner & Posch, 2006). Hence, transdisciplinary curriculum serves to legitimize the knowledge of students through the incorporation of local, cultural knowledge and by allowing students to become co-constructors of knowledge. Transdisciplinary approaches are an antidote to the deficit model, which only recognizes knowledge from European/Western societies and instead promotes transformational learning (Habermas, 1979; Mezirow, 1994; Mezirow, 1996) that values multiple perspectives and removes hierarchical frameworks for knowledge, thereby empowering Indigenous students as legitimate knowledge holders.

Mediation of Border Crossings

For Native students, everyday life is situated in Indigenous worldviews and there is an apparent great cultural divide between their culture and the culture of science. For these reasons, success in science is dependent on how well students can transcend the cultural borders between the disparate worldviews of their everyday life and science (Ezeife, 2003; Jegede & Aikenhead, 1999).The predominant mainstream perspective in science education typically results in an assimilationist approach and can result in Native students feeling alienated by science (Aikenhead, 1996) and perceiving success in science as an either/or proposition (Gates, 2006). In order to be successful in science many students are faced with a potential loss or erosion of identity, in order to perform in a knowledge system that does not value or incorporate their cultural heritage. According to Jegede and Aikenhead (1999), culturally sensitive curriculum supports the students’ life view and mediates a smooth border crossing, whereas science curriculum that is incongruent to the students’ life-world culture can be disruptive to a student’s worldview and lead to abandonment and marginalization of their culture. This might result in short-term success in science, but ultimately leads to loss of culture and assimilation.

Collateral learning refers to how students resolve two or more schemata simultaneously held in long-term memory (Jegede & Aikenhead, 1999). Transdisciplinary approaches to science education can mediate border crossings and promote desirable collateral learning. Since transdisciplinary curriculum presents content in a high-context, integrated manner, it prevents compartmentalization of knowledge where the student masters the concept in the classroom but is unable to apply it within their everyday life that is part of their life-world experience. Instead, it facilitates the students’ ability to achieve simultaneous collateral learning wherein learning a concept in one domain of knowledge or culture can improve the learning of a similar concept in another domain (Aikenhead & Jegende, 1999). In this latter situation, the two worldviews can act to augment and enrich knowledge in the other domain. Transdisciplinary approaches also promote simultaneous collateral learning because transdisciplinary education incorporates real-world, authentic learning, giving the students the opportunity to connect their learning to their own unique life-world culture. It also includes opportunities to explore answers using all their knowledge, including relational knowledge, value systems and spiritual interconnectedness; thus, reinforcing connections between the two knowledge systems and empowering students to make their own unique connections and bridges between Western science and Indigenous knowledges.

Incorporation of Core Values

Gregory Cajete (1999), arguably the foremost scholar in this area, contends that for science and math courses to be effectively taught for American Indian students, they must use instructional strategies that incorporate values common to most Native American tribal nations and connect mathematical and scientific concepts to real-world issues and problems. Cajete (1999) argues:

Because core values invariably affect education outcomes, it is important that the teacher, teaching methods, and curricular content reflect this dimension of the learner. It follows then, that an effective and natural way for learning to begin is to help students become aware of their core values. This can be accomplished when the teacher shows the students how the content presented in a particular subject area (such as science) is relevant to or otherwise enhances an understanding of the student’s core values (p. 139).

TEK is by its very nature holistic knowledge, which not only includes multiple discipline areas but also integrates spiritual and ethical dimensions in its knowledge system. Therefore, transdisciplinary approaches that include TEK provide mechanisms for the inclusion of value systems.

Incorporation of High-Context, Problem-Based Learning

In identifying traditional Native American values and behaviors, Cajete includes several that are congruent with both problem-based learning and characteristics of high-context learners and three are particularly relevant: “orientation to the present, practicality, and holistic orientation.” Those same three factors are also components of an approach to learning that has gained attention of educators from K-12 to colleges and universities, known as “engaged civic learning.” Engaged civic learning is an approach to learning that is problem centered, using authentic problems, inter- or multidisciplinary, and connected to communities (holistic, to use Cajete’s term). Problem-based learning is an approach to educating students where they are presented with real-world problems that require solutions. Students evaluate the problem, gather data, identify possible solutions and present their conclusions. Because of the problem/solution focus, education in this context usually crosses academic disciplinary borders, a characteristic of transdisciplinary education.

Cajete’s call for an Indigenous pedagogy also resonates with Ibarra’s (2001) argument for pedagogy that is effective for multi-contextual student populations. As Ibarra (2001) notes, both low-context learners and high-context learners exist in society, but pedagogy in institutions of higher education is often effective only for low-context learners. According to Ibarra (2001) and others, low-context learners are those who learn best by following directions, where learning is oriented toward the individual, information is compartmentalized and can be separated from social and other context, and where culture is not critical in reasoning and new ideas. In contrast, according to Ibarra (2001) and others, high-context learners are those who learn best by demonstration, application and experience; where comprehensive thinking is important; where learning is collaborative and practical; where interconnected thinking is important; where culture is critical to understanding difference and new ideas; and where information is unreliable if it is separated from context. Ibarra (2001) further notes that Native American and Hispanic students, in particular, tend to be high-context learners. In summary, curriculum must be culturally relevant and include practical applications of the complex theoretical concepts being taught to authentic problems that resonate with students’ lives.

Monhardt (2000) contends that effective educational practices for minority students (including Native American students) and women in science must create and include “equitable contexts for learning,” including discussions of incorporating traditional Indigenous knowledge into curricula and instruction. Other scholars have noted the importance of context for effective learning in mathematics for particular groups, including Barton and Frank (2001), who explore how Indigenous languages may explain differences in how Indigenous students understand spatial relationships, quantity concepts and more. Barton and Frank (2001) reviewed the literature in ethnomathematics and noted that some have explored the idea that “mathematics manifests itself differently in different social or cultural contexts” as part of understanding the puzzle of differences among groups in mathematics achievement (Barton & Frank, 2001, p. 136). Cajete, as well as other leading scholars in the field of American Indian Education, particularly STEM education for Native American students, continue to point to the need for effective pedagogies for American Indian student success in higher education.

Overview of the Curriculum and Tribal Colleges and Universities

Thirty-eight Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs) serve over 20,000 Native American undergraduate students across the US. The tribal college movement began in response to the need for self-determination and tribal sovereignty; therefore, tribally controlled education is an act of cultural restoration (Crazy Bull, 2010) and reconciliation through deconstructing and challenging the dominance of Western knowledge (Kanu, 2006; Wilson, 2004). Each tribal college has a dual mission to preserve tribal culture and to provide students a high quality post-secondary education while serving the needs of its community and tribal members (Tierny, 1992; American Indian Higher Education Consortium, 2001). Tribal community colleges play a pivotal role in training Native American ecologists by providing them with the expertise to address the environmental challenges faced by their communities, such as climate change. Undergraduate science curriculum at tribal colleges is designed to be relevant to the culture of Native students because this is essential for developing the local experts and scientifically literate populace needed to address specific challenges faced by Native communities.

Tohono O’odham Community College (TOCC) is one of the 38 tribally controlled colleges and universities in the US and is the institution of higher education of the Tohono O’odham Nation. Located in the heart of the Sonoran Desert of southern Arizona and northern Mexico, the Tohono O’odham Nation is home to the Tohono O’odham, or “Desert People.” At TOCC, the science curriculum has been developed under the premise that science is part of the cultural heritage of each student, as every culture has relied upon processes for gathering and making meaning of information about the natural world (TEK). A cornerstone of TOCC’s science program is a global change biology course. which teaches climate change from an Indigenous perspective. This is accomplished through the incorporation of the Tohono O’odham language and stories, an analysis of Western science and Indigenous ways of knowing, inclusion of traditional ecological knowledge and place-based learning. This course includes a transdisciplinary module that was developed as part of a cross-institutional collaboration with Northern Arizona University for the National Council for Science and the Environment’s Climate Change Adaptation, Mitigation and eLearning (CAMEL) site and piloted in TOCC classes in spring 2012 (Newberry & Trujillo, 2012). The module was enhanced through the incorporation of a mathematical component under the Southwest Native Lands Project funded by the National Science Foundation and, most recently, has continued to be refined and adapted based on the unique “Man in the Maze” education model for problem-based learning (Newberry, Quijada, Guarin, & Lopez, 2016).

Climate Change, Water and Traditional Ecological Knowledge in the Southwest: A Transdisciplinary Approach to Climate Education

Since the impacts of climate change are falling disproportionately on tribal communities in the US –particularly in Alaska and the southwestern states (Wildcat, 2013) – our motivations for the curriculum include addressing issues of climate justice, legitimizing traditional knowledge, and encouraging interdisciplinary dialogue across science, policy, student and elder circles. The fundamental problem addresses adaptation to changes in water availability due to climate change impacts and exploring strategies for including Indigenous knowledge and cultural traditions that respect the rights of nature in water policy. We created a model that incorporated elder input, science input and policy input to meeting future water needs in the Southwest under current and project climate change scenarios.

Specifically, this transdisciplinary module integrates social science, water policy, traditional ecological knowledge and climate change science in the context of the Tohono O’odham Nation. The goal of this module is to examine strategies for including Indigenous knowledge and cultural traditions into water policy and environmental decision-making. This is accomplished by providing the students a background on the Tohono O’odham cultural perspectives on water from the perspectives of Tohono O’odham elders, geographical orientation and creation stories. It incorporates the spiritual values related to water as sacred and central to the Tohono O’odham culture. It includes traditional uses of water in the context of traditional lifeways and farming as well as the modern uses of water by the Tohono O’odham. The students then learn about current and predicted climate change patterns such as drought, increased temperature, changes in overall and seasonal precipitation patterns, and extreme weather events. The students then apply this knowledge to predicting potential impacts of these environmental changes to each water source on the Tohono O’odham Nation. Finally, using the model that incorporates elder knowledge, water policy, and climate change science, they develop water policy scenarios, adaptation plans and tribal resolutions addressing climate change impacts on the food and water resources on the Tohono O’odham Nation. The students are required to incorporate Indigenous viewpoints on water and Tohono O’odham cultural core values (T-So:son) in their final projects. Since this curriculum is available to mainstream institutions via the CAMEL site, mainstream students are also afforded the opportunity to learn science from a multicultural perspective.

Conclusion

We feel that transdisciplinary approaches to climate change education are vitally important to promoting resiliency in Indigenous communities (Aldunce, Bórquez,Adler, Blanco, & Garreaud, 2016). Transdisciplinary approaches provide students opportunities to make connections between different types and forms for knowledge and allow them to examine concepts of culture, knowledge and power through an Indigenous lens, which in turn promotes self-education and sovereignty (Brayboy, 2006). Transdisciplinary education trains students to be active and competent participants in transdisciplinary research since they will be competent in both IK and community knowledge as well as scientific knowledge. Furthermore, they will know how to navigate between the two knowledge systems and be well versed in methodologies to incorporate IK and community knowledge alongside scientific knowledge toward the production of new knowledge. This is vitally important because the resilience of Indigenous communities facing threats of climate change is strengthened when Indigenous peoples shape climate policies, are included in natural resource management, strengthen tribal economies, and engage in sustainable development (Maldonado et al., 2016).

On a broader scale, well-trained Indigenous ecologists who also have a strong grounding in their own cultural knowledge can provide the scientific community with unique multi-contextual, Indigenous perspectives on the science of ecology through TEK. Since TEK includes human interactions and is holistic in nature, transdisciplinary curriculum including the social science dimension is a natural outcome of teaching science from an Indigenous perspective. Furthermore, the inclusion of traditional ecological knowledge across disciplines encourages integrative, multi-contextual thinking and promotes the interdisciplinary dialogue necessary to finding solutions to the global environmental problems facing humanity.

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Acknowledgement

Indigenous Peoples of North America have been the traditional guardians of Turtle Island and traditional knowledge holder Camillus Lopez has guided us in “braiding” Indigenous Peoples knowledge and sciences. Our work at Tohono O’odham Community College transcends scientific, spiritual, cultural, philosophical, linguistic and religious boundaries. We believe in reciprocal listening and learning; this body of work is part of decolonizing studies in education. Growing opportunities and platforms to advance sustainability, justice and equity has been essential in our work: we thank the entire community college and allies on the Tohono O’odham Nation for their guidance and encouragement.