Science education seen through the lens of coloniality

This paper aims to deconstruct how the practice of science is discursively attached to certain parts of the world and certain “kinds of people”. In focus is how the power technology of coloniality organizes the scientific content in textbooks as well as how different categories of science students are acted upon in the science classroom. The theoretical foundation is Foucault’s work on how power and knowledge are inseparable categories and operate together in the making of truth as well as (im)possible subjectivities. To deconstruct the power/knowledge system I use the concepts of epistemic violence and coloniality; how the entanglement of scientific reason, coloniality and the idea of modernity are constantly reproduced. Drawing on these theories, the paper discusses how science and coloniality shape the images of the world and of science. This is done through analyzing science textbooks from the following themes: 1) if and how the colonial history of science is described in Swedish textbooks; 2) how science history is described and; 3) how the global South is represented. Furthermore, to understand how the power technology of coloniality organize science classrooms, I use previous studies on the image of the science learner from inside and outside the context of Sweden. The analysis shows that what has been – and still is – made in the name of science in the colonial project is not present in the science textbooks. Noisier is the talk about science as necessary for the development, i.e. colonialism is more or less absent in the science textbooks, while coloniality organizes the content. Furthermore, the biology lessons differs depending on the color and/or ethnic background of the children. Racialized children are objected to “civilization” in the name of science: eat better, sleep better and take care of their hygiene (e.g. Ideland, Malmberg & Winberg, 2011)