Finding a sustainable cultural identity as a science teacher educator: A Mozambican perspective

Mozambican schools are not helping students to see themselves as culturally rich beings because local cultural values, traditions, knowledge and beliefs have never been included in the curriculum. More than 30 years after independence from 500 years of Portuguese colonial rule, Mozambican science teachers continue to serve as agents of assimilation of students into a Western modern worldview that is indifferent to their local cultural identities and aspirations. As a science teacher educator preparing new teachers for Mozambican schools Cupane (first author) saw his cultural identity to be part of the problem and part of the solution. He designed a critical auto-ethnographic inquiry and explored (and transformed) his cultural identity as he addressed the key research question: How can school science serve better the cultural development of local school communities in Mozambique? A key outcome of this research is Cupane’s multi-cultural identity as a Mozambican, an indigenous (Changana) person, a world citizen, and a science teacher educator. Generating this understanding has fuelled his vision of future science education for Mozambique for which he has articulated a culture-sensitive philosophy of physics teacher education