essay on traditional knowledge

• Economic and Social Council
• Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues

Indigenous People’s Traditional Knowledge Must Be Preserved, Valued Globally, Speakers Stress as Permanent Forum Opens Annual Session

Traditional knowledge is at the core of indigenous identity, culture, languages, heritage and livelihoods, and its transmission from one generation to the next must be protected, preserved and encouraged, speakers in the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues stressed today, as they opened its eighteenth session.

The special theme of this year’s forum “Indigenous Peoples’ Traditional Knowledge:  Generation, transmission and protection” is an opportunity to share innovations and practices developed in indigenous communities over centuries and millennia, Permanent Forum Chair Anne Nuorgam said.

“We need to ensure that our educational practices, languages, environmental conservation and management is acknowledged and respected globally, not only by Governments, but by all peoples,” she emphasized.

Traditional knowledge is transmitted between generations through stories, songs, dances, carvings, paintings and performances.  However, global histories of colonialism, exploitation and dispossession continue to undermine and undervalue these aspects.  In many countries, indigenous children and youth are not taught in their native languages.  Calling for financial and technical support from Member States and the United Nations, she encouraged “all of us make sure our children and our youth are connected to their indigenous community and their culture, which is inextricably linked to their lands, territories and natural resources.”

María Fernanda Espinosa (Ecuador), General Assembly President, stressed that traditional knowledge occupies a pivotal place in the range of actions needed to mitigate climate change.  Transferring this information across generations is vital, as is harnessing the potential of youth and women.  Highlighting the importance of preserving languages, she pointed out that knowledge accumulated over thousands of years on medicine, meteorology, agriculture and other areas is at risk of forever disappearing.  In preparing for the great challenges ahead, she said efforts must include fostering a better understanding of traditional knowledge and finding ways to strengthen indigenous peoples’ voices within the United Nations.

Valentin Rybakov (Belarus), Vice-President of the Economic and Social Council, said the Forum’s 2019 theme is timely considering the vast role of indigenous knowledge in sustainable development.  However, misconceptions often categorize traditional activities as uninformed and damaging to the environment when, in fact, indigenous peoples’ knowledge of their lands includes a vast array of successful practices.  He called on Member States to continue to collaborate with indigenous peoples in implementing the Goals and in reporting for voluntary national reviews.

In the afternoon, the Forum held a discussion on preserving indigenous languages, with speakers noting the importance of the General Assembly’s decision to proclaim 2019 the International Year of Indigenous Languages.  Member States shared their work towards that end while representatives of indigenous groups pointed to challenges they face in trying to access education in their mother tongues.  

Royal Johan Kxao UI/O/OO, Deputy Minister for Marginalized Communities of Namibia, said that although his country’s Constitution ensures multiple languages could be used in an official capacity, three groups are left on the margins.  The challenge remains in providing education to these groups in their indigenous language at the foundational levels, he said, adding:  “For this reason, you find many children not able to speak their language.”  Igor Barinov, Head of the Federal Agency on Interethnic relations of the Russian Federation, said that the education system in his country teaches in 25 languages.  State efforts have helped preserve myriad languages which were forecasted for extinction 100 years ago.  Joanna Hautakorpi, Minister Adviser in the Ministry for Justice of Finland, said that with the majority of Sami children today living outside their homeland area, the Government in Helsinki started a class last year in which children receive lessons in Sami.

A representative of the Sami Parliament in Norway, noting the “real fear” that indigenous people will not be able to keep up with the digital revolution, stressed the importance of having access to digital tools in indigenous languages.  The Head of the Indigenous Youth Division at the Fund for the Development of the Indigenous Peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean called indigenous languages “a link to our heritage” and sacred.  A representative of the Nomadic Ancestral Community of Indigenous Peoples of the North (Yukagirs) “Keigur” said the rights to language and land are interlinked, stressing that children must be able to study in their communities and still access education in their native language.

Also delivering opening remarks today was Stefan Schweinfest, Director of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs’ Statistics Division, on behalf of the Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs, and Cristiana Paşca Palmer, Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity.  The Forum also heard a ceremonial welcome by the Chief of the Onondaga Nation, Chief Tadodaho Sid Hill. 

At the beginning of the meeting, the Permanent Forum elected by acclamation Anne Nuorgam (Finland) as Chair of its eighteenth session.  Phoolman Chaudhary (Nepal), Lourdes Tiban Guala (Ecuador), Dmitri Kharakka-Zaitsev (Russian Federation) and Elifuraha Laltaika (United Republic of Tanzania) were elected as Vice-Chairs while Brian Keane (United States) was elected Rapporteur.

The Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues will reconvene at 10 a.m. on Tuesday, 23 April, to continue its eighteenth session.

Opening Remarks

MARÍA FERNANDA ESPINOSA (Ecuador), President of the General Assembly, said the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples said much remains to be done to ensure that indigenous rights are enjoyed around the world.  Urgent action must, among other things, close implementation gaps and address the repayment of an enormous debt to indigenous peoples, with close attention focusing on health, education and other critical areas.  In addition, indigenous women face more discrimination than others, even as they are crucial agents of change in their communities, she said, emphasizing the importance of strategies and programmes targeting their empowerment.

Traditional knowledge occupies a pivotal place in the range of actions needed to mitigate climate change, she continued, and transferring this information across generations is vital, as is harnessing the potential of youth.  Highlighting the importance of preserving languages, she pointed out that knowledge accumulated over thousands of years on medicine, meteorology, agriculture and other areas is at risk of forever disappearing.  In preparing for the great challenges ahead, she said efforts must include fostering a better understanding of traditional knowledge and finding ways to strengthen indigenous peoples’ voices within the United Nations.

VALENTIN RYBAKOV (Belarus), Vice-President of the Economic and Social Council, said that as an advisory body, the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues plays a key role in informing the Council’s deliberations and decisions.  Highlighting forthcoming meetings on the Sustainable Development Goals — from inclusive education to combating climate change — he said the issues are of central importance to indigenous peoples and the attainment of their human rights.  The 2019 theme — “Traditional knowledge: Generation, transmission and protection” — is timely in light of the issues to be discussed during the Council’s High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development and the September review summit of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, to be held under the Assembly’s auspices.  As the vast and important role of indigenous knowledge in sustainable development is becoming more widely understood and recognized, he underlined a need to acknowledge its source, ownership and protection, as enshrined in the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

However, he said, misconceptions often categorize traditional activities as uninformed and damaging to the environment when in fact indigenous peoples’ knowledge of their lands includes a vast array of successful practices.  Partnerships among Governments, indigenous peoples and other actors demonstrate the benefits of recognizing traditional land and environmental conservation knowledge — all of which address the Sustainable Development Goal of combating climate change.  Also becoming ever more apparent are the linkages among traditional knowledge, conservation, climate change and land rights and uses — and their role in promoting inclusive societies and the peace and security agenda.  Calling upon Member States to collaborate with indigenous peoples in implementing the Goals and in reporting for voluntary national reviews, he said more must be done to ensure their rights and priorities are given due attention ahead of the High-Level Political Forum.

With 2019 celebrated as the International Year of Indigenous Languages, he expressed hope that the Permanent Forum’s discussions and recommendations will highlight the importance of native-language learning in advancing Goal 4 (improving access to inclusive and equitable quality education).  Pleased with the increased cooperation between the Permanent Forum and other Council bodies, he said “it is through this sharing of expertise that we can further advance our collective thinking and take concrete action.”

ANNE NUORGAM (Finland), Chair of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, said that this year’s theme is an opportunity to share innovations and practices developed in indigenous communities over centuries and millennia.  “Through our stories, songs, dances, carvings, paintings and performances we transit knowledge between generations,” she declared.  Traditional knowledge is at the core of indigenous identity, culture, languages, heritage and livelihoods, and must be protected.  However, global histories of colonialism, exploitation and dispossession continue to undermine and undervalue these aspects of life.  “We need to ensure that our educational practices, languages, environmental conservation and management is acknowledged and respected globally, not only by Governments, but by all peoples,” she stressed. 

Indigenous peoples have the right to autonomy or self-government and will continue to strive to determine their political status and pursue their economic, social and cultural development, she emphasized.  The Declaration reaffirms the collective right of indigenous peoples to a life of freedom, peace and security as distinct peoples.  It is increasingly recognized, for instance, that land is at the heart of many, if not most, challenges to peace and security.  There are growing tensions and rising violence surrounding traditional indigenous lands, territories and resources.  This can be attributed to the negative effects of climate change and the movement of peoples, environmental mismanagement, drug trafficking and extractive industry activities.  “This has often resulted in increased attacks against indigenous rights defenders,” she said.

The violence against indigenous women is a continuing concern, with “my indigenous sisters and daughters targeted for their identity and their role as transmitters of their culture and traditional knowledge”, she continued.  Indigenous persons with disabilities require greater protection as well.  In many countries, indigenous children and youth are not taught in their native languages.  Calling for financial and technical support from Member States and the United Nations, she encouraged “all of us to make sure our children and our youth are connected to their indigenous community and their culture, which is inextricably linked to their lands, territories and natural resources.”  This enables people to protect their traditional knowledge.  Indeed, the strong and growing engagement of indigenous peoples in the intergovernmental arena is a step forward in ensuring their rights are considered in policies and processes.

STEFAN SCHWEINFEST, Director, Statistics Division, Department of Economic and Social Affairs , spoke on behalf of the Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs and Senior Official of the United Nations System to Coordinate Follow-up to the World Conference on Indigenous Peoples.  Noting that the Assembly proclaimed 2019 as the International Year of Indigenous Languages, he said the loss of such languages signifies the loss of traditional knowledge and cultural diversity.  Teaching children in their languages and traditional ways maintains community culture, reduces school drop-out rates and leads to economic growth.  It also strengthens linguistic diversity and contributes to achieving both the Declaration and the 2030 Agenda, which includes explicit references to indigenous peoples.  Thanking those Member States that contributed to the Trust Fund on Indigenous Peoples last year, he said indigenous peoples suffer disproportionately from poverty, discrimination, poor health care and lack of access to culturally appropriate education.  However, “with concerted efforts, we can make a difference,” he said.

CRISTIANA PAŞCA PALMER, Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity, said the transmission of traditional knowledge and culture requires access to traditional territories, rights to customary sustainable use of nature resources and living indigenous languages.  Noting that the Sami have more than 200 words for snow, the Hawaiians have more than 200 words for rain and the Bedouin more than 160 words for camels, she said nature-based solutions for sustainable development and climate change cannot be promoted without healthy indigenous languages, many of which are at risk of disappearing.  With parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity currently considering elements for a post-2020 global biodiversity framework, the door is wide open for proposals from indigenous peoples and the Permanent Forum.  She went on to suggest the establishment of an international alliance for nature and culture that would underscore the link between biological and cultural diversity.

In the afternoon, the Permanent Forum took up its agenda item “Discussion on the 2019 International Year of Indigenous Languages”, hearing from ministers, high-level officials and representatives of indigenous communities.

AISA MUKABENOVA, Permanent Forum member from the Russian Federation , opening the discussion, said the declaration of 2019 as the International Year aims to recognize rights and raise awareness at the policy-making level.  Based on the Permanent Forum’s recommendations for preserving and revitalizing indigenous languages, it is also meant to close the gap between law and practice.  Today, it is possible to monitor progress on the International Year, including by developing a language atlas.  In accordance with the related General Assembly resolution and Permanent Forum recommendations, countries have taken steps toward that end, she said, citing Canada’s project to draft a list of indigenous languages.  But, more remains to be done, she stressed, suggesting the passage of a declaration of an international decade of indigenous languages to ensure, among other things, that States adopt legislation to recognize indigenous languages and to show the required political will to preserve and revitalize them.

IRMGARDA KASINSKAITE-BUDDEBERG, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), highlighting activities surrounding the International Year, said indigenous languages matter as they are repositories of knowledge and the main conveyors to transmit practices that can benefit the world today.  A steering committee facilitated an action plan for the International Year, she said, thanking partners for their engagement.  Activities to date include sporting and cultural events, regional meetings, a hack-a-thon and a high-level dialogue, partnering with civil society, United Nations agencies and the private sector.  A world report on languages is also being developed, and a call for research papers has already resulted in 280 submissions from 63 countries focused on seven themes. 

NANAIA MAHUTA, Minister for Māori Development and Minister for Local Government of New Zealand , said the International Year provides an opportunity for countries to recognize indigenous languages.  Legal protection can actively revitalize languages, she said, noting that this is an important step forward.  Sharing measures taken to implement these goals, she said her delegation remains an active member of the Permanent Forum.

DORTHE WACKER, European Union , said linguistic diversity is a core value for the bloc, which prohibits discrimination on a number of grounds, including language.  In 2018, the European Parliament invited all States to contribute to the International Year, with the best investment being to promote bilingualism and multilingualism.  Abandoning indigenous languages need not happen, she said, pointing to a strategy to ensure students can learn more than one language.  The European Union also supports mother-tongue learning and language revitalization in countries around the world.

AILI KESKITALO, the Sami Parliament in Norway , said there is a real fear that indigenous people will not be able to participate or keep up with the digital revolution.  Hence, there must be digital tools available in indigenous languages so these populations can keep up with digitization.  “We must cooperate to help us preserve the indigenous languages of the world,” she added.

CAROLYN BENNETT, Minister for Crown Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs of Canada , said having the ability to know one’s language is a critical component of personal cultural identity.  Reclaiming and revitalizing indigenous languages is an essential part of Canada’s shared journey of reconciliation.  Canada is committed to preserving and promoting indigenous language and is currently working on passing a bill on the matter.  She ceded the remainder of her time to Kelly Fraser, an Inuk Singer, who said her way of revitalizing her culture is through teaching traditional drum dancing and song writing in her language.

DALÍ ANGEL, Head of the Indigenous Youth Division, Fund for the Development of the Indigenous Peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean , said “our languages are a link to our heritage, they are sacred, bring us closer to our brothers and our foundation to our lives.”  Citing discrimination and prejudices that exist against indigenous languages, she urged Governments to adopt measures to protect indigenous cultures and heritage.  Progress can be seen in Bolivia and the wider Latin region, where steps have been taken to demonstrate respect for indigenous languages by establishing alliances with the media, civil society and the private sector.  There must be inclusive participation and a safe regional space for the discussion of indigenous languages.

THINGREIPHI LUNGHARWO, Asia Indigenous Peoples Caucus and Asia Indigenous Peoples Pact , said Asia’s 411 million indigenous peoples speak many languages, some of them on the verge of extinction or critically endangered.  While efforts are being made to promote indigenous languages, these are not commensurate with the level of threat they face.  Much more must be done at the country and local levels, building on partnerships with indigenous peoples.  She urged the Forum to call on States to undertake censuses and surveys to understand the situation of indigenous languages and ways to promote and preserve them; to carry out legal and administrative reforms to ensure equality and promote the public use of indigenous languages; to support and expand community initiatives to preserve indigenous languages; and to urgently resolve the challenges of displacement and forced migration of indigenous communities from their ancestral territories through guaranteeing their land and resource rights.

KOPENG OBED BAPELA, Deputy Minister for Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs of South Africa , said indigenous languages are not only used for communication but also express culture and heritage.  South Africa has made progress on a national bill which ensures that one of South Africa’s indigenous communities is officially recognized.  South Africa’s rich cultural and ethnic diversity is recognized by its Constitution.  The Government has placed the revitalization and preservation of indigenous language at the heart of its development plans, underscoring the importance of indigenous peoples’ rights, and has also taken steps to include indigenous languages in school curriculums.

PAOLO DAVID, Chief of Indigenous peoples and Minorities Section, Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), said language is pivotal in terms of rights protection and good governance.  For decades, assimilation policies have adversely affected indigenous language.  Noting the wealth of guidance available to States from United Nations special offices, he urged indigenous peoples to strengthen their cooperation with such bodies so that their issues can be raised directly with Member States.  The Office will continue to provide technical assistance and guidance to stakeholders to ensure that indigenous groups are involved in decisions that affect them.

ILIA MATILDE REYES AYMANI, Desarrollo Intercultural Chile , said bilingual intercultural education must be provided to all indigenous and non-indigenous children throughout the educational system, underscoring the need for direct contact with indigenous peoples on educational matters.  Indigenous peoples must have the same status as non-indigenous peoples, with the cultural status of each school tailored to the cultural sensitivities of indigenous peoples.

ROYAL JOHAN KXAO /UI/O/OO, Deputy Minister for Marginalized Communities of Namibia , said that although English remains the main official language, the Constitution provides for other languages to be used in an official capacity, “meaning you can be assisted in any office in the language you speak”.  The ability to communicate clearly is a key function for all people, and ability to use indigenous language is critical for indigenous communities, particularly in settings outside the home.  It is also important to make a distinction for countries like Namibia, where “all of us are indigenous, and therefore speak indigenous languages,” he said.  However, three groups are left on the margins and classified as “marginalized communities” — the Ovatue, Ovatjimba and San peoples — and the challenge is in providing education in the indigenous language at the foundational levels.  “For this reason, you find many children not able to speak their language,” he added.

ALEXEY TSYKAREV (Russian Federation), Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples , citing engagement activities with Member States, said measures to protect languages must be sustainable, urgently implemented and guarantee the free and informed consent of indigenous peoples through a human-rights-based approach.  Making several recommendations, he said States’ recognition of past injustices is necessary to move forward in related activities.  He also recommended that United Nations agencies and programmes ensure that indigenous languages are included in field work and projects and expressed support for a declaration of an international decade for indigenous languages.

RON LAMEMAN, International Indian Treaty Council , declared: “Collectively, we owe it to our future generations to ensure that we can continue to use our beautiful languages.”  Despite their central importance in daily ways of life and knowledge, indigenous languages around the globe are under threat due to processes of colonization — including in the United States and Canada — as well as the legacy of forced assimilation at residential and boarding schools.  The protection, revitalization and transmission of indigenous languages is a central underpinning of nearly every area of indigenous peoples’ work, both at home and at the United Nations, he said, urging the Permanent Forum to recommend to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) that it develop a new platform on indigenous languages with the full and effective participation of indigenous peoples.

ANNE KARIN OLLI, State Secretary to the Minister for Local Government and Modernization of Norway , described several actions the Government has taken, including establishing a Sami language committee that works with the Sami Parliament.  But, challenges remain, she said, emphasizing that the participation of indigenous peoples is vital in any measures regarding the protection of their languages.

ANNE DENNIS, New South Wales Aboriginal Land Council , recommended that States implement long-term national strategies to promote and protect indigenous languages; acknowledge, value as well as respect them in national constitutions and expand public and governmental usage; and recognize and resource community organizations to implement indigenous-led programmes to revitalize, protect and promote their languages.

HELENE ÖBERG, State Secretary for Culture and Democracy of Sweden , called on States to listen to indigenous communities, engage and learn from past mistakes.  For Sweden, the protection of the indigenous Sami people is an essential priority for which the Government works closely with democratically elected members of the Sami Parliament, civil society and others.  Noting that representatives of the Sami Parliament are part of this year’s Swedish delegation to the Permanent Forum, she expressed support for the development of procedures that give indigenous peoples the chance to properly participate in and influence decision-making over issues that concern them.  She cited “very troubling numbers” of disappearing languages and called on all people to work together to protect the world’s linguistic and cultural diversity.  Sweden, for its part, launched a national inquiry to map out the need for measures to safeguard and revitalize its five national minority languages.

ELIDA ATLASOVA, Nomadic Ancestral Community of Indigenous Peoples of the North (Yukagirs) “Keigur ”, said the rights to language and land are interlinked.  “We do not want our languages to exist only on maps,” she said, also noting the cultural barriers to education.  In Australia, for instance, there is no financing for education for schools in some hard-to-reach places.  Children must be able to study in their communities and still access education in their native language.  The local initiatives of civil society organizations must be supported by Governments, which must ensure greater financial assistance.

IGOR BARINOV, Head of the Federal Agency on Interethnic relations of the Russian Federation , said that the education system in his country teaches in 25 languages and also 81 languages are studied in Russian schools.  National laws give indigenous peoples special legal protection.  Noting the growth in ethnic self-awareness throughout the Russian Federation, he added that State efforts have helped preserve myriad languages which were forecasted for extinction 100 years ago.  The Government is also monitoring the status and development of indigenous language.  He expressed support for proclaiming an international decade of indigenous language.

ALUKI KOTIERK, Inuit Circumpolar Conference , speaking also for the Arctic Caucus, said measures must be taken among the region’s Governments to ensure mother-tongue instruction in schools.  At the current rate, only 4 per cent of the Inuit community will be using Inuktitut at home, she said, citing a recent United Nations report that points to the dangers of disappearing indigenous languages.  Legally protecting and revitalizing languages is essential, she said, emphasizing that language and education support cultural integrity, including teaching traditional practices.  Instead of continuing on the path of cultural genocide, the United Nations must emphasize the need to protect the rights of indigenous peoples so they can live in dignity throughout their homelands.

CRAIG RITCHIE ( Australia ) said that in his country, more than half of the some 250 original aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages are no longer spoken.  However, throughout Australia, indigenous languages are being revived through education, with eight languages being taught in universities and more in primary and secondary schools.  This year, Australia is focusing on the value and diversity of its indigenous languages, including through the introduction of a coin that bears the word for money in 14 languages and a blank space for languages that have been lost.  The Ngaanyatjarra Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Women’s Council has developed a mindfulness app that incorporates aboriginal languages and cultural concepts of mental health, while a repository of language and cultural content called IndigiTube features music videos, documentaries and even comedy routines.

EMILY HANG, delivering a joint statement for Khmers Kampuchea-Krom Federation and Khmer Kampuchea Krom Temple , said indigenous youth face challenges in accessing quality education in line with Sustainable Development Goal 4.  In the Khmer Krom communities, young people are struggling to hold onto their indigenous roots and language while learning the official State language, Vietnamese, causing many to fall behind.  Meanwhile, Khmer is still prohibited from being taught in public schools.  Viet Nam affirmed its commitment to the 2030 Agenda, but the Government has stated that it lacks adequate statistics on progress towards achieving equal access for vulnerable groups, including ethnic minorities and children in vulnerable situations.  In that vein, she urged Viet Nam to consider how to better enact programmes that promote learning the Khmer Krom language without fear or discrimination and to engage in an open dialogue to ensure that no indigenous peoples are left behind.

DEVONEY MCDAVIS ( Nicaragua ) said that despite gains, efforts must continue.  For its part, Nicaragua has taken a number of steps in the domains of education, justice and public administration, in addition to linguistic revitalization projects.  Moreover, Nicaragua has declared some indigenous languages as part of its cultural fabric and the nation’s history.

GUADALUPE ACOSTA, Cubraiti, Inc. , pointed out that the First Nations culture is in danger and its land is being desecrated.  To rectify this, he called on the Permanent Forum to submit a letter to the Pope to begin the process of repatriation of artefacts to the First Nations in Mexico.

SAUL VICENTE VAZQUEZ ( Mexico ) said the Government has outlined measures authorities can take to protect and promote the use of indigenous languages.  Among them are efforts to foster dialogue and strengthen indigenous education with a view to ensuring languages are maintained and preserved, he said, expressing support for an international decade to continue along the same path.

DARIA EGEREVA, Union of Indigenous Peoples of Tomsk Region , said there is not a single school teaching the indigenous language of her region and, in fact, there are only three people who speak it fluently.  While efforts exist to promote the language, there is scant funding to produce materials and cover teachers’ salaries.  Applications for linguistic support to publish textbooks and provide education have yet to be successful, she said, calling for budgetary support.

PASCUAL SOL SOLIS ( Guatemala ) said fighting to maintain indigenous languages, such as Mayan languages, means protecting culture.  Guatemala has, since 1987, worked to protect the Mayan languages, having established an institution to promote their dissemination and use, and adopted a national law that “officialized” indigenous languages, he said, adding that “a language that is not used, dies.”

POLINA SHULBAEVA, Centre for Support of Indigenous Peoples of the North , said 41 indigenous languages exist in the region in the Russian Federation, but their numbers vary, with as a little as three people speaking fluently.  The Russian language policy does not evenly reach all communities, she said, noting a dearth in salaries for professors to teach indigenous languages.  She requested the Permanent Forum to reflect in its outcome document the inclusion of, among other things, a call for State programmes and financing for relevant language instruction in local schools.

JENS DAHL, Permanent Forum member from Denmark , commended UNESCO for taking practical steps to preserve indigenous languages, which are firmly rooted in culture.  Highlighting concerns raised by participants about displacement and national and multinational corporate policies that are detrimental to their communities, he asked UNESCO to consider and address them in related activities.

GERVAIS NZOA, Permanent Forum member from Cameroon , commended efforts made to date and thanked the Russian Federation for having taken related initiatives to address concerns.

RENA TASUJA ( Estonia ), describing a number of activities to mark the International Year, said a forthcoming congress on indigenous languages will focus on protection measures, among other things.  She hoped that funding for related activities worldwide will contribute to realizing goals in line with the Permanent Forum’s recommendations.  It is high time to step up efforts to fulfil the objectives of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and to increase cultural diversity.

MATTHEW NORRIS, Urban Native Youth Association , making several recommendations, said the Permanent Forum should urge Member States to engage with indigenous peoples to develop, fund and implement national action plans to address the colonial legacies responsible for their displacement, and to provide reparations and resources to indigenous nations to welcome back displaced people.  The Permanent Forum should also call on States to provide resources to jointly review laws and policies so that displaced urban communities are accounted for and included.

JOANNA HAUTAKORPI, Minister Adviser in the Ministry for Justice of Finland , said that while three Sami languages are spoken in the country, most Sami children today live outside the Sami homeland area.  “There is a need to provide them an opportunity to learn their language and culture,” she said.  Last year, the Government in Helsinki started the first class in which lessons are taught in Sami.  Now, more and more children around the country are being educated in their mother tongue.  A new pilot project is developing ways to teach the three Sami languages.  The International Year provides an opportunity to raise these important topics, she emphasized, noting Finland’s new project, operated by the Sami Parliament, aimed at improving the visibility of the Sami languages among youth and families.

JUDY WILSON, Union of BC Indian Chiefs , recommended that the Permanent Forum call on Member States to engage with indigenous peoples through a meaningful and substantive process to co-develop, fully fund and implement national action plans to revitalize and protect indigenous languages and the pursuit of language fluency.  Among other things, she also recommended that States provide indigenous peoples the resources and capacity needed to fully participate in the drafting of the action plans as equal partners; that they co-develop and implement independent monitoring and reporting mechanisms for States’ activities to safeguard and revitalize indigenous languages; and that they provide permanent, ongoing and sustainable funding to indigenous nations for those purposes.  “States can no longer dismiss or ignore our lived experiences, neither can States adopt a paternalistic approach to recognizing and accommodating our voices and expertise,” she stressed.

PEDRO VARE ( Bolivia ) highlighted national efforts in relation to the International Year while cautioning that the success of the Year hinges on the inclusion of indigenous peoples in related action plans.  Expressing support for a declaration of an international decade on indigenous languages, he said Bolivia has taken several steps, from establishing institutions nationwide to a mobile phone application, with efforts involving 15 State, academic and indigenous institutions.

TATIANA DIATLOVA, Save Ugra , underlining a need for more laws and targeted support for students and teachers, said joint efforts and authoritative initiatives can produce results.  Noting that Ugra, a region in the Russian Federation that is home to 124 ethnic groups, needs support, she echoed the call for declaring an international decade of indigenous languages.  Moving forward, efforts must include data collection and targeted initiatives to effectively preserve languages.  Awareness-raising activities must also bring these issues to the attention of national Governments and the public.

YOLANDA OTAVALO ( Ecuador ) said national initiatives aim at revitalizing indigenous languages and celebrating cultural diversity.  Ecuador has taken many steps to do this and is now in the process of establishing a university of indigenous languages.  Emphasizing that all stakeholders must ensure 2019 is a success, she said it is crucial that age-old languages survive and reminded delegates that “we are the guardians.”

MARIAM WALLET MOHAMED ABOUBAKRINE, Permanent Forum member from Mali , said the survival of indigenous peoples is the central issue.  The current debate highlights the threat facing indigenous languages, with participants providing examples of reversing this trend.  Laws and policies in draft form must now be adopted, and efforts should move towards declaring an international decade, because just one year is not enough.

LES MALENZER, Permanent Forum member from Australia , stressed the need to dedicate and commit resources to preserve indigenous languages.  “It won’t just happen by will alone,” he stressed.  He noted Australia’s national debate on whether indigenous languages should be recognized as official languages.  There is still a lot to be achieved.  Over the next 10 years, languages must be made a priority.

WILLIE LITTLECHILD, Assembly of First Nations , said indigenous peoples’ languages are in danger of disappearing but with support they can be sustainable.  The importance the United Nations places on indigenous languages will be critical to their survival.  Canada’s indigenous languages legislation should serve as a positive example on how to protect languages.  “They must be alive in our ceremonies and our daily lives,” he said.  It is essential that indigenous groups continue to work with UNESCO to ensure that the International Year of Indigenous Languages produces substantive results.  “Our diversity adds to the richness of the human family,” he added.

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What is “Indigenous Knowledge” And Why Does It Matter? Integrating Ancestral Wisdom and Approaches into Federal Decision-Making

By  Raychelle Aluaq Daniel, Deputy Director for the Arctic Executive Steering Committee and Policy Advisor for Indigenous Knowledge 

T. ‘Aulani Wilhelm, Assistant Director for Ocean Conservation, Climate and Equity 

Haley Case-Scott, Policy Assistant, Climate and Environment and Vice-Chair for the Interagency Working Group on Indigenous Traditional Ecological Knowledge 

Dr. Gretchen Goldman, A ssistant Director for Environmental Science, Engineering, Policy, and Justice 

Dr. Larry Hinzman, Executive Director, Interagency Arctic Research Policy Committee &  Assistant Director for Polar Sciences 

This week, something historic happened.

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) released the first-ever Guidance for Federal Departments and Agencies on Indigenous Knowledge at the White House  Tribal  Nations  Summit. The guidance , and accompanying implementation memorandum ,  recognized that in order to make the best scientific and policy decisions possible, the Federal government should value and, as appropriate, respectfully include Indigenous Knowledge.

Never before has humanity faced the confluence of crises we face. And never before has there been such a driving need to expand and diversify the kinds of evidence and knowledge we rely upon to make critical decisions to address them.  

“Had our traditional cultural practices and ceremony not been outlawed and had our information keepers been listened to over the centuries, we probably would not find ourselves in the position we are today – with the losses and extinction and contamination we face as our global community.   

This is a valuable component of being able to face not only climate change but the preservation and protection of all of our resources.”   

The insight behind the words of Cheryl Andrews-Maltais, Chairwoman of the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head Aquinnah, shared recently during Tribal consultations, was sourced centuries if not millennia earlier. That same insight is also at the core of what drives us as a team to elevate the role of Indigenous Knowledge in Federal policy making.

Some of us are Indigenous, from communities and cultures deeply rooted in the natural world. Others (of us) strive to understand both the power and limits of western scientific evidence alone and advance more inclusive evidence-based policy making. Collectively, we have worked within and with governments at the Tribal, local, state, national, and international levels, and we have seen evidence of success when knowledge systems are brought together.

This week’s release of this Guidance is important because respectful inclusion of Indigenous Knowledge at all levels within the Federal government can result in decisions that are based on a more holistic and comprehensive understanding of the world.  After all, developing wise policies and effective, equitable programs to improve the lives of all Americans and the health of the planet is what drives the work of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and many others in the Federal government. 

What is Indigenous Knowledge? As the Guidance details, Indigenous Knowledge – also referred to as Traditional Knowledge or Traditional Ecological Knowledge  –  is a body of observations, oral and written knowledge, innovations, practices, and beliefs that promote sustainability and the responsible stewardship of cultural and natural resources through relationships between humans and their landscapes. Indigenous Knowledge cannot be separated from the people inextricably connected to that knowledge. It applies to phenomena across biological, physical, social, cultural, and spiritual systems. Indigenous Peoples have developed their knowledge systems over millennia, and continue to do so based on evidence acquired through direct contact with the environment, long-term experiences, extensive observations, lessons, and skills. 

This familial intimacy with nature enables the ability to detect often subtle, micro-changes and to base decisions on deep understanding of patterns and processes of change in the natural world of which people are a part. The information and summative historical and cultural ecology contained within Indigenous languages, practices, values, place names, songs, and stories hold data and knowledge that are relevant today. 

For example, it is estimated that, currently, at the global scale, Indigenous Peoples – and long-standing, place-based communities – manage over 24% of land, which contains ~40% of all ecologically intact landscapes and protected areas left on the planet, and a staggering ~ 80% of the world’s biodiversity . In short, evidence suggests that the most intact ecosystems on the planet rest in the hands of people who have remained close to nature. And Indigenous Knowledge isn’t just applicable to land and water use; it is relevant to all human systems.  

Why Now? When more forms of evidence are considered, better decision-making results. Recognition and inclusion of Indigenous Knowledge in Federal decision-making benefits everyone. Tribes and Indigenous Peoples have long requested that Indigenous Knowledge be consistently and meaningfully included in Federal decision making.  We have heard from people well versed in this work during the consultations and engagement , that progress has varied widely across agencies and policy processes.  

Recognizing the importance of Indigenous Knowledge is part of a necessary process of recognizing history and rectifying relationships. As one of his first actions after taking office, President Biden issued the 2021 Presidential Memorandum on Tribal Consultation and Strengthening Nation-to-Nation Relationships to strengthen the relationship between the Federal Government and Tribal Nations and advancing equity for Indigenous Peoples, including Native Americans, Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians, and Indigenous Peoples of the U.S. states and territories. The Guidance identifies opportunities to include Indigenous Knowledge across all levels of Federal agency decision making.  

Acknowledging history and context. The Biden-Harris Administration has also taken critical first steps to acknowledge and address past harms to Indigenous communities, and this initiative is no different. Such efforts include a Federal effort to preserve Native languages , the Interior Department’s removal of derogatory place names , and the Interior Department’s effort to understand harms and help communities heal from the Federal boarding school initiative , which was intended to erase Indigenous identity. For over 150 years, hundreds of thousands of Indigenous children were taken from their families and communities, and many never returned. With respect to Indigenous Knowledge, U.S. colonial history and U.S. policy-making frameworks have ignored Indigenous Knowledge, and have resulted in  the disempowerment, disenfranchisement, and termination of Tribes and Indigenous Peoples. Official governmental policies sought to separate (both physically and intellectually) Indigenous Peoples from the places they are connected to, severing relationships with lands, waters, and social systems that are critical elements of Indigenous Knowledge. 

Many others have worked to build a foundation for improving relationships and recognizing the historic wrongdoings of the Federal government on Indigenous Peoples. This foundation includes a 1993 Apology Resolution by Congress , acknowledging the role of the U.S. in the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawai‘i and a 2009 apology , to all Native peoples “for the many instances of violence, maltreatment, and neglect inflicted on Native peoples by citizens of the United States.   

History and context matter; therefore, understanding these historical harms and past relationship between Indigenous communities and the Federal Government is critical for Federal employees seeking to meaningfully include Indigenous Knowledge in their work. And this Guidance is an important step in the right direction.

Guidance for Agencies.   Complementing the above activities, last November, the Biden-Harris Administration released a historic Memorandum recognizing Indigenous Knowledge as a critical contributor to the scientific, technical, social, and economic advancements of the United States and to our collective understanding of the natural world. The Memorandum committed the Administration to craft White House Guidance on Indigenous Knowledge for Federal agencies. One year later, the release of this Guidance is an important next step.

Looking to the future; where do we go from here? With the Guidance for Federal Departments and Agencies on Indigenous Knowledge now issued, OSTP and CEQ will work with agencies to ensure that the Guidance is meaningfully implemented into Federal decision-making. Building on the collaboration of an interagency working group of more than 25 agencies that developed the Guidance , OSTP, with CEQ, is establishing a National Science and Technology Council Subcommittee on Indigenous Knowledge to provide a mechanism for agencies to focus on Guidance implementation. The Guidance is intended to include and benefitall Indigenous Peoples, not only Federally recognized Tribes and Peoples. It will also aid Federal agencies in their ability to bring forward Indigenous Knowledge for the benefit of all Americans. The Guidance is one step towards successfully elevating Indigenous Knowledge as a common practice. In the words of one of the participants at the Pacific Peoples’ Roundtable in Hawai‘i,  

“ Continuity is important. Once the Administration leaves…we want to make sure the work continue[s] on and becomes an approach any administration can refer to. It should have reciprocity.  

 When people are part of the solution, they invest in it.”  

We are privileged to be part of this ongoing work.

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The Analysis of Knowledge

For any person, there are some things they know, and some things they don’t. What exactly is the difference? What does it take to know something? It’s not enough just to believe it—we don’t know the things we’re wrong about. Knowledge seems to be more like a way of getting at the truth. The analysis of knowledge concerns the attempt to articulate in what exactly this kind of “getting at the truth” consists.

More particularly, the project of analysing knowledge is to state conditions that are individually necessary and jointly sufficient for propositional knowledge, thoroughly answering the question, what does it take to know something? By “propositional knowledge”, we mean knowledge of a proposition—for example, if Susan knows that Alyssa is a musician, she has knowledge of the proposition that Alyssa is a musician. Propositional knowledge should be distinguished from knowledge of “acquaintance”, as obtains when Susan knows Alyssa. The relation between propositional knowledge and the knowledge at issue in other “knowledge” locutions in English, such as knowledge-where (“Susan knows where she is”) and especially knowledge-how (“Susan knows how to ride a bicycle”) is subject to some debate (see Stanley 2011 and his opponents discussed therein).

The propositional knowledge that is the analysandum of the analysis of knowledge literature is paradigmatically expressed in English by sentences of the form “ S knows that p ”, where “ S ” refers to the knowing subject, and “ p ” to the proposition that is known. A proposed analysis consists of a statement of the following form: S knows that p if and only if j , where j indicates the analysans: paradigmatically, a list of conditions that are individually necessary and jointly sufficient for S to have knowledge that p .

It is not enough merely to pick out the actual extension of knowledge. Even if, in actual fact, all cases of S knowing that p are cases of j , and all cases of the latter are cases of the former, j might fail as an analysis of knowledge. For example, it might be that there are possible cases of knowledge without j , or vice versa. A proper analysis of knowledge should at least be a necessary truth. Consequently, hypothetical thought experiments provide appropriate test cases for various analyses, as we shall see below.

Even a necessary biconditional linking knowledge to some state j would probably not be sufficient for an analysis of knowledge, although just what more is required is a matter of some controversy. According to some theorists, to analyze knowledge is literally to identify the components that make up knowledge—compare a chemist who analyzes a sample to learn its chemical composition. On this interpretation of the project of analyzing knowledge, the defender of a successful analysis of knowledge will be committed to something like the metaphysical claim that what it is for S to know p is for some list of conditions involving S and p to obtain. Other theorists think of the analysis of knowledge as distinctively conceptual —to analyse knowledge is to limn the structure of the concept of knowledge. On one version of this approach, the concept knowledge is literally composed of more basic concepts, linked together by something like Boolean operators. Consequently, an analysis is subject not only to extensional accuracy, but to facts about the cognitive representation of knowledge and other epistemic notions. In practice, many epistemologists engaging in the project of analyzing knowledge leave these metaphilosophical interpretive questions unresolved; attempted analyses, and counterexamples thereto, are often proposed without its being made explicit whether the claims are intended as metaphysical or conceptual ones. In many cases, this lack of specificity may be legitimate, since all parties tend to agree that an analysis of knowledge ought at least to be extensionally correct in all metaphysically possible worlds. As we shall see, many theories have been defended and, especially, refuted, on those terms.

The attempt to analyze knowledge has received a considerable amount of attention from epistemologists, particularly in the late 20 th Century, but no analysis has been widely accepted. Some contemporary epistemologists reject the assumption that knowledge is susceptible to analysis.

1.1 The Truth Condition

1.2 the belief condition, 1.3 the justification condition, 2. lightweight knowledge, 3. the gettier problem, 4. no false lemmas, 5.1 sensitivity, 5.3 relevant alternatives, 6.1 reliabilist theories of knowledge, 6.2 causal theories of knowledge, 7. is knowledge analyzable, 8. epistemic luck, 9. methodological options, 10.1 the “aaa” evaluations, 10.2 fake barn cases, 11. knowledge first, 12. pragmatic encroachment, 13. contextualism, other internet resources, related entries, 1. knowledge as justified true belief.

There are three components to the traditional (“tripartite”) analysis of knowledge. According to this analysis, justified, true belief is necessary and sufficient for knowledge.

• S believes that p ;
• S is justified in believing that p .

The tripartite analysis of knowledge is often abbreviated as the “JTB” analysis, for “justified true belief”.

Much of the twentieth-century literature on the analysis of knowledge took the JTB analysis as its starting-point. It became something of a convenient fiction to suppose that this analysis was widely accepted throughout much of the history of philosophy. In fact, however, the JTB analysis was first articulated in the twentieth century by its attackers. [ 1 ] Before turning to influential twentieth-century arguments against the JTB theory, let us briefly consider the three traditional components of knowledge in turn.

Most epistemologists have found it overwhelmingly plausible that what is false cannot be known. For example, Hillary Clinton did not win the 2016 US Presidential election. Consequently, nobody knows that Hillary Clinton won the election. One can only know things that are true.

Sometimes when people are very confident of something that turns out to be wrong, we use the word “knows” to describe their situation. Many people expected Clinton to win the election. Speaking loosely, one might even say that many people “knew” that Clinton would win the election—until she lost. Hazlett (2010) argues on the basis of data like this that “knows” is not a factive verb. [ 2 ] Hazlett’s diagnosis is deeply controversial; most epistemologists will treat sentences like “I knew that Clinton was going to win” as a kind of exaggeration—as not literally true.

Something’s truth does not require that anyone can know or prove that it is true. Not all truths are established truths. If you flip a coin and never check how it landed, it may be true that it landed heads, even if nobody has any way to tell. Truth is a metaphysical , as opposed to epistemological , notion: truth is a matter of how things are , not how they can be shown to be. So when we say that only true things can be known, we’re not (yet) saying anything about how anyone can access the truth. As we’ll see, the other conditions have important roles to play here. Knowledge is a kind of relationship with the truth—to know something is to have a certain kind of access to a fact. [ 3 ]

The belief condition is only slightly more controversial than the truth condition. The general idea behind the belief condition is that you can only know what you believe. Failing to believe something precludes knowing it. “Belief” in the context of the JTB theory means full belief, or outright belief. In a weak sense, one might “believe” something by virtue of being pretty confident that it’s probably true—in this weak sense, someone who considered Clinton the favourite to win the election, even while recognizing a nontrivial possibility of her losing, might be said to have “believed” that Clinton would win. Outright belief is stronger (see, e.g., Fantl & McGrath 2009: 141; Nagel 2010: 413–4; Williamson 2005: 108; or Gibbons 2013: 201.). To believe outright that p , it isn’t enough to have a pretty high confidence in p ; it is something closer to a commitment or a being sure. [ 4 ]

Although initially it might seem obvious that knowing that p requires believing that p , a few philosophers have argued that knowledge without belief is indeed possible. Suppose Walter comes home after work to find out that his house has burned down. He says: “I don’t believe it”. Critics of the belief condition might argue that Walter knows that his house has burned down (he sees that it has), but, as his words indicate, he does not believe it. The standard response is that Walter’s avowal of disbelief is not literally true; what Walter wishes to convey by saying “I don’t believe it” is not that he really does not believe that his house has burned down, but rather that he finds it hard to come to terms with what he sees. If he genuinely didn’t believe it, some of his subsequent actions, such as phoning his insurance company, would be rather mysterious.

A more serious counterexample has been suggested by Colin Radford (1966). Suppose Albert is quizzed on English history. One of the questions is: “When did Queen Elizabeth die?” Albert doesn’t think he knows, but answers the question correctly. Moreover, he gives correct answers to many other questions to which he didn’t think he knew the answer. Let us focus on Albert’s answer to the question about Elizabeth:

• (E) Elizabeth died in 1603.

Radford makes the following two claims about this example:

• Albert does not believe (E).
• Albert knows (E).

Radford’s intuitions about cases like these do not seem to be idiosyncratic; Myers-Schutz & Schwitzgebel (2013) find evidence suggesting that many ordinary speakers tend to react in the way Radford suggests. In support of (a), Radford emphasizes that Albert thinks he doesn’t know the answer to the question. He doesn’t trust his answer because he takes it to be a mere guess. In support of (b), Radford argues that Albert’s answer is not at all just a lucky guess. The fact that he answers most of the questions correctly indicates that he has actually learned, and never forgotten, such historical facts.

Since he takes (a) and (b) to be true, Radford holds that belief is not necessary for knowledge. But either of (a) and (b) might be resisted. One might deny (a), arguing that Albert does have a tacit belief that (E), even though it’s not one that he thinks amounts to knowledge. David Rose and Jonathan Schaffer (2013) take this route. Alternatively, one might deny (b), arguing that Albert’s correct answer is not an expression of knowledge, perhaps because, given his subjective position, he does not have justification for believing (E). The justification condition is the topic of the next section.

Why is condition (iii) necessary? Why not say that knowledge is true belief? The standard answer is that to identify knowledge with true belief would be implausible because a belief might be true even though it is formed improperly. Suppose that William flips a coin, and confidently believes—on no particular basis—that it will land tails. If by chance the coin does land tails, then William’s belief was true; but a lucky guess such as this one is no knowledge. For William to know, his belief must in some epistemic sense be proper or appropriate: it must be justified . [ 5 ]

Socrates articulates the need for something like a justification condition in Plato’s Theaetetus , when he points out that “true opinion” is in general insufficient for knowledge. For example, if a lawyer employs sophistry to induce a jury into a belief that happens to be true, this belief is insufficiently well-grounded to constitute knowledge.

1.3.1 Approaches to Justification

There is considerable disagreement among epistemologists concerning what the relevant sort of justification here consists in. Internalists about justification think that whether a belief is justified depends wholly on states in some sense internal to the subject. According to one common such sense of “internal”, only those features of a subject’s experience which are directly or introspectively available count as “internal”—call this “access internalism”. According to another, only intrinsic states of the subject are “internal”—call this “state internalism”. See Feldman & Conee 2001 for the distinction.

Conee and Feldman present an example of an internalist view. They have it that S ’s belief that p is justified if and only if believing that p is the attitude towards p that best fits S ’s evidence, where the latter is understood to depend only on S ’s internal mental states. Conee and Feldman call their view “evidentialism”, and characterize this as the thesis that justification is wholly a matter of the subject’s evidence. Given their (not unsubstantial) assumption that what evidence a subject has is an internal matter, evidentialism implies internalism. [ 6 ] Externalists about justification think that factors external to the subject can be relevant for justification; for example, process reliabilists think that justified beliefs are those which are formed by a cognitive process which tends to produce a high proportion of true beliefs relative to false ones. [ 7 ] We shall return to the question of how reliabilist approaches bear on the analysis of knowledge in §6.1 .

1.3.2 Kinds of Justification

It is worth noting that one might distinguish between two importantly different notions of justification, standardly referred to as “propositional justification” and “doxastic justification”. (Sometimes “ ex ante ” justification and “ ex post ” justification, respectively.) [ 8 ] Unlike that between internalist and externalist approaches to justification, the distinction between propositional and doxastic justification does not represent a conflict to be resolved; it is a distinction between two distinct properties that are called “justification”. Propositional justification concerns whether a subject has sufficient reason to believe a given proposition; [ 9 ] doxastic justification concerns whether a given belief is held appropriately. [ 10 ] One common way of relating the two is to suggest that propositional justification is the more fundamental, and that doxastic justification is a matter of a subject’s having a belief that is appropriately responsive to or based on their propositional justification.

The precise relation between propositional and doxastic justification is subject to controversy, but it is uncontroversial that the two notions can come apart. Suppose that Ingrid ignores a great deal of excellent evidence indicating that a given neighborhood is dangerous, but superstitiously comes to believe that the neighborhood is dangerous when she sees a black cat crossing the street. Since forming beliefs on the basis of superstition is not an epistemically appropriate way of forming beliefs, Ingrid’s belief is not doxastically justified; nevertheless, she does have good reason to believe as she does, so she does have propositional justification for the proposition that the neighborhood is dangerous.

Since knowledge is a particularly successful kind of belief, doxastic justification is a stronger candidate for being closely related to knowledge; the JTB theory is typically thought to invoke doxastic justification (but see Lowy 1978).

Some epistemologists have suggested that there may be multiple senses of the term “knowledge”, and that not all of them require all three elements of the tripartite theory of knowledge. For example, some have argued that there is, in addition to the sense of “knowledge” gestured at above, another, weak sense of “knowledge”, that requires only true belief (see for example Hawthorne 2002 and Goldman & Olsson 2009; the latter contains additional relevant references). This view is sometimes motivated by the thought that, when we consider whether someone knows that p , or wonder which of a group of people know that p , often, we are not at all interested in whether the relevant subjects have beliefs that are justified; we just want to know whether they have the true belief. For example, as Hawthorne (2002: 253–54) points out, one might ask how many students know that Vienna is the capital of Austria; the correct answer, one might think, just is the number of students who offer “Vienna” as the answer to the corresponding question, irrespective of whether their beliefs are justified. Similarly, if you are planning a surprise party for Eugene and ask whether he knows about it, “yes” may be an appropriate answer merely on the grounds that Eugene believes that you are planning a party.

One could allow that there is a lightweight sense of knowledge that requires only true belief; another option is to decline to accept the intuitive sentences as true at face value. A theorist might, for instance, deny that sentences like “Eugene knows that you are planning a party”, or “eighteen students know that Vienna is the capital of Austria” are literally true in the envisaged situations, explaining away their apparent felicity as loose talk or hyperbole.

Even among those epistemologists who think that there is a lightweight sense of “knows” that does not require justification, most typically admit that there is also a stronger sense which does, and that it is this stronger state that is the main target of epistemological theorizing about knowledge. In what follows, we will set aside the lightweight sense, if indeed there be one, and focus on the stronger one.

Few contemporary epistemologists accept the adequacy of the JTB analysis. Although most agree that each element of the tripartite theory is necessary for knowledge, they do not seem collectively to be sufficient . There seem to be cases of justified true belief that still fall short of knowledge. Here is one kind of example:

Imagine that we are seeking water on a hot day. We suddenly see water, or so we think. In fact, we are not seeing water but a mirage, but when we reach the spot, we are lucky and find water right there under a rock. Can we say that we had genuine knowledge of water? The answer seems to be negative, for we were just lucky. (quoted from Dreyfus 1997: 292)

This example comes from the Indian philosopher Dharmottara, c. 770 CE. The 14 th -century Italian philosopher Peter of Mantua presented a similar case:

Let it be assumed that Plato is next to you and you know him to be running, but you mistakenly believe that he is Socrates, so that you firmly believe that Socrates is running. However, let it be so that Socrates is in fact running in Rome; however, you do not know this. (from Peter of Mantua’s De scire et dubitare , given in Boh 1985: 95)

Cases like these, in which justified true belief seems in some important sense disconnected from the fact, were made famous in Edmund Gettier’s 1963 paper, “Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?”. Gettier presented two cases in which a true belief is inferred from a justified false belief. He observed that, intuitively, such beliefs cannot be knowledge; it is merely lucky that they are true.

In honour of his contribution to the literature, cases like these have come to be known as “Gettier cases”. Since they appear to refute the JTB analysis, many epistemologists have undertaken to repair it: how must the analysis of knowledge be modified to accommodate Gettier cases? This is what is commonly referred to as the “Gettier problem”.

Above, we noted that one role of the justification is to rule out lucky guesses as cases of knowledge. A lesson of the Gettier problem is that it appears that even true beliefs that are justified can nevertheless be epistemically lucky in a way inconsistent with knowledge.

Epistemologists who think that the JTB approach is basically on the right track must choose between two different strategies for solving the Gettier problem. The first is to strengthen the justification condition to rule out Gettier cases as cases of justified belief. This was attempted by Roderick Chisholm; [ 11 ] we will refer to this strategy again in §7 below. The other is to amend the JTB analysis with a suitable fourth condition, a condition that succeeds in preventing justified true belief from being “gettiered”. Thus amended, the JTB analysis becomes a JTB+ X account of knowledge, where the “ X ” stands for the needed fourth condition.

Let us consider an instance of this attempt to articulate a “degettiering” condition.

According to one suggestion, the following fourth condition would do the trick:

• S ’s belief that p is not inferred from any falsehood. [ 12 ]

In Gettier’s cases, the justified true belief is inferred from a justified false belief. So condition (iv) explains why it isn’t knowledge. However, this “no false lemmas” proposal is not successful in general. There are examples of Gettier cases that need involve no inference; therefore, there are possible cases of justified true belief without knowledge, even though condition (iv) is met. Suppose, for example, that James, who is relaxing on a bench in a park, observes an apparent dog in a nearby field. So he believes

• There is a dog in the field.

Suppose further that the putative dog is actually a robot dog so perfect that it could not be distinguished from an actual dog by vision alone. James does not know that such robot dogs exist; a Japanese toy manufacturer has only recently developed them, and what James sees is a prototype that is used for testing the public’s response. Given these assumptions, (d) is of course false. But suppose further that just a few feet away from the robot dog, there is a real dog, concealed from James’s view. Given this further assumption, James’s belief in (d) is true. And since this belief is based on ordinary perceptual processes, most epistemologists will agree that it is justified. But as in Gettier’s cases, James’s belief appears to be true only as a matter of luck, in a way inconsistent with knowledge. So once again, what we have before us is a justified true belief that isn’t knowledge. [ 13 ] Arguably, this belief is directly justified by a visual experience; it is not inferred from any falsehood. If so, then the JTB account, even if supplemented with (iv) , gives us the wrong result that James knows (d).

Another case illustrating that clause (iv) won’t do the job is the well-known Barn County case (Goldman 1976). Suppose there is a county in the Midwest with the following peculiar feature. The landscape next to the road leading through that county is peppered with barn-facades: structures that from the road look exactly like barns. Observation from any other viewpoint would immediately reveal these structures to be fakes: devices erected for the purpose of fooling unsuspecting motorists into believing in the presence of barns. Suppose Henry is driving along the road that leads through Barn County. Naturally, he will on numerous occasions form false beliefs in the presence of barns. Since Henry has no reason to suspect that he is the victim of organized deception, these beliefs are justified. Now suppose further that, on one of those occasions when he believes there is a barn over there, he happens to be looking at the one and only real barn in the county. This time, his belief is justified and true. But since its truth is the result of luck, it is exceedingly plausible to judge that Henry’s belief is not an instance of knowledge. Yet condition (iv) is met in this case. His belief is not the result of any inference from a falsehood. Once again, we see that (iv) does not succeed as a general solution to the Gettier problem.

5. Modal Conditions

Another candidate fourth condition on knowledge is sensitivity . Sensitivity, to a first approximation, is this counterfactual relation:

S ’s belief that p is sensitive if and only if, if p were false, S would not believe that p . [ 14 ]

A sensitivity condition on knowledge was defended by Robert Nozick (1981). Given a Lewisian (Lewis 1973) semantics for counterfactual conditionals, the sensitivity condition is equivalent to the requirement that, in the nearest possible worlds in which not- p , the subject does not believe that p .

One motivation for including a sensitivity condition in an analysis of knowledge is that there seems to be an intuitive sense in which knowledge requires not merely being correct, but tracking the truth in other possible circumstances. This approach seems to be a plausible diagnosis of what goes wrong in at least some Gettier cases. For example, in Dharmottara’s desert water case, your belief that there is water in a certain location appears to be insensitive to the fact of the water. For if there were no water there, you would have held the same belief on the same grounds— viz. , the mirage.

However, it is doubtful that a sensitivity condition can account for the phenomenon of Gettier cases in general. It does so only in cases in which, had the proposition in question been false, it would have been believed anyway. But, as Saul Kripke (2011: 167–68) has pointed out, not all Gettier cases are like this. Consider for instance the Barn County case mentioned above. Henry looks at a particular location where there happens to be a barn and believes there to be a barn there. The sensitivity condition rules out this belief as knowledge only if, were there no barn there, Henry would still have believed there was. But this counterfactual may be false, depending on how the Barn County case is set up. For instance, it is false if the particular location Henry is examining is not one that would have been suitable for the erecting of a barn façade. Relatedly, as Kripke has also indicated (2011: 186), if we suppose that barn facades are always green, but genuine barns are always red, Henry’s belief that he sees a red barn will be sensitive, even though his belief that he sees a barn will not. (We assume Henry is unaware that colour signifies anything relevant.) Since intuitively, the former belief looks to fall short of knowledge in just the same way as the latter, a sensitivity condition will only handle some of the intuitive problems deriving from Gettier cases.

Most epistemologists today reject sensitivity requirements on knowledge. The chief motivation against a sensitivity condition is that, given plausible assumptions, it leads to unacceptable implications called “abominable conjunctions”. [ 15 ] To see this, suppose first that skepticism about ordinary knowledge is false—ordinary subjects know at least many of the things we ordinarily take them to know. For example, George, who can see and use his hands perfectly well, knows that he has hands. This is of course perfectly consistent with a sensitivity condition on knowledge, since if George did not have hands—if they’d been recently chopped off, for instance—he would not believe that he had hands.

Now imagine a skeptical scenario in which George does not have hands. Suppose that George is the victim of a Cartesian demon, deceiving him into believing that he has hands. If George were in such a scenario, of course, he would falsely believe himself not to be in such a scenario. So given the sensitivity condition, George cannot know that he is not in such a scenario.

Although these two verdicts—the knowledge-attributing one about ordinary knowledge, and the knowledge-denying one about the skeptical scenario—are arguably each intuitive, it is intuitively problematic to hold them together. Their conjunction is, in DeRose’s term, abominable: “George knows that he has hands, but he doesn’t know that he’s not the handless victim of a Cartesian demon”. A sensitivity condition on knowledge, combined with the nonskeptical claim that there is ordinary knowledge, seems to imply such abominable conjunctions. [ 16 ]

Most contemporary epistemologists have taken considerations like these to be sufficient reason to reject sensitivity conditions. [ 17 ] However, see Ichikawa (2011a) for an interpretation and endorsement of the sensitivity condition according to which it may avoid commitment to abominable conjunctions.

Although few epistemologists today endorse a sensitivity condition on knowledge, the idea that knowledge requires a subject to stand in a particular modal relation to the proposition known remains a popular one. In his 1999 paper, “How to Defeat Opposition to Moore”, Ernest Sosa proposed that a safety condition ought to take the role that sensitivity was intended to play. Sosa characterized safety as the counterfactual contrapositive of sensitivity.

Sensitivity: If p were false, S would not believe that p .

Safety: If S were to believe that p , p would not be false. [ 18 ]

Although contraposition is valid for the material conditional \((A \supset B\) iff \(\mathord{\sim} B \supset \mathord{\sim}A)\), Sosa suggests that it is invalid for counterfactuals, which is why sensitivity and safety are not equivalent. An example of a safe belief that is not sensitive, according to Sosa, is the belief that a distant skeptical scenario does not obtain. If we stipulate that George, discussed above, has never been at risk of being the victim of a Cartesian demon—because, say, Cartesian demons do not exist in George’s world—then George’s belief that he is not such a victim is a safe one, even though we saw in the previous section that it could not be sensitive. Notice that although we stipulated that George is not at risk of deceit by Cartesian demons, we did not stipulate that George himself had any particular access to this fact. Unless he does, safety, like sensitivity, will be an externalist condition on knowledge in the “access” sense. It is also externalist in the “state” sense, since the truth of the relevant counterfactuals will depend on features outside the subject.

Characterizing safety in these counterfactual terms depends on substantive assumptions about the semantics of counterfactual conditionals. [ 19 ] If we were to accept, for instance, David Lewis’s or Robert Stalnaker’s treatment of counterfactuals, including a strong centering condition according to which the actual world is always uniquely closest, all true beliefs would count as safe according to the counterfactual analysis of safety. [ 20 ] Sosa intends the relevant counterfactuals to be making a stronger claim, requiring roughly that in all nearby worlds in which S believes that p , p is not false.

Rather than resting on a contentious treatment of counterfactuals, then, it may be most perspicuous to understand the safety condition more directly in these modal terms, as Sosa himself often does:

In all nearby worlds where S believes that p , p is not false.

Whether a JTB+safety analysis of knowledge could be successful is somewhat difficult to evaluate, given the vagueness of the stated “nearby” condition. The status of potential counterexamples will not always be straightforward to apply. For example, Juan Comesaña (2005) presents a case he takes to refute the requirement that knowledge be safe. In Comesaña’s example, the host of a Halloween party enlists Judy to direct guests to the party. Judy’s instructions are to give everyone the same directions, which are in fact accurate, but that if she sees Michael, the party will be moved to another location. (The host does not want Michael to find the party.) Suppose Michael never shows up. If a given guest does not, but very nearly does, decide to wear a very realistic Michael costume to the party, then his belief, based in Judy’s testimony, about the whereabouts of the party will be true, but could, Comesaña says, easily have been false. (Had he merely made a slightly different choice about his costume, he would have been deceived.) Comesaña describes the case as a counterexample to a safety condition on knowledge. However, it is open to a safety theorist to argue that the relevant skeptical scenario, though possible and in some sense nearby, is not near enough in the relevant respect to falsify the safety condition. Such a theorist would, if she wanted the safety condition to deliver clear verdicts, face the task of articulating just what the relevant notion of similarity amounts to (see also Bogardus 2014).

Not all further clarifications of a safety condition will be suitable for the use of the latter in an analysis of knowledge. In particular, if the respect of similarity that is relevant for safety is itself explicated in terms of knowledge, then an analysis of knowledge which made reference to safety would be in this respect circular. This, for instance, is how Timothy Williamson characterizes safety. He writes, in response to a challenge by Alvin Goldman:

In many cases, someone with no idea of what knowledge is would be unable to determine whether safety obtained. Although they could use the principle that safety entails truth to exclude some cases, those are not the interesting ones. Thus Goldman will be disappointed when he asks what the safety account predicts about various examples in which conflicting considerations pull in different directions. One may have to decide whether safety obtains by first deciding whether knowledge obtains, rather than vice versa. (Williamson 2009: 305)

Because safety is understood only in terms of knowledge, safety so understood cannot serve in an analysis of knowledge. Nor is it Williamson’s intent that it should do so; as we will see below, Williamson rejects the project of analyzing knowledge. This is of course consistent with claiming that safety is a necessary condition on knowledge in the straightforward sense that the latter entails the former.

A third approach to modal conditions on knowledge worthy of mention is the requirement that for a subject to know that p , she must rule out all “relevant alternatives” to p . Significant early proponents of this view include Stine 1976, Goldman 1976, and Dretske 1981. The idea behind this approach to knowledge is that for a subject to know that p , she must be able to “rule out” competing hypotheses to p —but that only some subset of all not- p possibilities are “relevant” for knowledge attributions. Consider for example, the differences between the several models that have been produced of Apple’s iPhone. To be able to know by sight that a particular phone is the 6S model, it is natural to suppose that one must be able to tell the difference between the iPhone 6S and the iPhone 7; the possibility that the phone in question is a newer model is a relevant alternative. But perhaps there are other possibilities in which the belief that there is an iPhone 6S is false that do not need to be ruled out—perhaps, for instance, the possibility that the phone is not an iPhone, but a Chinese knock-off, needn’t be considered. Likewise for the possibility that there is no phone at all, the phone-like appearances being the product of a Cartesian demon’s machinations. Notice that in these cases and many of the others that motivate the relevant-alternatives approach to knowledge, there is an intuitive sense in which the relevant alternatives tend to be more similar to actuality than irrelevant ones. As such, the relevant alternatives theory and safety-theoretic approaches are very similar, both in verdict and in spirit. As in the case of a safety theorist, the relevant alternatives theorist faces a challenge in attempting to articulate what determines which possibilities are relevant in a given situation. [ 21 ]

6. Doing Without Justification?

As we have seen, one motivation for including a justification condition in an analysis of knowledge was to prevent lucky guesses from counting as knowledge. However, the Gettier problem shows that including a justification condition does not rule out all epistemically problematic instances of luck. Consequently, some epistemologists have suggested that positing a justification condition on knowledge was a false move; perhaps it is some other condition that ought to be included along with truth and belief as components of knowledge. This kind of strategy was advanced by a number of authors from the late 1960s to the early 1980s, although there has been relatively little discussion of it since. [ 22 ] Kornblith 2008 provides a notable exception.

One candidate property for such a state is reliability . Part of what is problematic about lucky guesses is precisely that they are so lucky: such guesses are formed in a way such that it is unlikely that they should turn out true. According to a certain form of knowledge reliabilism, it is unreliability, not lack of justification, which prevents such beliefs from amounting to knowledge. Reliabilist theories of knowledge incorporate this idea into a reliability condition on knowledge. [ 23 ] Here is an example of such a view:

Simple K-Reliabilism:

S knows that p iff

• S ’s belief that p was produced by a reliable cognitive process.

Simple K-Reliabilism replaces the justification clause in the traditional tripartite theory with a reliability clause. As we have seen, reliabilists about justification think that justification for a belief consists in a genesis in a reliable cognitive process. Given this view, Simple K-Reliabilism and the JTB theory are equivalent. However, the present proposal is silent on justification. Goldman 1979 is the seminal defense of reliabilism about justification; reliabilism is extended to knowledge in Goldman 1986. See Goldman 2011 for a survey of reliabilism in general.

In the following passage, Fred Dretske articulates how an approach like K-reliabilism might be motivated:

Those who think knowledge requires something other than , or at least more than , reliably produced true belief, something (usually) in the way of justification for the belief that one’s reliably produced beliefs are being reliably produced, have, it seems to me, an obligation to say what benefits this justification is supposed to confer…. Who needs it, and why? If an animal inherits a perfectly reliable belief-generating mechanism, and it also inherits a disposition, everything being equal, to act on the basis of the beliefs so generated, what additional benefits are conferred by a justification that the beliefs are being produced in some reliable way? If there are no additional benefits, what good is this justification? Why should we insist that no one can have knowledge without it? (Dretske 1989: 95)

According to Dretske, reliable cognitive processes convey information, and thus endow not only humans, but (nonhuman) animals as well, with knowledge. He writes:

I wanted a characterization that would at least allow for the possibility that animals (a frog, rat, ape, or my dog) could know things without my having to suppose them capable of the more sophisticated intellectual operations involved in traditional analyses of knowledge. (Dretske 1985: 177)

It does seem odd to think of frogs, rats, or dogs as having justified or unjustified beliefs. Yet attributing knowledge to animals is certainly in accord with our ordinary practice of using the word “knowledge”. So if, with Dretske, we want an account of knowledge that includes animals among the knowing subjects, we might want to abandon the traditional JTB account in favor of something like K-reliabilism.

Another move in a similar spirit to K-Reliabilism replaces the justification clause in the JTB theory with a condition requiring a causal connection between the belief and the fact believed; [ 24 ] this is the approach of Goldman (1967, 1976). [ 25 ] Goldman’s own causal theory is a sophisticated one; we will not engage with its details here. See Goldman’s papers. Instead, consider a simplified causal theory of knowledge, which illustrates the main motivation behind causal theories.

Simple Causal Theory of Knowledge:

• S ’s belief that p is caused by the fact that p .

Do approaches like Simple K-Reliabilism or the Simple Causal Theory fare any better than the JTB theory with respect to Gettier cases? Although some proponents have suggested they do—see e.g., Dretske 1985: 179; Plantinga 1993: 48—many of the standard counterexamples to the JTB theory appear to refute these views as well. Consider again the case of the barn facades. Henry sees a real barn, and that’s why he believes there is a barn nearby. This belief is formed by perceptual processes, which are by-and-large reliable: only rarely do they lead him into false beliefs. So it looks like the case meets the conditions of Simple K-Reliabilism just as much as it does those of the JTB theory. It is also a counterexample to the causal theory, since the real barn Henry perceives is causally responsible for his belief. There is reason to doubt, therefore, that shifting from justification to a condition like reliability will escape the Gettier problem. [ 26 ] Gettier cases seem to pose as much of a problem for K-reliabilism and causal theories as for the JTB account. Neither theory, unless amended with a clever “degettiering” clause, succeeds in stating sufficient conditions for knowledge. [ 27 ]

Gettier’s paper launched a flurry of philosophical activity by epistemologists attempting to revise the JTB theory, usually by adding one or more conditions, to close the gap between knowledge and justified true belief. We have seen already how several of these attempts failed. When intuitive counterexamples were proposed to each theory, epistemologists often responded by amending their theories, complicating the existing conditions or adding new ones. Much of this dialectic is chronicled thoroughly by Shope 1983, to which the interested reader is directed.

After some decades of such iterations, some epistemologists began to doubt that progress was being made. In her 1994 paper, “The Inescapability of Gettier Problems”, Linda Zagzebski suggested that no analysis sufficiently similar to the JTB analysis could ever avoid the problems highlighted by Gettier’s cases. More precisely, Zagzebski argued, any analysans of the form JTB+ X , where X is a condition or list of conditions logically independent from justification, truth, and belief, would be susceptible to Gettier-style counterexamples. She offered what was in effect a recipe for constructing Gettier cases:

• (1) Start with an example of a case where a subject has a justified false belief that also meets condition X .
• (2) Modify the case so that the belief is true merely by luck.

Zagzebski suggests that the resultant case will always represent an intuitive lack of knowledge. So any non-redundant addition to the JTB theory will leave the Gettier problem unsolved. [ 28 ] We may illustrate the application of the recipe using one of Zagzebski’s own examples, refuting Alvin Plantinga’s (1996) attempt to solve the Gettier problem by appending to the JTB analysis a condition requiring that the subject’s faculties be working properly in an appropriate environment.

In step one of Zagzebski’s procedure, we imagine a case in which a subject’s faculties are working properly in an appropriate environment, but the ensuing belief, though justified, is false. Zagzebski invites us to imagine that Mary has very good eyesight—good enough for her cognitive faculties typically to yield knowledge that her husband is sitting in the living room. Such faculties, even when working properly in suitable environments, however, are not infallible—if they were, the condition would not be independent from truth—so we can imagine a case in which they go wrong. Perhaps this is an unusual instance in which Mary’s husband’s brother, who looks a lot like the husband, is in the living room, and Mary concludes, on the basis of the proper function of her visual capacity, that her husband is in the living room. This belief, since false, is certainly not knowledge.

In step two, we imagine Mary’s misidentification of the occupant of the living room as before, but add to the case that the husband is, by luck, also in the living room. Now Mary’s belief is true, but intuitively, it is no more an instance of knowledge than the false belief in the first step was.

Since the recipe is a general one, it appears to be applicable to any condition one might add to the JTB theory, so long as it does not itself entail truth. The argument generalizes against all “non-redundant” JTB+ X analyses.

One potential response to Zagzebski’s argument, and the failure of the Gettier project more generally, would be to conclude that knowledge is unanalyzable. Although it would represent a significant departure from much analytic epistemology of the late twentieth century, it is not clear that this is ultimately a particularly radical suggestion. Few concepts of interest have proved susceptible to traditional analysis (Fodor 1998). One prominent approach to knowledge in this vein is discussed in §11 below.

Another possible line is the one mentioned in §2 —to strengthen the justification condition to rule out Gettier cases as justified. In order for this strategy to prevent Zagzebski’s recipe from working, one would need to posit a justification condition that precludes the possibility of step one above—the only obvious way to do this is for justification to entail truth. If it does, then it will of course be impossible to start with a case that has justified false belief. This kind of approach is not at all mainstream, but it does have its defenders—see e.g., Sturgeon 1993 and Merricks 1995. Sutton 2007 and Littlejohn 2012 defend factive approaches to justification on other grounds.

A third avenue of response would be to consider potential analyses of knowledge that are not of the nonredundant form JTB+ X . Indeed, we have already seen some such attempts, albeit unsuccessful ones. For instance, the causal theory of knowledge includes a clause requiring that the belief that p be caused by the fact that p . This condition entails both belief and truth, and so is not susceptible to Zagzebski’s recipe. (As we’ve seen, it falls to Gettier-style cases on other grounds.) One family of strategies along these lines would build into an analysis of knowledge a prohibition on epistemic luck directly; let us consider this sort of move in more detail.

If the problem illustrated by Gettier cases is that JTB and JTB+ analyses are compatible with a degree of epistemic luck that is inconsistent with knowledge, a natural idea is to amend one’s analysis of knowledge by including an explicit “anti-luck” condition. Zagzebski herself outlines this option in her 1994 (p. 72). Unger 1968 gives an early analysis of this kind. For example:

• S ’s belief is not true merely by luck.

The first thing to note about this analysis is that it is “redundant” in the sense described in the previous section; the fourth condition entails the first two. [ 29 ] So its surface form notwithstanding, it actually represents a significant departure from the JTB+ analyses. Rather than composing knowledge from various independent components, this analysis demands instead that the epistemic states are related to one another in substantive ways.

The anti-luck condition, like the safety condition of the previous section, is vague as stated. For one thing, whether a belief is true by luck comes in degrees—just how much luck does it take to be inconsistent with knowledge? Furthermore, it seems, independently of questions about degrees of luck, we must distinguish between different kinds of luck. Not all epistemic luck is incompatible with having knowledge. Suppose someone enters a raffle and wins an encyclopedia, then reads various of its entries, correcting many of their previous misapprehensions. There is a straightforward sense in which the resultant beliefs are true only by luck—for our subject was very lucky to have won that raffle—but this is not the sort of luck, intuitively, that interferes with the possession of knowledge. [ 30 ] Furthermore, there is a sense in which our ordinary perceptual beliefs are true by luck, since it is possible for us to have been the victim of a Cartesian demon and so we are, in some sense, lucky not to be. But unless we are to capitulate to radical skepticism, it seems that this sort of luck, too, ought to be considered compatible with knowledge. [ 31 ]

Like the safety condition, then, a luck condition ends up being difficult to apply in some cases. We might try to clarify the luck condition as involving a distinctive notion of epistemic luck—but unless we were able to explicate that notion—in effect, to distinguish between the two kinds of luck mentioned above—without recourse to knowledge, it is not clear that the ensuing analysis of knowledge could be both informative and noncircular.

As our discussion so far makes clear, one standard way of evaluating attempted analyses of knowledge has given a central role to testing it against intuitions against cases. In the late twentieth century, the perceived lack of progress towards an acceptable analysis—including the considerations attributed to Zagzebski in §7 above—led some epistemologists to pursue other methodological strategies. (No doubt, a wider philosophical trend away from “conceptual analysis” more broadly also contributed to this change.) Some of the more recent attempts to analyse knowledge have been motivated in part by broader considerations about the role of knowledge, or of discourse about knowledge.

One important view of this sort is that defended by Edward Craig (1990). Craig’s entry-point into the analysis of knowledge was not intuitions about cases, but rather a focus on the role that the concept of knowledge plays for humans. In particular, Craig suggested that the point of using the category of knowledge was for people to flag reliable informants—to help people know whom to trust in matters epistemic. Craig defends an account of knowledge that is designed to fill this role, even though it is susceptible to intuitive counterexamples. The plausibility of such accounts, with a less intuitive extension but with a different kind of theoretical justification, is a matter of controversy.

Another view worth mentioning in this context is that of Hilary Kornblith (2002), which has it that knowledge is a natural kind, to be analysed the same way other scientific kinds are. Intuition has a role to play in identifying paradigms, but generalizing from there is an empirical, scientific matter, and intuitive counterexamples are to be expected.

The “knowledge first” stance is also connected to these methodological issues. See §11 below.

10. Virtue-Theoretic Approaches

The virtue-theoretic approach to knowledge is in some respects similar to the safety and anti-luck approaches. Indeed, Ernest Sosa, one of the most prominent authors of the virtue-theoretic approach, developed it from his previous work on safety. The virtue approach treats knowledge as a particularly successful or valuable form of belief, and explicates what it is to be knowledge in such terms. Like the anti-luck theory, a virtue-theoretic theory leaves behind the JTB+ project of identifying knowledge with a truth-functional combination of independent epistemic properties; knowledge, according to this approach, requires a certain non-logical relationship between belief and truth.

Sosa has often (e.g., Sosa 2007: ch. 2) made use of an analogy of a skilled archer shooting at a target; we may find it instructive as well. Here are two ways in which an archer’s shot might be evaluated:

• Was the shot successful? Did it hit its target?
• Did the shot’s execution manifest the archer’s skill? Was it produced in a way that makes it likely to succeed?

The kind of success at issue in (1), Sosa calls accuracy . The kind of skill discussed in (2), Sosa calls adroitness . A shot is adroit if it is produced skillfully. Adroit shots needn’t be accurate, as not all skilled shots succeed. And accurate shots needn’t be adroit, as some unskilled shots are lucky.

In addition to accuracy and adroitness, Sosa suggests that there is another respect in which a shot may be evaluated, relating the two. This, Sosa calls aptness .

• Did the shot’s success manifest the archer’s skill?

A shot is apt if it is accurate because adroit. Aptness entails, but requires more than, the conjunction of accuracy and adroitness, for a shot might be both successful and skillful without being apt. For example, if a skillful shot is diverted by an unexpected gust of wind, then redirected towards the target by a second lucky gust, its ultimate accuracy does not manifest the skill, but rather reflects the lucky coincidence of the wind.

Sosa suggests that this “AAA” model of evaluation is applicable quite generally for the evaluation of any action or object with a characteristic aim. In particular, it is applicable to belief with respect to its aim at truth:

• A belief is accurate if and only if it is true.
• A belief is adroit if and only if it is produced skillfully. [ 32 ]
• A belief is apt if and only if it is true in a way manifesting, or attributable to, the believer’s skill.

Sosa identifies knowledge with apt belief, so understood. [ 33 ] Knowledge entails both truth (accuracy) and justification (adroitness), on this view, but they are not merely independent components out of which knowledge is truth-functionally composed. It requires that the skill explain the success. This is in some respects similar to the anti-luck condition we have examined above, in that it legislates that the relation between justification and truth be no mere coincidence. However, insofar as Sosa’s “AAA” model is generally applicable in a way going beyond epistemology, there are perhaps better prospects for understanding the relevant notion of aptness in a way independent of understanding knowledge itself than we found for the notion of epistemic luck.

Understanding knowledge as apt belief accommodates Gettier’s traditional counterexamples to the JTB theory rather straightforwardly. When Smith believes that either Jones owns a Ford or Brown is in Barcelona, the accuracy of his belief is not attributable to his inferential skills (which the case does not call into question). Rather, unlucky circumstances (the misleading evidence about Jones’s car) have interfered with his skillful cognitive performance, just as the first diverting gust of wind interfered with the archer’s shot. Compensating for the unlucky interference, a lucky circumstance (Brown’s coincidental presence in Barcelona) renders the belief true after all, similar to the way in which the second gust of wind returns the archer’s arrow back onto the proper path towards the target.

Fake barn cases, by contrast, may be less easily accommodated by Sosa’s AAA approach. When Henry looks at the only real barn in a countryside full of barn facades, he uses a generally reliable perceptual faculty for recognizing barns, and he goes right in this instance. Suppose we say the accuracy of Henry’s belief manifests his competence as a perceiver. If so, we would have to judge that his belief is apt and therefore qualifies as an instance of knowledge. That would be a problematic outcome because the intuition the case is meant to elicit is that Henry does not have knowledge. There are three ways in which an advocate of the AAA approach might respond to this difficulty.

First, AAA advocates might argue that, although Henry has a general competence to recognize barns, he is deprived of this ability in his current environment, precisely because he is in fake barn county. According to a second, subtly different strategy, Henry retains barn-recognition competence, his current location notwithstanding, but, due to the ubiquity of fake barns, his competence does not manifest itself in his belief, since its truth is attributable more to luck than to his skill in recognizing barns. [ 34 ] Third, Sosa’s own response to the problem is to bite the bullet. Judging Henry’s belief to be apt, Sosa accepts the outcome that Henry knows there is a barn before him. He attempts to explain away the counterintuitiveness of this result by emphasizing the lack of a further epistemically valuable state, which he calls “reflective knowledge” (see Sosa 2007: 31–32).

Not every concept is analyzable into more fundamental terms. This is clear both upon reflection on examples—what analysis could be offered of hydrogen , animal , or John F. Kennedy ?—and on grounds of infinite regress. Why should we think that knowledge has an analysis? In recent work, especially his 2000 book Knowledge and Its Limits , Timothy Williamson has argued that the project of analyzing knowledge was a mistake. His reason is not that he thinks that knowledge is an uninteresting state, or that the notion of knowledge is somehow fundamentally confused. On the contrary, Williamson thinks that knowledge is among the most fundamental psychological and epistemological states there are. As such, it is a mistake to analyze knowledge in terms of other, more fundamental epistemic notions, because knowledge itself is, in at least many cases, more fundamental. As Williamson puts it, we should put “knowledge first”. Knowledge might figure into some analyses, but it will do so in the analysans, not in the analysandum. [ 35 ]

There is no very straightforward argument for this conclusion; its case consists largely in the attempted demonstration of the theoretical success of the knowledge first stance. Weighing these benefits against those of more traditional approaches to knowledge is beyond the scope of this article. [ 36 ]

Although Williamson denies that knowledge is susceptible to analysis in the sense at issue in this article, he does think that there are interesting and informative ways to characterize knowledge. For example, Williamson accepts these claims:

• Knowledge is the most general factive mental state.
• S knows that p if and only if S ’s total evidence includes the proposition that p .

Williamson is also careful to emphasize that the rejection of the project of analyzing knowledge in no way suggests that there are not interesting and informative necessary or sufficient conditions on knowledge. The traditional ideas that knowledge entails truth, belief, and justification are all consistent with the knowledge first project. And Williamson (2000: 126) is explicit in endorsement of a safety requirement on knowledge—just not one that serves as part of an analysis.

One point worth recognizing, then, is that one need not engage in the ambitious project of attempting to analyze knowledge in order to have contact with a number of interesting questions about which factors are and are not relevant for whether a subject has knowledge. In the next section, we consider an important contemporary debate about whether pragmatic factors are relevant for knowledge.

Traditional approaches to knowledge have it that knowledge has to do with factors like truth and justification. Whether knowledge requires safety, sensitivity, reliability, or independence from certain kinds of luck has proven controversial. But something that all of these potential conditions on knowledge seem to have in common is that they have some sort of intimate connection with the truth of the relevant belief. Although it is admittedly difficult to make the relevant connection precise, there is an intuitive sense in which every factor we’ve examined as a candidate for being relevant to knowledge has something to do with truth of the would-be knowledgeable beliefs.

In recent years, some epistemologists have argued that focus on such truth-relevant factors leaves something important out of our picture of knowledge. In particular, they have argued that distinctively pragmatic factors are relevant to whether a subject has knowledge. Call this thesis “pragmatic encroachment”: [ 37 ]

Pragmatic Encroachment:

A difference in pragmatic circumstances can constitute a difference in knowledge.

The constitution claim here is important; it is trivial that differences in pragmatic circumstances can cause differences in knowledge. For example, if the question of whether marijuana use is legal in Connecticut is more important to Sandra than it is to Daniel, Sandra is more likely to seek out evidence, and come to knowledge, than Daniel is. This uninteresting claim is not what is at issue. Pragmatic encroachment theorists think that the practical importance itself can make for a change in knowledge, without reliance on such downstream effects as a difference in evidence-gathering activity. Sandra and Daniel might in some sense be in the same epistemic position , where the only difference is that the question is more important to Sandra. This difference, according to pragmatic encroachment, might make it the case that Daniel knows, but Sandra does not. [ 38 ]

Pragmatic encroachment can be motivated by intuitions about cases. Jason Stanley’s 2005 book Knowledge and Practical Interests argues that it is the best explanation for pairs of cases like the following, where the contrasted cases are evidentially alike, but differ pragmatically:

Low Stakes . Hannah and her wife Sarah are driving home on a Friday afternoon. They plan to stop at the bank on the way home to deposit their paychecks. It is not important that they do so, as they have no impending bills. But as they drive past the bank, they notice that the lines inside are very long, as they often are on Friday afternoons. Realizing that it wasn’t very important that their paychecks are deposited right away, Hannah says, “I know the bank will be open tomorrow, since I was there just two weeks ago on Saturday morning. So we can deposit our paychecks tomorrow morning”.

High Stakes . Hannah and her wife Sarah are driving home on a Friday afternoon. They plan to stop at the bank on the way home to deposit their paychecks. Since they have an impending bill coming due, and very little in their account, it is very important that they deposit their paychecks by Saturday. Hannah notes that she was at the bank two weeks before on a Saturday morning, and it was open. But, as Sarah points out, banks do change their hours. Hannah says, “I guess you’re right. I don’t know that the bank will be open tomorrow”. (Stanley 2005: 3–4)

Stanley argues that the moral of cases like these is that in general, the more important the question of whether p , the harder it is to know that p . Other, more broadly theoretical, arguments for pragmatic encroachment have been offered as well. Fantl & McGrath (2009) argue that encroachment follows from fallibilism and plausible principles linking knowledge and action, while Weatherson 2012 argues that the best interpretation of decision theory requires encroachment.

Pragmatic encroachment is not an analysis of knowledge; it is merely the claim that pragmatic factors are relevant for determining whether a subject’s belief constitutes knowledge. Some, but not all, pragmatic encroachment theorists will endorse a necessary biconditional that might be interpreted as an analysis of knowledge. For example, a pragmatic encroachment theorist might claim that:

S knows that p if and only if no epistemic weakness vis-á-vis p prevents S from properly using p as a reason for action.

This connection between knowledge and action is similar to ones endorsed by Fantl & McGrath (2009), but it is stronger than anything they argue for.

Pragmatic encroachment on knowledge is deeply controversial. Patrick Rysiew (2001), Jessica Brown (2006), and Mikkel Gerken (forthcoming) have argued that traditional views about the nature of knowledge are sufficient to account for the data mentioned above. Michael Blome-Tillmann (2009a) argues that it has unacceptably counterintuitive results, like the truth of such claims as S knows that p , but if it were more important, she wouldn’t know , or S knew that p until the question became important . Stanley (2005) offers strategies for accepting such consequences. Other, more theoretical arguments against encroachment have also been advanced; see for example Ichikawa, Jarvis, and Rubin (2012), who argue that pragmatic encroachment is at odds with important tenets of belief-desire psychology.

One final topic standing in need of treatment is contextualism about knowledge attributions, according to which the word “knows” and its cognates are context-sensitive. The relationship between contextualism and the analysis of knowledge is not at all straightforward. Arguably, they have different subject matters (the former a word, and the latter a mental state). Nevertheless, the methodology of theorizing about knowledge may be helpfully informed by semantic considerations about the language in which such theorizing takes place. And if contextualism is correct, then a theorist of knowledge must attend carefully to the potential for ambiguity.

It is uncontroversial that many English words are context-sensitive. The most obvious cases are indexicals, such as “I”, “you”, “here”, and “now” (David Kaplan 1977 gives the standard view of indexicals).

The word “you” refers to a different person, depending on the conversational context in which it is uttered; in particular, it depends on the person one is addressing. Other context-sensitive terms are gradable adjectives like “tall”—how tall something must be to count as “tall” depends on the conversational context—and quantifiers like “everyone”—which people count as part of “everyone” depends on the conversational context. Contextualists about “knows” think that this verb belongs on the list of context-sensitive terms. A consequence of contextualism is that sentences containing “knows” may express distinct propositions, depending on the conversational contexts in which they’re uttered. This feature allows contextualists to offer an effective, though not uncontroversial, response to skepticism. For a more thorough overview of contextualism and its bearing on skepticism, see Rysiew 2011 or Ichikawa forthcoming-b.

Contextualists have modeled this context-sensitivity in various ways. Keith DeRose 2009 has suggested that there is a context-invariant notion of “strength of epistemic position”, and that how strong a position one must be in in order to satisfy “knows” varies from context to context; this is in effect to understand the semantics of knowledge attributions much as we understand that of gradable adjectives. (How much height one must have to satisfy “tall” also varies from context to context.) Cohen 1988 adopts a contextualist treatment of “relevant alternatives” theory, according to which, in skeptical contexts, but not ordinary ones, skeptical possibilities are relevant. This aspect is retained in the view of Lewis 1996, which characterizes a contextualist approach that is more similar to quantifiers and modals. Blome-Tillmann 2009b and Ichikawa forthcoming-a defend and develop the Lewisian view in different ways.

Contextualism and pragmatic encroachment represent different strategies for addressing some of the same “shifty” patterns of intuitive data. (In fact, contextualism was generally developed first; pragmatic encroachment theorists were motivated in part by the attempt to explain some of the patterns contextualists were interested in without contextualism’s semantic commitments.) Although this represents a sense in which they tend to be rival approaches, contextualism and pragmatic encroachment are by no means inconsistent. One could think that “knows” requires the satisfaction of different standards in different contexts, and also think that the subject’s practical situation is relevant for whether a given standard is satisfied.

Like pragmatic encroachment, contextualism is deeply controversial. Critics have argued that it posits an implausible kind of semantic error in ordinary speakers who do not recognize the putative context-sensitivity—see Schiffer 1996 and Greenough & Kindermann forthcoming—and that it is at odds with plausible theoretical principles involving knowledge—see Hawthorne 2003, Williamson 2005, and Worsnip forthcoming. In addition, some of the arguments that are used to undercut the data motivating pragmatic encroachment are also taken to undermine the case for contextualism; see again Rysiew 2001 and Brown 2006.

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For the 2012 revision, we are grateful to Kurt Sylvan for extremely detailed and constructive comments on multiple drafts of this entry. Thanks also to an anonymous referee for additional helpful suggestions. For the 2017 revision, thanks to Clayton Littlejohn, Jennifer Nagel, and Scott Sturgeon for helpful and constructive feedback and suggestions. Thanks to Ben Bayer, Kenneth Ehrenberg, and Mark Young for drawing our attention to errors in the previous version.

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How Indigenous knowledge advances modern science and technology

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Throughout history, Indigenous peoples have been responsible for the development of many technologies and have substantially contributed to science.

Science is the pursuit of knowledge. Approaches to gathering that knowledge are culturally relative. Indigenous science incorporates traditional knowledge and Indigenous perspectives, while non-Indigenous scientific approaches are commonly recognized as Western science. Together, they contribute substantially to modern science.

Although the value of integrating Indigenous science with Western science has been recognized, we have only begun to scratch the surface of its benefits.

Indigenous perspectives are holistic and founded upon interconnectedness, reciprocity and the utmost respect for nature. Both Western and Indigenous science approaches and perspectives have their strengths and can greatly complement one another .

As an Indigenous scientist who specializes in combining traditional ecological knowledge with wildlife ecology research , I have come across many examples where blending both approaches has resulted in excellent contributions to modern science.

Roots of food and medicine

For centuries, Indigenous people’s lives depended on their knowledge about the environment . Many plant species — including three-fifths of the crops now in cultivation and enjoyed across the globe — were domesticated by Indigenous peoples in North, Central and South America. Corn, squash, beans, potatoes and peppers are just a few examples of foods that now contribute vastly to global cuisine!

Indigenous knowledge about the medicinal properties of plants has been instrumental in pharmacological development. For example, as settlers arrived in North America, Indigenous people helped newcomers cure life-threatening scurvy through conifer-needle tonics that were rich in vitamin C.

The active ingredient in the pain reliever Aspirin, acetylsalicylic acid, was first discovered by Indigenous people who utilized the bark of the willow tree. Medicinal plant properties are still being recognized to this day — especially in tropical ecosystems — as Indigenous people share their knowledge.

Technology to TEK

Technological innovations such as the canoe , kayak , toboggan or snowshoe aided in travel and transport and were quickly adapted by European settlers.

Indigenous peoples, with their decades of personal experience combined with that of their ancestors, harbour vast knowledge about the environment and the ecological relationships within them. Tremendous opportunities exist where such knowledge can contribute to modern science and natural resource management.

Indigenous knowledge, also known as Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK), is essentially the cumulative body of knowledge associated with ecological relationships, which is handed down through generations by Indigenous people.

TEK has already provided insight into environmental change, wildlife population monitoring, sustainable harvesting practices, behavioural ecology, ecological relationships and so much more.

Inuit observations have identified several important environmental changes in the Arctic as a result of climate change , and their knowledge about bowhead whale behaviour helped researchers revise their survey methods to improve population size estimates.

Elders of the Heiltsuk First Nation in B.C. recognized two types of wolves — coastal and inland — previously undocumented by Western scientific methods. With such proven value in only a few examples, imagine how TEK can further inform science!

TEK continues to complement Western science. In light of recent moose population decline across North America, my own research aims to incorporate Indigenous knowledge to help identify factors that may be responsible for this decline.

Indigenous education is essential

Despite the recognized value of Indigenous perspectives and knowledge, there are few Indigenous science scholars. Scholars with specialization in Indigenous science can provide mentorship as well as become role models for current and prospective Indigenous science students.

By encouraging Indigenous science scholar recruitment, forthcoming research incorporating Indigenous perspectives can pave the way to promote culturally inclusive scientific approaches.

Many wildlife species are at risk across the planet, and engaging in co-operative management initiatives that embrace Indigenous science are now more important than ever. Collaborations are becoming more and more common. For example, the Canadian government incorporates TEK in assessing species at risk . The Worldwide Indigenous Science Network (WISN) restores TEK dialogue to the world’s most pressing ecological issues.

Throughout history, Indigenous people, perspectives, and knowledge have contributed substantially to the development of science and technology and will surely continue to do so for generations to come!

Further reading

Indian Givers: How Native Americans Transformed the World by Jack Weatherford. Broadway Books, 2010.

Indigenous Knowledge, Ecology, and Evolutionary Biology by Raymond Pierotti. Routledge, 2011.

“ What tradition teaches: Indigenous knowledge complements western wildlife science ” by Paige M. Schmidt and Heather K. Stricker. USDA National Wildlife Research Center – Staff Publications, 2010.

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A Multi-Perspective Reflection on How Indigenous Knowledge and Related Ideas Can Improve Science Education for Sustainability

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A Correction to this article was published on 13 March 2021

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Indigenous knowledge provides specific views of the world held by various indigenous peoples. It offers different views on nature and science that generally differ from traditional Western science. Futhermore, it introduces different perspectives on nature and the human in nature. Coming basically from a Western perspective on nature and science, the paper analyzes the literature in science education focusing on research and practices of integrating indigenous knowledge with science education. The paper suggests Didaktik models and frameworks for how to elaborate on and design science education for sustainability that takes indigenous knowledge and related non-Western and alternative Western ideas into consideration. To do so, indigenous knowledge is contextualized with regards to related terms (e.g., ethnoscience), and with Eastern perspectives (e.g., Buddhism), and alternative Western thinking (e.g., post-human Bildung ). This critical review provides justification for a stronger reflection about how to include views, aspects, and practices from indigenous communities into science teaching and learning. It also suggests that indigenous knowledge offers rich and authentic contexts for science learning. At the same time, it provides chances to reflect views on nature and science in contemporary (Western) science education for contributing to the development of more balanced and holistic worldviews, intercultural understanding, and sustainability.

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1 Introduction

One of the main problems in science education—is the perception of students that a lot of their secondary science lessons are neither interesting, engaging, nor relevant (Anderhag et al. 2016 ; Potvin and Hasni 2014 ; Stuckey et al. 2013 ). This is in line with Holbrook ( 2005 ) who discussed that learning of science is perceived not to be relevant in the view of students and thus becomes unpopular to them. A main factor for the missing perception of relevance is suggested in a lack of connections of the teaching of science to the everyday life of students and society (Childs et al. 2015 ; Hofstein et al. 2011 ). To raise the relevance of science education as part of relevant education, science education should accept a more thorough role in preparing students to become critical citizens (e.g., Sjöström and Eilks 2018 ). The role of science education is to prepare students to think responsibly, critically, and creatively in responding to societal issues caused by the impact of science and technology on life and society (e.g., Holbrook and Rannikmäe 2007 ; Hofstein et al. 2011 ; Sjöström 2013 ; Stuckey et al. 2013 ).

To improve the relevance of science education, science teaching requires new ways in the curriculum and pedagogy beyond the mere learning of science theories and facts (Eilks and Hofstein 2015 ). Science learning should be based on everyday life and societal situations that frame conceptual learning to enable students to appreciate the meaningfulness of science (e.g., Greeno 1998 ; Østergaard 2017 ). For acquiring more relevant science teaching and learning—as well as for innovating the curriculum—theory-driven and evidence-based curriculum development for science education and corresponding teacher education are needed (Hugerat et al. 2015 ). Accordingly, it is important to implement new topics and pedagogies in science teaching and to change teacher education programs. One source for such new topics is sustainability thinking and action, and a corresponding related educational paradigm is called Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) (Burmeister et al. 2012 ). ESD in connection with science education has been suggested to have potential to contribute to all three domains of relevant science teaching (personal, societal, and vocational relevance) (Eilks and Hofstein 2014 ). It is relevant for individual action, e.g., in cases involving consumption of resources, participation in societal debates about issues of sustainable development, or careers related to sustainability in science and technology (Sjöström et al. 2015 ).

However, it should be mentioned that the ESD movement has been criticized for a too instrumental view on the relationship between science, technology, and society. The possibilities of environmental technology for solving environmental problems are emphasized, whereas the need for other societal and behavioral changes is not so much mentioned. Such a view is called ecological modernization (e.g., Læssøe 2010 ; Kopnina 2014 ). Education for sustainability (EfS) is a more critical alternative to a narrow-focused ESD (e.g., Simonneaux and Simonneaux 2012 ; Birdsall 2013 ). According to Albe ( 2013 ), it requires the individual to take the political dimension of environmental issues and their intrinsic power relationships into consideration. The aim is to empower the individual for acting responsibly in terms of sustainability, which was also identified by Stuckey et al. ( 2013 ) as an essential justification in their model of relevant science education. Yet another related and critically oriented alternative to mainstream ESD is called ecojustice education (Mueller 2009 ). In this paper, we use the term science education for sustainability describing science education driven by critical and alternative Western views on the transformation to a sustainable world.

According to Savelyeva ( 2017 ), the dominant Western sustainability discourse is based on an anthropocentric conception, where nature needs to be managed within the three pillars of sustainability: ecological, economic, and societal sustainability. Such a view on the human-nature relationship is oriented towards producing a sustainable person. However, as will be explained more in detail below, alternative Western—and less anthropocentric—sustainability discourses have been suggested, such as self-reflective subjectivity (Straume 2015 ), transformative sustainability learning (Barrett et al. 2017 ), a virtue ethics approach (Jordan and Kristjánsson 2017 ), and eco-reflexive Bildung (Sjöström et al. 2016 ; Sjöström 2018 ).

Science is practised based on natural and environmental resources in any given cultural and socio-economic context. However, the picture of science represented in many textbooks all over the world often neglects its cultural component or restricts it to a Western view on the history of science (e.g., Forawi 2015 ; Khaddour et al. 2017 ; Ideland 2018 ). Indigenous views on nature and indigenous knowledge in science at different levels vary among societies and cultures across the globe. The wisdom of indigenous knowledge is often based on sacred respect of nature, due to indigenous peoples’ relationships and responsibilities towards nature (Knudtson and Suzuki 1992 ). Thus, learning about indigenous knowledge may help students recognizing this intimate connection between humans and nature in the foreground of culture from their regional environment or beyond.

Recently, Sjöström ( 2018 ) discussed science education driven by different worldviews. Especially he discussed how science teachers’ identities are related to their worldviews, cultural values, and educational philosophies, and all these are influenced by the individual’s perspectives towards it. Different educational approaches in science education and corresponding eco(logy) views were commented on by Sjöström in relation to the transformation of educational practice. The focus was especially pointed on the similarities between Asian neo-Confucianism and alternative-Western North-European reflexive Bildung (see further below).

Indigenous cultures and the culture of (alternative) Western modern science might complement each other in students’ everyday world experiences. The introduction of indigenous knowledge in the classroom will represent different cultural backgrounds and might help improve the interpretation of this knowledge (Botha 2012 ), so that it makes science more relevant to students in culturally diverse classrooms (de Beer and Whitlock 2009 ). In addition, the incorporation of indigenous knowledge into school curricula might help to enable students to gain positive experiences and develop corresponding attitudes towards science. It might help students to maintain the values of their local cultural wisdom (Kasanda et al. 2005 ; de Beer and Whitlock 2009 ; Ng’asike 2011 ; Perin 2011 ).

Some research used indigenous knowledge to contextualize science curricula by a cultural context (Chandra 2014 ; Hamlin 2013 ; Kimmerer 2012 ; Sumida Huaman 2016 ; van Lopik 2012 ). Indigenous knowledge offers rich contexts which have the potential to contribute understanding the relationship of environmental, sociocultural, and spiritual understandings of life and nature. This approach could be appropriate to accommodate sociocultural demand in science education curricula as well as to raise students’ perception of the relevance of science learning. Aikenhead ( 2001 ) found, however, that possible conflicts may arise when students have the problem of taking information from one knowledge system and placing it into another. There is a number of barriers enabling indigenous knowledge to co-exist in the science curriculum and in the minds of learners and teachers. Barriers are related to limitations of time and corresponding learning materials, prescribed curricula, the selection of appropriate pedagogies, and teachers’ doubts in conveying topics containing spiritual aspects in science (Snively and Williams 2016 ). Teachers have to be aware that it is especially tricky to handle indigenous spiritual views with sufficient care and respect.

Coming from a Western view on nature and science, this analysis attempts to examine the potential role of indigenous knowledge to enhance the relevance of science education with a certain view on education for sustainability. Our view is that the sciences, as well as many other subject areas, have important roles in education for sustainability (Sjöström et al. 2015 ; Sjöström et al. 2016 ). The paper suggests Didaktik models (in the following called “didactic models”) (e.g., Jank and Meyer 1991 ; Blankertz 1975 ; Meyer 2012 ; Arnold 2012 ) and frameworks for how to elaborate on and design EfS that takes indigenous knowledge and related non-Western and alternative Western ideas into consideration. Didaktik can be seen as the professional science for teachers and has a long history in Germany, central Europe, and Scandinavia (e.g., Seel 1999 ; Schneuwly 2011 ; Ingerman and Wickman 2015 ).

A theoretical framework, which contributes multiple reference disciplines of science education (Duit 2007 ), is proposed for adopting indigenous knowledge in science learning. This approach encompasses the interdisciplinary nature of relevant science education to carry out science education research and development. It could provide guidance for research-based curriculum development to construct an indigenous knowledge framework for raising the relevance of science education and students’ perception thereof.

2 Indigenous Knowledge and Related Concepts in the Science Education Literature

The search method in this paper used several scientific literature databases, namely Web of Science, ERIC, Science Direct, and Google Scholar. Several keywords were used to find literature related to the following three main points: (1) a conceptual framework of indigenous knowledge, which includes the definition and concept of indigenous knowledge, the perspective of indigenous knowledge and Western modern science, indigenous knowledge in science education, and the role of indigenous knowledge to promote sustainable development; (2) the relevance of science learning through indigenous knowledge, which encompasses the relevance of science learning in general and indigenous knowledge as a context that supports the relevance of science learning; and (3) research designs and pedagogical approaches to integrate indigenous knowledge in learning and education for sustainability education in science education.

The term indigenous knowledge is broadly defined as the local knowledge held by indigenous peoples or local knowledge unique to a particular culture or society (Warren et al. 1993 ). The search for the term “indigenous knowledge” in the databases located articles pertaining to a number of different terms. Other notions of indigenous knowledge include indigenous science, traditional ecological knowledge, traditional knowledge, ethnoscience, native science, traditional wisdom, Maori science, and Yupiaq science. The search for the term “indigenous knowledge” in the Web of Science produced as much as 8436 hits (retrieved on 2018-01-29), including 577 educational research articles either combined with science education or combined with other related topics (plant sciences, environmental sciences, anthropology, environmental studies, and others). From the 577 educational articles, 446 are peer-reviewed research papers, and only a few articles discuss specific conceptual frameworks of indigenous knowledge. The search in ERIC showed 2404 results for the search term “indigenous knowledge” (retrieved on 2018-01-29). From this database, many review papers and research journal papers were found which are specifically discussing the concept of indigenous knowledge. Some research papers also focus on the relationship between indigenous knowledge and sustainable development. Similar results were also found in Science Direct and Google Scholar that mostly contain empirical and theoretical articles on indigenous knowledge. Of the many terms related to indigenous knowledge, the terminology of indigenous science, ethnoscience, and traditional ecological knowledge were the most frequently used in the literature related to science education, so the search then focused these three terms. Because of the abundance of available articles, potential articles were screened based on the relevant titles. As a result, 22 articles were selected which are directly focusing conceptual frameworks of indigenous knowledge. To complement the perspective with Western modern science and alternative Western thinking, some literature on the philosophy of science education were added by further literature searches.

The literature search for the relevance of science learning was done by using the keyword “relevant science education.” It generated 5363 articles (retrieved on 2018-01-29) in ERIC (consisting of 3178 journal articles, reports articles, book chapter, and others). A more specific search was done combining “relevant science education” with “indigenous knowledge” that brought up articles relating to the sociocultural contexts of science and socio-scientific issues. Further analysis focused on raising the relevance of science learning by indigenous knowledge in terms of promoting environmental protection and sustainable development. Thirty relevant articles were identified including some of the same articles as in the previous literature search.

Further analysis of previously obtained articles was aimed to complement the literature on the topic of research designs and pedagogical approaches to integrate indigenous knowledge in science learning. The search was done with the keyword “pedagogical approach for integrating indigenous knowledge.” This search generated 70 hits in ERIC and 942 results in Science Direct (retrieved on 2018-01-29). A screening for empirical research in anthropological and psychological paradigms, designing instructional approaches to introducing indigenous knowledge into science classrooms and using indigenous science to contextualize science learning by a sociocultural context, identified 14 articles. Further analysis of the articles from this search identified the need for more design research in science education for the integration of indigenous knowledge. One strategy identified in the literature is the Model of Educational Reconstruction (Duit et al. 2005 ). Search results using the keywords “Model of Educational Reconstruction” produced 88,816 hits in ERIC (retrieved on 2018-01-29). Screening related titles with science education identified seven articles. A search on the development of learning designs accommodated to the relevance of science learning for sustainable development, as well as to promote sustainable development, was added. The search for the keyword “ESD in Science Education” generated 148.499 articles on the ERIC database (retrieved on 2018-01-29). Some articles based on topics related to sustainability and referring to context- and/or socio-scientific issue–based science education were identified this way (Table 1 ).

3 Indigenous Knowledge, Western Modern Science, and Alternative Western Thinking

3.1 concepts to characterize indigenous knowledge.

Based on an analysis of terms, there are differences in the use of terms Indigenous (with capital I) and indigenous (with lowercase i). According to Wilson ( 2008 ), Indigenous (with capital I) refers to original inhabitants or first peoples in unique cultures who have experiences of European imperialism and colonialism. Indigenous peoples have a long history of live experience with their land and the legacy from the ancestor, and their future generations (Wilson 2008 ; Kim 2018 ). Meanwhile, the term indigenous (with lowercase i) refers to “things that have developed ‘home-grown’ in specific places” (Wilson 2008 , p. 15). In this paper, it is suggested to follow Kim’s ( 2018 ) point of view to use the term “indigenous” (with lowercase i) to positioning oneself as an indigenous to one’s homeland. The first author is indigenous to Indonesia, which is a country that has many traditional tribes and indigenous societies. These societies affect the culture of people living near indigenous environments but not living indigenous lifestyles. Even though the first author considers himself not to belong to an indigenous community, he spent his childhood in a rural environment, and he felt the experience of indigenous knowledge in his daily life as well as he was influenced by the culture of modern society. The first author is also able to speak an indigenous language (second language) used by one of the Indonesian indigenous peoples (Baduy Tribe) and interacted with them in a study focusing the Baduy’s science-related knowledge (Zidny and Eilks 2018 ). This study is part of a project to educationally reconstruct indigenous knowledge in science education in Indonesia in order to enhance the relevance of science learning as well as to promote education for sustainability. Meanwhile, the other authors are coming from central and northern European backgrounds with experience to Eurocentric cultures. In line with Kim ( 2018 ), all authors position themselves as an “ally” to indigenous people and still maintaining their personal cultural and integrity. In this regard, Kovach ( 2009 ) encouraged non-indigenous knowledge academics to incorporate a decolonizing agenda to support indigenous scholarship. The term “decolonization” is defined as a process to acknowledge the values of indigenous knowledge and wisdom (Afonso 2013 ) and bring together both indigenous and non-indigenous people to learn and respect indigenous knowledge (Kim 2018 ).

In the last few decades, studies on the knowledge of indigenous cultures involved various disciplines both from the natural and from the social sciences. There is no universal definition available about this kind of knowledge and many terms are used to describe what indigenous people know (Berkes 1993 ). Some scholars define indigenous knowledge by several terms and their respective perceptions. Snively and Williams ( 2016 ) argue that this distinction describes a way to distinguish heterogeneous cultural groups’ ways of knowing about nature. Many terms to describe indigenous knowledge have been used in the literature in science education (Table 2 ).

Ogawa ( 1995 ) proposed to understand science education in a “multiscience” perspective in order to foster “multicultural science education” contributing to the field of science education. The idea of a multiscience perspective acknowledges the existence of numerous types of science at play in science classrooms. Ogawa defined science in a multiscience perspective encompassing three categories: personal science (referring to science at the individual level), indigenous science (referring to science at the cultural or society level), and Western modern science (referring to a collective rational perceiving reality shared and authorized by the scientific community). In a more recent publication, Aikenhead and Ogawa ( 2007 ) proposed a new definition about science. They proposed a concept of science which explores three cultural ways of understanding nature. It changes the key terms to become more authentic to better represent each culture’s collective, yet heterogeneous, worldview, meta-physics, epistemology, and values. They also suggested dividing the ways of understanding nature into the following three categories:

An indigenous way (referring to indigenous nations in North America)

Indigenous ways of living in nature are more authentic. This view is used to describe indigenous knowledge, which encompasses indigenous ways of knowing. Ways of living in nature are action-oriented, which must be experienced in the context of living in a particular place in nature, in the pursuit of wisdom, and in the context of multiple relationships. One example of this kind of knowledge is the Yupiaq way of understanding nature, which has the focus of surviving the extreme condition in the tundra (Kawagley et al. 1998 ).

A neo-indigenous way (bringing up distinctive ways of Asian nations of knowing nature)

A neo-indigenous way of knowing is based in far more heterogeneous indigenous cultures, which are influenced by the traditions of Islamic and Japanese cultures. The term “indigenous science” is used by Japanese literature in the context of a multiple-science perspective. Indigenous science is a collective rational perceiving reality experienced by particular culture-dependent societies (Ogawa 1995 ).

Euro-American (Western modern) scientific way

Eurocentric sciences represent a way of knowing about nature and it was modified to fit Eurocentric worldviews, meta-physics, epistemologies, and value systems. This also includes knowledge appropriated over the ages from many other cultures (e.g., Islam, India, and China).

3.2 Defining Indigenous Science and Related Terms

From the same perspective, Snively and Corsiglia ( 2000 ) defined indigenous science as science obtained from the long-resident oral community and the knowledge which has been explored and recorded by biological scientists. They interpreted indigenous science as Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK). The concept of TEK is used by various scientists in the fields of biology, botany, ecology, geology, medicine, climatology, and other fields related to human activity on the environment guided by traditional wisdom (Andrews 1988 ; Berkes 1988 , 1993 ; Berkes and Mackenzie 1978 , Inglis 1993 ; Warren 1997 ; Williams and Baines 1993 ). Even so, Snively and Corsiglia ( 2000 ) stated that the definition of TEK is not accepted universally because of the ambiguity in the meaning of traditional and ecological knowledge . Other scholars prefer the term “indigenous knowledge” to avoid the debate about tradition and give emphasis on indigenous people (Berkes 1993 ). In addition, Snively and Corsiglia ( 2000 ) argued that TEK does not represent the whole of indigenous knowledge because it also contributes to some aspects of Western modern science. Therefore, TEK is the product of both Western modern science and indigenous knowledge (Kim et al. 2017 ).

Snively and Williams ( 2016 ) distinguished the scope of indigenous knowledge, indigenous science, traditional ecological knowledge, and Western science as follows:

Indigenous knowledge ( IK ): The local knowledge held by indigenous peoples or local knowledge unique to a particular culture or society (Warren et al. 1993 ). IK is a broad category that includes indigenous science.

Indigenous science ( IS ): IS is the science-related knowledge of indigenous cultures.

Traditional ecological knowledge ( TEK ): TEK refers to the land-related, place-based knowledge of long-resident, usually oral indigenous peoples, and as noted, consider it a subset of the broader categories of IK and IS. TEK is not about ecological relationships exclusively, but about many fields of science in its general sense including agriculture, astronomy, medicine, geology, architecture, navigation, and so on.

Western science (WS): WS represents Western or Eurocentric science in the means of modern Western science knowledge. Here, Western science knowledge is understood as mainstream Western modern science, i.e., acknowledging that also in modern Western societies’ alternative worldviews and views on science and nature exist (Korver-Glenn et al. 2015 ). Such views are here called “alternative Western thinking.”

To understand the relationship between indigenous knowledge, indigenous science, and TEK, Kim and Dionne ( 2014 ) suggest the “cup of water” analogy (Fig.  1 ). This analogy illustrates science as a cup or container, and knowledge as water that fills the cup. The shape of the water will adjust to the shape of the cup that holds it. Science is described as a collection of knowledge and methods that shape the perception of knowledge (Kim and Dionne 2014 ). Thus, knowledge will be perceived differently according to the form of science that reflects cultural traditions and the perspective of those who adhere to it. Western or European knowledge is shaped by Western modern science (WMS) who adhere to the culture and perspective of Western or European societies (Aikenhead 1996 ; Kim and Dionne 2014 ). Indigenous knowledge is formed by indigenous science which adheres to the culture and perspective of indigenous society, while TEK is part of the indigenous knowledge which is guided by indigenous science methods that are in parallel with WMS in terms of presenting solutions to ecological problems. Thus, TEK does not represent the whole indigenous knowledge system and has some similarities and differences with WMS (Kim and Dionne 2014 ).

Relationship between indigenous knowledge (IK), indigenous science (IS), and traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) (adapted from Kim and Dionne 2014 )

The term of IK in science education is also known as “ethnoscience.” Ethnoscience was first introduced by anthropologists in an ethnography approach that refers to a system of knowledge and cognition built to classify and interpret objects, activities, and events in a particular culture (Sturtevant 1964 ; Hardesty 1977 ). According to Snively and Corsiglia ( 2000 ), also IS is sometimes referred to as ethnoscience, which consists of the knowledge of indigenous expansionists (e.g., the Aztec, Mayan, or Mongolian empires) as well as the long-term residents of origin knowledge (i.e., the Inuit, the Aboriginal people of Africa, the Americas, Asia, Australia, Micronesia, and New Zealand). Abonyi ( 1999 ) emphasizes that the indigenous own thinking and relation to life is a fundamental focus of ethnoscience to realize their vision of the world. He also notes that ethnoscience may have potentially the same branches as Western modern science because it is concerned with natural objects and events. Accordingly, the dimensions of ethnoscience would include a number of disciplines, namely ethnochemistry, ethnophysics, ethnobiology, ethnomedicine, and ethnoagriculture (Abonyi et al. 2014 ). Ethnoscience might have the same characteristics as TEK because it has been categorized into various disciplines of WMS-based scientific knowledge. Table 3 summarizes all the terminology, definitions, and acronyms related to indigenous knowledge in this paper.

All in all, this analysis is not intended to make contention about the different definitions of indigenous knowledge. Despite there are some different perspectives of scholars to define knowledge systems, we support the view of Snively and Williams ( 2016 ) that this distinction simply serves as a way to distinguish between highly heterogeneous groups and their ways of knowing nature.

3.3 Perspectives of Indigenous Knowledge

There is some literature in science education which has identified various characteristics and opposing views between Western modern science and indigenous knowledge. Nakashima and Roué ( 2002 ) identified that indigenous knowledge is often spiritual and does not make distinctions between empirical and sacred knowledge in contrast to Western modern science, which is mainly positivist and materialist. They also emphasized that Western modern science generally tries to use controllable experimental environments on their subject of study, while on the contrary indigenous knowledge depends on its context and particular local cultural conditions. In addition, indigenous knowledge adopts a more holistic approach, whereas on the opposite, Western modern science often tries to separate observations into different disciplines (Iaccarino 2003 ).

The perspective of Western contemporary culture and philosophy encourages us an interesting idea about the different forms of knowledge. Feyerabend ( 1987 ) acknowledged that any form of knowledge makes sense only within its own cultural context, and doubted people’s contention that the absolute truth criteria are only being determined by Western modern science. This is in line with Bateson ( 1979 ) who pointed out that the actual representation of knowledge depends on the observer’s view. Therefore, every culture has its way of viewing the world so they may have developed unique strategies for doing science (Murfin 1994 ). The theory of multicultural education in science also proposed the same ideas which recognize science as a cultural enterprise. Aikenhead ( 1996 , p.8) stated that “science itself is a subculture of Western or Euro-American culture, and so Western science can be thought of as ‘subculture science’”. It is based on the worldview presuppositions that nature and the universe are ordered, uniform, and comprehensible. However, Hansson ( 2014 ) has shown that many upper secondary students view scientific laws as only valid locally and that they differentiate between their own views and the views they associate with Western science. This indicates that also many Western people have a “personal science” (Ogawa 1995 ) way of thinking.

At the same time, it is widely known that there is a different perspective between Western modern science and indigenous knowledge in the context of strategies to create and transmit knowledge (Mazzocchi 2006 ). Eijck and Roth ( 2007 ) pointed out that both domains of knowledge are incommensurable and cannot be reduced to each other, because they are based on different processes of knowledge construction. Therefore, it is difficult to analyze one form of knowledge using the criteria of another tradition. Despite there are many distinctions on both sides, Stephens ( 2000 ) discovered the common ground between indigenous knowledge and Western modern science (Table 4 ), even though there are some suggestions to improve the content (e.g., Aikenhead and Ogawa 2007 ). Stephens ( 2000 ) emphasized that correlating one with another would be validated local knowledge as a pathway to science learning, and demonstrated that the exploration of multiple knowledge systems could enrich both perspectives to create thoughtful dialog.

3.4 Indigenous Knowledge and Alternative Western Thinking

Ideologically mainstream Western science can be described with labels such as positivism, objectivism, reductionism, rationalism, and modernism (e.g., Sjöström 2007 ). Many of these characteristics can be explained by the body-mind dualism that has been promulgated in Western civilization all since René Descartes (e.g., Bernstein 1983 ). It is called a Cartesian view and also includes the view that human beings are seen as separate from nature and with rights to exploit the Earth and its resources. In contrast to Western dualisms and modernism, most Eastern philosophies are more holistic and system-oriented (e.g., Hwang 2013 ). For example, Neo-Confucianism has been suggested as an alternative to the dominant Western sustainability discourse (Savelyeva 2017 ). Humans are positioned in harmony with cosmos and such a view can be called cosmoanthropic : “everything in the universe, including humans, shares life and deserves greatest respect […] cosmos is not an object, physical reality, or a mechanical entity; cosmos is a dynamic and ever-changing interpretive reality, which reflects human understanding, sense-making and interpretation of the universe” (Savelyeva 2017 , pp. 511–512).

Another more recent Korean philosophy, highly influenced by Neo-Confucianism, but also based on, e.g., Taoism and Buddhism, is called Donghak (=Eastern learning). Moon ( 2017 ) describes that in Donghak the interconnection and equal relations between God, human, nature, and cosmos go beyond the anthropocentric understanding of any human-nature relations. Similarly, Wang ( 2016 ) has discussed Taoism and Buddhism in relation to the concepts of self-realization and the ecological self-according to ecosophy , the eco-living philosophy developed by the Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess. It is strongly influenced by Buddhist traditions and can be explained as a lifestyle that incorporates ecological harmony and ecological wisdom.

Recently, De Angelis ( 2018 )—in the context of sustainability—compared Buddhist/Eastern spiritual perspectives and indigenous-community learning with alternative Western thinking such as transformative learning theory (Sterling 2011 ) and Dewey’s experience-thinking (see further below). De Angelis ( 2018 ) proposes that they all—to a higher or lower degree—share the notions of inner experience , oneness of reality , and moral sustainable values . Other similarities are awareness of context and a holistic orientation . She writes: “human beings are seen as strictly interconnected and co-existing with nature and their self-development is conceived in harmonious terms with it” (p. 184). Values, feelings, and emotions are seen as significantly contributing to various transformative processes. Furthermore, she emphasizes that her intention is to give “a voice to ‘other’ ways of perceiving the relationship between humans and the environment” (p. 189).

As indicated with the examples above, many of the ideas that are characteristic of Eastern philosophies and indigenous knowledge (according to Table 4 ) can also be found in some alternative Western thinking. Examples include holistic thinking, an integrated worldview, and respect for all living things. Below, we more in detail describe the following three interrelated philosophical directions of alternative Western thinking: (a) a post-human version of the European notion of Bildung , (b) phenomenology and embodied knowledge, and (c) network-thinking, respectively:

Post-human Bildung : In Central and Northern Europe, there is a philosophical and educational tradition called Bildung (Sjöström et al. 2017 ). It was in its modern educational meaning coined in Germany in the late eighteenth century and then spread to Scandinavia. However, the real origins of the concept can be traced back to the Middle Age, when it had theological and spiritual connotations (Horlacher 2016 ; Reichenbach 2016 ). Meister Eckhart (1260–1328) introduced the term as early as in the late thirteenth century when he translated the Bible from Latin into German. He used it as a term for transcending “natural existence and reach real humanity” (Horlacher 2016 , p. 8). Then it took roughly five hundred years until the term started to be used in educational contexts, meaning self-formation. The rooting of Bildung in Romanticism was later intertwined with contemporary ideas of Enlightenment (Reichenbach 2014 ). It became also connected to morality and virtue, or in one word to humanity (Reichenbach 2016 ).

Generally, the following five historical elements of Bildung can be identified:

Biological-organic growth process (self-knowledge is a prerequisite for humanism)

Religious elements (transparency for a spiritual world in contrast to only materialism)

Connection to ancient cultures

Enlightenment thoughts (forming informed and useful democratic citizens)

Socio-political dimension (emancipation)

The two main elements of Bildung are autonomous self-formation and reflective and responsible societal (inter)actions. Most versions of Bildung are highly influenced by Western modernism (Sjöström 2018 ), although alternatives, which in a way connect to the roots of the concept, have developed during the last two decades. Rucker and Gerónimo ( 2017 ) have theoretically connected the concept to the complexity and some scholars have started to discuss it from postmodern, post-human, and sustainability perspectives, where both relations and responsibility are emphasized (e.g., Taylor 2017 ; Sjöström 2018 ; Rowson 2019 ). Taylor ( 2017 ) asked if a post-humanist Bildung is possible and she seems to think so:

A posthuman Bildung is a lifelong task of realizing one’s responsibility within an ecology of world relations, it occurs outside as well as inside formal education, in virtual as well as’real’ places. [… It] is a matter of spirituality and materiality which means that it is not an ‘inner process’ but an educative practice oriented to making a material difference in the world. [… It is] education as an ethico-onto-epistemological quest for (better ways of) knowing-in-becoming. (pp. 432–433)

With many similarities to the Eastern thoughts of co-living, and just like “ecosophy” in a Western context, two of us have discussed what we call eco-reflexive Bildung (Sjöström et al. 2016 ). It adds an eco-dimension to critical-reflexive Bildung and has similarities to the cosmoanthropic view described above as well as to Donghak . These ideas have in common the view of life and society as interdependent and an inseparable whole.

Phenomenology and embodied knowledge: The discussion about Bildung connects to the second alternative Western idea, which is life-world phenomenology and connected embodied experiences (Bengtsson 2013 ). These ideas are based on philosophical thinking originating from the philosophers Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger, and Husserl. Bengtsson ( 2013 ) describes this understanding by the view that the life of the individual and the world is interdependent and that the lived body is a subject of experiencing, acting, understanding, and being in the world. John Dewey had similar thoughts about the experience (Retter 2012 ) and Brickhouse ( 2001 ) has emphasized the importance of an embodied science education, which overcomes the body-mind dualism.

Related to this, some science education scholars have emphasized the role of wonder, esthetic experience, romantic understanding, and environmental awareness in science education (e.g., Dahlin et al. 2009 ; Hadzigeorgiou and Schulz 2014 ; Østergaard 2017 ). Hadzigeorgiou and Schulz ( 2014 ) focused on the following six ideas: (1) the emotional sensitivity towards nature, (2) the centrality of sense experience, (3) the importance of holistic experiences, (4) the importance of the notions of mystery and wonder, (5) the power of science to transform people’s outlook on the natural world, and (6) the importance of the relationship between science and philosophy. These six ideas are related to “relations between self, others and nature” and to Dewey’s esthetic (phenomenological existence) and reflective (pragmatic existence) experience (Quay 2013 ). It can also be described by “being-in-the-world” and “a total, relational whole” (p. 148).

Dahlin et al. ( 2009 ) have argued for a phenomenological perspective on science and science education and they discussed how it can foster students’ rooting (see also Østergaard et al. 2008 ). By phenomenology, they emphasized that all human experiences are important and that “subject and object must be seen as belonging together, as two aspects of one (non-dualistic) whole” (Dahlin et al. 2009 , p. 186). Furthermore, they are critical to cognitionism and technisation and instead emphasize the rich complexity of nature and lived experience. In contrast to both constructivism and sociocultural learning, they describe phenomenology to be more open to esthetic, ethical, and moral dimensions of science. These views have similarities to Eastern philosophies and indigenous knowledge.

Network-thinking: The third alternative and related Western idea is network-thinking by, e.g., the French sociologist Michael Callon (born 1945) and the French philosopher Bruno Latour (born 1947). A conflict between modernism and postmodernism in science education has been identified by Blades ( 2008 ). This tension is related to the tension between views in traditional science education versus more progressive views in the area of environmental education (Dillon 2014 ). In an article about emancipation in science education, Zembylas ( 2006 ) discussed the philosophy of meta-reality by Roy Bhaskar. He claimed that Bhaskar’s ideas offer an interesting alternative to modernist and postmodernist accounts. Bhaskar viewed everything as connected—humans, nonhumans, and “things.” These thoughts are similar to some thinking of actor-network theory developed by, e.g., Callon and Latour. In Latour’s networks, knowledge and power are not separable and he claims that it is not possible to stay outside a field of competing networks for giving an objective description of the state of affairs. Latour ( 2004 ) introduced the concept matters of concern to refer to the highly complex, uncertain, and risky state of affairs in which human and non-human entities are intimately entangled.

Network-oriented science education focuses on interactive relational production of knowledge. Colucci-Gray and Camino ( 2014 ) write about “science of relationships” and “epistemic and reflexive knowledge” (see also Colucci-Gray et al. 2013 ). More recently, the same authors suggested activities that aim at developing reflexivity about the individual’s position in the global, ecological web. They related it to the thinking of Gandhi and emphasized ideas such as non-duality and interdependency, and relational ways of knowing (Colucci-Gray and Camino 2016 ). Except for cognitive and social development, they also emphasized emotional and spiritual development. On the question what should be the narratives of science education, they answered non-human relationships, interactions between science, values and learning, embodied experiences, and interdisciplinarity. In addition to Gandhi’s philosophy they also refer to ecosophy and different Eastern traditions.

Brayboy and Maughan ( 2009 ) have pointed out that the objective for most culturally relevant science learning is not to put indigenous knowledge and Western modern science in opposition to one another, but instead to extend knowledge systems and find value and new perspectives for teaching and learning from both. This is aligned with the perspective of two-eyed seeing as a means to build bridges and “to help these cultures find ways to live in mutual respect of each other’s strengths and ways” (Hatcher et al. 2009 , p. 146): “Through two-eyed seeing students may learn to see from one eye with the strengths of indigenous ways of knowing and from the other eye with the strengths of Western ways of knowing.” McKeon ( 2012 ) used the perspective of “two-eyed seeing” for weaving the knowledge from the views of non-indigenous environmental educators to enrich environmental education by indigenous understandings. The indigenous understandings are communicated through oral tradition to teach about the interconnectedness of nature and the concepts of transformation, holism, caring, and responsibility. The core ideas in environmental education (systems theory, ecological literacy, bio-philia, and place-based education) can obtain advantage from and connect to foundational values of indigenous education (Mckeon 2012 ).

4 Indigenous Knowledge in Science Education

4.1 conceptual frameworks of indigenous knowledge in science education.

Studies in constructivism opened up the science educators to understand science not only as a body of knowledge but also as a way of thinking. Indigenous science is the knowledge which reflects the indigenous way of thinking about the physical world (Abonyi et al. 2014 ). Thus, constructivism provides the opportunity for indigenous science to adjoin with Western modern scientific views. The perspective of constructivism suggests that knowledge is not a kind of thinking that can be copied between individuals, but rather has to be reconstructed by each learner (Taber 2014 ). According to Taber ( 2013 ), human learning is interpretive (a sense-making process to produce a perception of the world), incremental (integrating the existing knowledge and understanding which enable learners to make sense), and iterative (reinforces the existing interpretation). Accordingly, once learners have developed a particular understanding, then they will interpret new information according to this way of thinking and tend to learn it in a way that reinforces the existing interpretation. The indigenous ways of thinking can provide corresponding learners with a broader (more holistic) view of the world to understand science and nature beyond a non-Western perspective (Kim and Dionne 2014 ). The integration of indigenous knowledge in science education provides a holistic learning framework of the study, which make learners with an indigenous background able to understand the role of their societal and cultural context in the production of scientific knowledge (Aikenhead and Michell 2011 ). It has potential to facilitate learners to make own sense of their world and reinforces their existing interpretation of natural phenomena.

Cobern ( 1996 ) suggested that learning is the active process of constructing a conceptual framework based on the interpretation of learners’ prior knowledge, rather than the process of transmission which only make learners memorize knowledge. The interpretation is affected by the personal and culturally embedded background of knowledge of the learners that make learning processes meaningful. This view suggests building a conceptualization of scientific knowledge in which it is reasonable to expect culture-specific understandings of science (Cobern 1996 ). Accordingly, in the perspective of any learners, indigenous science can serve as a base for the construction of reality by linking culture to advance scientific knowledge (Abonyi et al. 2014 ). Moreover, incorporating indigenous knowledge in science education for all may help to reflect the different intellectual traditions of various cultures adjoined with scientific knowledge to solve relevant problems in the context of its ecological, societal, and economic ramifications.

McKinley and Stewart ( 2012 ) point out four major themes of research and development associated with integrating indigenous knowledge into science education. These are (a) equity of learning outcomes for students from non-Western backgrounds, (b) contributions of indigenous knowledge to the knowledge base of Western modern science, (c) environmental concerns over sustainability, and (d) inclusion of the nature, philosophy, and limits of science. For instance, Lowan-Trudeau ( 2012 ) developed a model based on métissage (the metis methodologies) to incorporate Western and indigenous knowledge and philosophy into ecological identities and pedagogical praxis. Métissage offers the diversity of views and experiences about nature which is required for the development of environmental education research for future generations. Environmental education researchers from all cultural backgrounds are encouraged to acknowledge and engage with indigenous knowledge, philosophies, and methodologies (Lowan-Trudeau 2012 ) .

The integration of indigenous knowledge in education should recognize indigenous frameworks and methodologies to give more attention to their history, politics, cultural beliefs, and philosophical views as well as to balance the Western perspective (Smith 1999 , 2002 ). For instance, some Maori scholars have used their frameworks and methodologies to incorporate indigenous knowledge in education. Smith ( 1999 ) suggested Kaupapa Maori as a research approach to reconstruct and recognize indigenous knowledge of Maori people rather than using mainstream research that is too Western paradigm-oriented. The term of Kaupapa Maori describes the Maori worldview that incorporates their thinking and understanding about practice and philosophy living (Smith 1997 ; Pihama and Cram 2002 ). Based on the framework and key principles of Kaupapa Maori , Maori’s scholars developed oral traditions and narrative inquiry approaches to express their experiences. Ware, Breheny, and Forster ( 2018 ) developed a Māori approach called Kaupapa Kōrero to collect, introduce, and understand Māori experiences and also interrelatedness and influence of their societal expectations, indigeneity, and culture. In school education, Lee ( 2002 ) suggested the akonga Maori framework to view Maori secondary teachers’ experiences in relation to teacher education in ways that are culturally responsive and culturally relevant to Maori students. This framework offers education providers to be more involved with Maori students in preparing them for their work in secondary schools.

In the literature, the integration of indigenous knowledge with science education has been widely distilled and packaged based on the different genres and cultures of Western modern science disciplines in the form of TEK (Afonso Nhalevilo 2013 ; Bermudez et al. 2017 ; Chandra 2014 ; Chinn 2009 ; Funk et al. 2015 ; Hamlin 2013 ; Kim and Dionne 2014 ; Kimmerer 2012 ; Sumida Huaman 2016 ; van Lopik 2012 ; Nadasdy 1999 ; Simpson 1999 ). Based on the suggested polygon framework of TEK (Houde 2007 ; Kim et al. 2017 ), it is suggested that TEK pedagogy should respect five dimensions as in the didactic model in Fig.  2 .

TEK Polygon Framework (Kim et al. 2017 )

Using the polygon framework of TEK, Kim et al. ( 2017 ) explored current pedagogical conceptualizations of knowledge systems in science education and criticized the implication of TEK (Table 5 ).

Reflecting on the conceptualization of the TEK polygon in science education, it is suggested that TEK should be interpreted as the product of both Western modern science and indigenous knowledge because it has distilled indigenous knowledge into Western modern science framework. The two knowledge systems should complement each other, should work together, and should be acknowledged in their respective entities. It is also suggested to take certain aspects into account when incorporating indigenous knowledge in science education:

An educational approach to indigenous knowledge should give more attention to socioculture, history, and current politics of a place in addition to ecological and environmental aspects (Smith 2002 ; Ruitenberg 2005 ; Kim et al. 2017 ). This approach gives the student opportunities to learn science more authentically beyond their physical environments. From local environments, learners have a wealth of information regarding the diverse rural sociocultural and ecological connections. Avery and Hains ( 2017 ) suggest that the diverse knowledge of rural children, which is inherited by elders’ wisdom, must be respected in order to solve the complex problems in the new age of the Anthropocene. The knowledge should be cultivated to enrich science education pedagogies and practices which can be learned from individual and unique rural contexts. Moreover, supporting and valuing students’ knowledge in urban science education is also a necessity. Science education should recognize urban students’ ways of communicating and participating in order to support the effective teaching of science to students with different cultural backgrounds in urban science classrooms (Edmin Emdin 2011 ).

The pedagogy of multiculturalism of indigenous knowledge in science education must attempt to acknowledge the multiple perspective ways of knowing the differences and similarities of as well as relations of different types of knowledge systems (Ogawa 1995 ; Aikenhead 1996 ; Mueller and Tippins 2010 ; Kim and Dionne 2014 ). Kapyrka and Dockstator ( 2012 ) suggest an educational approach to encourage teachers and students to promote respective cultural understandings and collaborative solutions between indigenous and Western worldviews.

Indigenous cosmological grounding must be involved to help revitalize cultural identities for indigenous students (McGregor 2004 ; Kimmerer 2012 ). For instance, Sutherland and Swayze ( 2012 ) used the indigenous framework of Ininiwikisk n tamowin (the knowledge of the people in how we understand the Earth) as a model for science and math programs in indigenous settings. This framework was applied to a culturally relevant environmental education program, as a process of lifelong learning, and to give a broad understanding of interconnected relationships with nature, living and non-living entities in the environment and beyond (Sutherland and Swayze 2012 ).

Science education should recognize the significant wisdom values of indigenous knowledge that encompass spirituals, philosophical, worldviews, and stories of indigenous communities (Kawagley et al. 1998 ; Kawagley and Barnhardt 1998 ; McGregor 2004 ). All these aspects are necessary as a reflection on multiple perspective ways of knowing (Snively 1995 ) and as appreciation on the interconnected relationships of human and nature as well as to maintain the values of local cultural wisdom (Kasanda et al. 2005 ; de Beer and Whitlock 2009 ; Ng’asike 2011 ; Perin 2011 ).

Collaborative work with indigenous experts is needed to understand nature from an indigenous perspective (Garroutte 1999 ; Kim and Dionne 2014 ). The knowledge holders and communities must be involved to avoid diminishing or misrepresenting knowledge (Kim et al. 2017 ).

4.2 The Potential Role of Indigenous Knowledge for Transformative Education

According to the goal of twenty-first century education, Bell ( 2016 ) suggested that conventional teaching models must shift to a transformative style of education in order for humankind to learn how to live more sustainably. This implication could accommodate student transformative experiences in which they use ideas from the science classroom to see and experience the world differently in their everyday lives (Pugh et al. 2017 ). The involvement of transformative education with sustainable science has the potential to play an integral role in this paradigmatic shift, which requires the wider legitimation of our ecology as a highly interconnected system of life (Williams 2013 ). The students can use their ideas and beliefs in another way of knowing nature, which contributes to a better understanding of social, cultural, economic, political, and natural aspects of local environments. Indigenous science could provide a potential topic in pedagogical approaches for transformative education towards a sustainable future.

There exists a general agreement on the need to reform scientific expertise by developing new ways of understanding knowledge to cope with challenging sustainability issues (Sjöström et al. 2016 ). Transdisciplinary aspects of sustainability became acknowledged as a transformational stream of sustainability science (Tejedor et al. 2018 ). Indigenous science can provide one of these transdisciplinary aspects of sustainability, which proposes a different way of knowing. It has potential to provide learners with a different view of the world to understand scientific knowledge and more holistic learning, which learners make able to understand the role of the social and cultural context in the production of scientific knowledge (Aikenhead and Michell 2011 ; Kim and Dionne 2014 ).

By integrating multiple ways of knowing into science classrooms, students can learn the value of traditional ways of knowing. They can learn to utilize a conceptual eco-reflexive perspective and to acknowledge that learning and understanding are part of a complex system that includes experience, culture, and context, as well as mainstream science that is taught in class (Mack et al. 2012 ). This process can facilitate transformative experiences which encompass three characteristics: (1) motivated use (application of learning in “free-choice” contexts), (2) expansion of perception (seeing objects, events, or issues through the lens of the content), and (3) experiential value (valuing content for how it enriches everyday experience) (Pugh et al. 2017 ). The transformation of science education for learners is not merely a set of strategies related to changing learners’ behavior, changing the curriculum or pedagogy, changing definitions of science, or changing governance. Transformation of (science) education will also need to occur in the wider context to respect both indigenous and non-indigenous knowledge (Snively and Williams 2016 ).

4.3 The Role of Indigenous Knowledge in Science Education for Sustainability

Despite indigenous knowledge has been passed down from generation to generation over the centuries, its existence has been neglected and tended to be largely omitted from science curricula (Kibirige and van Rooyen 2006 ), as many other aspects of society and culture are (Hofstein et al. 2011 ). With the growing consideration of several problems facing the world, such as hunger, poverty, diseases, and environmental degradation, issues due to the weakness of Western modern science to overcome it has opened the insight and interest of the global community to take into account more thoroughly indigenous knowledge as a solution (Senanayake 2006 ; Odora Hoppers 2004 ). For instance, scientists have identified indigenous peoples’ practices to survive their life in nature: indigenous soil taxonomies; soil fertility; agronomic practices (terracing), such as contour banding, fallowing, organic fertilizer application, crop-rotation, and multi-cropping; conservation of soil and water; and anti-desertification practices (Atteh 1989 ; Lalonde 1993 ). Practices of indigenous pest control systems gained new interest for wide use in tropical countries. An ancient known mention of a poisonous plant having bio-pesticide activities is Azadirachta indica . This plant contains compounds which have been established as a pivotal insecticidal ingredient (Chaudhary et al. 2017 ).

The acknowledgement of the knowledge and practices of indigenous people to promote sustainable development has increased around the globe. For instance, UNESCO created the Local and Indigenous Knowledge System (LINKS) (UNESCO 2002 ). This program has a goal to explore the ways that indigenous and local knowledge systems contribute to understanding, mitigating and adapting to climate change, environmental degradation, and biodiversity loss. In addition, as part of its education for a sustainable future project, UNESCO launched the Teaching and Learning for Sustainable Future: A Multimedia Teacher Education Program (UNESCO 2002 ). It provides professional development for student teachers, teachers, curriculum developers, education policymakers, and authors of educational materials. This program also encourages teachers and students to gain enhanced respect for local cultures, their wisdom and ethics, and suggests ways of teaching and learning locally relevant knowledge and skills.

The integration of an indigenous perspective in science education has been widely applied by scholars in some regions, including Africa, Australia, Asia, and America. Ogunniyi and Hewson ( 2008 ) analyzed a teacher training course in South Africa to improve the ability of teachers to integrate indigenous knowledge into their science classrooms. Ogunniyi and Ogawa ( 2008 ) addressed the challenges in the development and implementation of indigenous science curricula in Africa and Japan. In Canada, Bridging the Gap (BTG) program provides inner-city students from Winnipeg in Manitoba with culturally relevant, science-based environmental education. This program content brings together environmental education and local indigenous knowledge and pedagogies (Sutherland and Swayze 2012 ). Reintegration of indigenous knowledge into education has also been carried out for a long time in Alaska. This process was initiated by the AKRSI (Alaska Rural Systemic Initiative) program that reconstructs indigenous knowledge of Alaska people and develops pedagogical practices by incorporating indigenous ways of knowing into formal education (Barnhardt et al. 2000 ). This process aims to connect learning processes inside classroom and experience outside school so that it can broaden and deepen the students understanding as well as encouraging them to learn about traditional culture and values (Barnhardt 2007 ). Moreover, in Indonesia, there is a bold attempt to reconstruct ethnoscience to promote the values of nature conservation and develop critical self-reflection on own cultural backgrounds (Parmin et al. 2017 ; Rahmawati et al. 2017 ; Widiyatmoko et al. 2015 ). In higher education, Australian undergraduate programs implemented indigenous studies in their curricula. The results suggest that the program can promote the greater capacity for students’ skills in critical reflections (Bullen & Roberts 2019 ).

Furthermore, the integration of indigenous knowledge is also involved in science teacher’s professional development programs. Sylva et al. ( 2010 ) conducted a study to transform science teacher professional development to facilitate teachers to make the content related to the environment and agriculture science fields more relevant to Hawaiian students’ lives and backgrounds. Chinn ( 2014 ) suggested that scientific inquiry learning associated with indigenous knowledge and sustainability practices supports the development of ecological attention of teachers. In addition, long-term professional development providing situated learning through cross-cultural immersion and interdisciplinary instruction also supports teachers to develop cross-cultural knowledge and literacy (Chinn 2006 ).

The application of indigenous knowledge to promote education for sustainability in various parts of the world is recognized. Teachers and students participating in sustainability and environmental education programs, as well as science education programs, should be considered potential beneficiaries of published research on indigenous science.

5 Raising the Relevance of Science Learning Through Indigenous Knowledge

5.1 the relevance of science learning.

The term relevance in science learning has many different meanings that can be viewed from different perspectives. Relevance can be defined as students’ interest in learning (Ramsden 1998 ; Childs 2006 ; Holbrook 2005 ), usefulness or student’s needs (Keller 1983 ; Simon and Amos 2011 ), or aspects of the application of science and technology to raise welfare and sustainability in social, economic, environmental, and political issues (De Haan 2006 ; Hofstein and Kesner 2006 ; Knamiller 1984 ). Stuckey et al. ( 2013 ) attempted to formulate a comprehensive understanding of relevance in science education and suggested a model of relevance by linking different dimensions of the relevance of science education. The model encompasses three main dimensions:

Individual relevance, with an emphasis on students’ interests and the development of individual intellectual skills

Societal relevance, by facilitating the student’s competence to engage responsibly in the present and future society

Vocational relevance, by providing vocational orientation and preparation for career development

Stuckey et al. ( 2013 ) suggested curriculum development to move dynamically to accommodate the relevance of science learning in its different dimensions and aspects (Eilks and Hofstein 2015 ). Current curricula in many countries are suggested to overcome a preference for learning based on scientific principles and facts that have been done in the “Golden Age” of the science curriculum in the 1950s and 1960s (Bybee 1997 ). At that time, the curriculum was designed using a discipline-based structured approach to provide effective learning about the concepts, theories, and facts of science (Eilks et al. 2013 ). The curriculum of science at that time is today considered irrelevant for most learners as it only accommodates the emphasis in the selection and preparation of a minority of students to become scientists and engineers (De Boer 2000 ; Stuckey et al. 2013 ).

Over time, science curriculum development has undergone significant changes (Eilks et al. 2013 ). The curriculum development in late 1990 to early 2000 was done by suggesting context-based science education and creating meaningful learning for students in many countries (e.g., King and Ritchie 2012 ). The contexts used were considered relevant from the perspective of Western modern science. However, in the viewpoint of global science, relevance must be concerned with the natural and environmental phenomena described by science in various contexts and cultural forms. Different views on science should be accepted by students with respect to different environments based on cultural identity, time, and society. One of the problems experienced by students in science education in developing countries is the feeling that learning science is like recognizing foreign cultures (Maddock 1981 ) and this is also experienced by students in industrialized countries (Aikenhead 1996 ; Costa 1995 ). The phenomenon occurs due to the fundamental differences between Western modern science and the knowledge systems of many non-Western cultures (Aikenhead 1997 ; Jegede 1995 ). The same issue is also expressed by Kibirige and van Rooyen ( 2006 ) suggesting that students with indigenous backgrounds may experience a conflict between Western modern science, that they learn in school, with their indigenous knowledge. As already described above, a similar conflict can also be expected for many students with a Western background, when their “personal science view” differ from the views of mainstream Western science (Ogawa 1995 ; Hansson 2014 ). Surely this is a challenge for researchers and educators who want to reach the goal of relevant science education for all students by bridging the difference between student’s experiences in their cultural context and the world of Western science.

5.2 Indigenous Knowledge as a Socio-scientific and Cultural Context to Accommodate Relevance in Science Education

In order to realize relevant science education in a contemporary view, it is necessary to consider socio-scientific and cultural contexts in science education (Stuckey et al. 2013 ; Sjöström et al. 2017 ; Sjöström 2018 ). As Ogawa ( 1995 ) emphasizes, every culture has its own science called “indigenous science.” Thus, every student must become aware of his individual, personal “indigenous” knowledge to constructs his knowledge of Western science. The focus of learning cannot be restricted to provide the student scientifically acceptable information, but should be to help students understand the concepts and explore the differences and similarities between their ideas, beliefs, values, and experiences with modern science concepts (Snively and Corsiglia 2000 ). The same view is also affirmed by Abonyi ( 1999 ) who stated that current instructional approaches in science education, which often do not take into consideration prior cultural beliefs, will lack in a contribution to students’ interest in science. In consequence, it might negatively influence students’ understanding and attitudes towards science learning (Alshammari et al. 2015 ).

The introduction of indigenous knowledge in the classroom can represent different cultural backgrounds of the learners and might improve their interpretation of knowledge (Botha 2012 ). It might have the potential to make science learning more relevant to students in culturally diverse classrooms (de Beer and Whitlock 2009 ). Related to this, Hayes et al. ( 2015 ) stated that societal culture has a major impact on the functioning of schools and the complexity of factors which affects the way schools teach science. The incorporation of indigenous knowledge into school curricula has the potential to enable students to gain further experiences and develop corresponding attitudes towards science. In the same time, it might help indigenous students to maintain the values of their local cultural wisdom (Kasanda et al. 2005 ; de Beer and Whitlock 2009 ; Ng’asike 2011 ; Perin 2011 ). Another goal of integrating indigenous knowledge in classroom learning is to reduce the notion that learning science is “strange” from the students’ own point of views by providing insights that views on science and nature can be different from culture to culture (Mashoko 2014 ). Knowledge can be seen as a dynamic process within the context of sociocultural and ecological relations. Accordingly, knowledge is not sourced only from the teachers but can be found in the experience of the students living, which is a prominent feature of the rural experiential environment (Avery and Hains 2017 ). Kawagley et al. ( 1998 ) contended that although indigenous ways of knowing are different from the Western way of thinking, their knowledge is scientific and relevant to the current situation because it is obtained from the results of long-term environmental observations combined with experiments in a natural setting. Indigenous science for science learning is relevant for students because they can learn traditional knowledge and skills that are still relevant to today’s life, as well as to find values and apply new insights to their practice which is essential for their survival (Kawagley et al. 1998 ; Barnhardt and Kawagley 2008 ).

Students bring ideas and beliefs based on their previous experiences in the classroom. The differences in cultural backgrounds cause them interpret the concept of science differently from a common scientific view. Accordingly, the exploration of multicultural science learning is required that brings students’ prior knowledge into the classroom. In many cases, the cultural aspect of the multicultural science context is important because it plays a role in providing valuable scientific knowledge and is also a pedagogical bridge linked mainly to multicultural students of science (Atwater and Riley 1993 ; Hodson 1993 ; Stanley and Brickhouse 1994 ). The relevant approach to this goal is by developing culturally sensitive curricula and teaching methods that integrate indigenous knowledge—and the variety of different cultural views—into the science curriculum (Aikenhead and Jegede 1999 ).

Zimmerman and Weible ( 2017 ) developed science learning curricula based on the sociocultural conceptualization of learning with specific consideration of place to understand how students’ rural experiences intersect with school-based learning. They suggested that education which focuses only on scientific concepts is not enough to support young people to become representative of their community. The learners need support in methods of presenting evidence and arguments, which can be facilitated in science classroom to convince key stakeholders in their rural community. This is important to make science learning meaningful and can lead to the development of various kinds of environmental meanings as learning outcomes.

Snively and Williams ( 2016 ) suggest that science educators must strive to design new curricula that represent a balanced perspective. Furthermore, they should expose students to multiple ways of understanding science. Indigenous perspectives have the potential to give insight and guidance to the kind of environmental ethics and deep understanding that we must gain as we attempt to solve the increasingly complex problems of the twenty-first century. For instance, the empirical study of the integration of indigenous perspective in science education has become a model of science education in Canada, with sustainability at its core (Fig.  3 ) (Murray 2015 ). Sustainability sciences should provide a balanced approach to how society alters the physical environment and how the state of the environment shapes society (Snively and Williams 2016 ).

Three dimensions of science education with the sustainability sciences as the foundation, as described in this didactic model by (Murray 2015 )

Murray ( 2015 ) emphasized in a magazine article that the focus of sustainability sciences is not merely on environmental science. It should also recognize science outside of environmental, citizenship, and cultural contexts. Therefore, it is important to make strong connections among the pure sciences, sustainability issues, socio-scientific issues, and the relevance of the curriculum (Murray 2015 ; Stuckey et al. 2013 ). According to Fig. 3 , sustainability sciences can integrate multiple perspectives on science worldviews and accommodate the three dimensions of the relevance of science education (individual, societal, and vocational relevance). In this case, indigenous science can be a source for socio-scientific and cultural issues which promote the relevance of science education. Accordingly, new pedagogical approaches should address indigenous science in order to enhance the relevance of science learning as well as to promote sustainable development.

As can be seen in Fig. 3 , Murray ( 2015 ) uses the term Vision III for multiple perspectives on scientific worldviews and indigenous systems of knowing, complementing Western traditions. This is included in our previous use of the term, although our Vision III of scientific literacy and science education is even broader in scope (Sjöström and Eilks 2018 ). Our view is inspired by an eco-reflexive understanding of Bildung . It describes a socio-political-philosophical vision of science education aiming at dialogical emancipation, critical global citizenship, and socio-ecojustice. This has consequences for the science curriculum that needs to incorporate more thoroughly societal perspectives—under inclusion of indigenous perspectives—and needs to incorporate stronger socio-scientific issue–based science education of a “hot” type (Simonneaux 2014 ). Controversial, relevant, and authentic socio-scientific issues, e.g., from the sustainability debate, shall become the drivers for the curriculum (Simonneaux and Simonneaux 2012 ). Corresponding research, curriculum development, and teacher continuous professional development need to be intensified. Recently, Sjöström ( 2018 ) discussed eco-reflexive Bildung - and a Vision III–driven science education as an alternative to science education based on Western modernism. It integrates cognitive and affective domains and includes complex socio-scientific and environmental issues, but also philosophical-moral-political-existential and indigenous perspectives more in general.

Recent pedagogical approaches involving socio-scientific issues to teach science imply the role of science and technology for society, both present and future (Marks and Eilks 2009 ; Sadler 2011 ). Students are suggested to develop general skills facilitated by science education to achieve the goals of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) (Eilks et al. 2013 ). In ESD-type curricula, learning encompasses the reflection and interaction of the application of science in its societal, economic, and ecological contexts (Burmeister et al. 2012 ; De Haan 2006 ; Wheeler 2000 ). ESD in connection with science education is suggested to have the potential to contribute to personal, societal, and vocational science teaching (Stuckey et al. 2013 ). It is relevant for individual action, e.g., in cases involving consumption of resources, participation in societal debates about issues of sustainable development, or careers related to sustainable chemistry and technology (Eilks and Hofstein 2014 ; Sjöström et al. 2015 ). Reflections on indigenous knowledge and its relatedness to Western modern science can form another focus in this selection of cases, especially if it becomes locally and regionally relevant.

Khaddoor et al. (2017) emphasized that the picture of science represented in many textbooks all over the world often neglects its societal and cultural components, and restricts it to a Western view on the history of science. Addressing indigenous knowledge in the framework of ESD, to promote relevant science education, may help students recognizing the intimate connection between humans and nature in culture. It would create science learning directly relevant to daily life and society along with regional-specific examples, but could also lead to intercultural learning. Moreover, it could facilitate authentic science experiences, which engage students with cultural-historical views (Roth et al. 2008a ).

6 Research Frameworks and Didactic Models for Adopting Indigenous Science in Science Education

There are different foci of research on integrating indigenous science in science education. Some scholars suggest attention to empirical research in anthropological and psychological paradigms. This research tries to investigate the process of knowledge transition from a student’s life-world into science classrooms, which forms a cross-cultural experience (Aikenhead and Jegede 1999 ). The research focuses on conceptualized transition as “cultural border crossing” (Aikenhead 1996 ) and cognitive conflicts arising from different cultural settings (Jegede 1995 ). They need to be addressed and resolved as “collateral learning.” Research suggests investigating the nature of student’s prior knowledge and beliefs about scientific phenomena when exposed to a cross-cultural topic (Herbert 2008 ).

Other research aims to design instructional approaches that introduce indigenous science into the science classroom. Abonyi ( 1999 ) explored the effect of ethnoscience-based instructional approaches on student’s conception of scientific phenomena and attitudes towards science. The study aimed to resolve the cognitive conflicts of African students as a result of differences between their cultural background and Western science. In a similar approach, Aikenhead ( 2001 ) developed instructional strategies by involving the aboriginal community. The strategies involved the discussion about local content with elders and the aboriginal community to construct an aboriginal science education framework. Key values as a context for integration were identified. However, conflict arose when students faced the problem of taking information from one knowledge system and placing it into another. Also contextualization by indigenous science is a topic of research and development (Chandra 2014 ; Hamlin 2013 ; Kimmerer 2012 ; Sumida Huaman 2016 ; van Lopik 2012 ). Sometimes, indigenous science is used to contextualize curricula. This approach is suggested to be appropriate to accommodate sociocultural demands in science curricula as well as to meet students’ perception of relevance. However, it is necessary to consider the students’ perspectives about scientific phenomena formed by the two different knowledge systems (indigenous science and Western modern science) to avoid misconceptions and conflicts that can arise. The systemic evidence and research-based development of the curriculum is suggested to construct a reliable knowledge framework to fit indigenous science with currently operated science education curricula.

To introduce indigenous knowledge as content and contexts into science education, a multidiscipline view on science education is needed. For this, didactic models and theories might be useful. According to Duit ( 2015 , p. 325), Didaktik “stands for a multifaceted view of planning and performing the instruction. It is based on the German concept of Bildung [… and] concerns the analytical process of transposing (and transforming) human knowledge (the cultural heritage) into knowledge for schooling that contributes to Bildung .” It is suggested that didactic models can help teachers in their didactic choices (why? what? how? to teach). Furthermore, they can be useful in the design, action, and analysis of teaching, but also for critical meta-reflection about for instance teaching traditions. When used systematically, they can also be helpful in teacher professional development and have potential to contribute to research-informed teaching (Duit 2015 ).

Duit ( 2007 ) also has emphasized that multiple reference disciplines are relevant to understand and design science education. The reference disciplines are suggested to support science education research and development. These reference disciplines include the sciences, philosophy, and history of science, pedagogy, and psychology, and furthermore (Fig.  4 ). We suggest that local wisdom of indigenous science—where appropriate—could be named as a further reference discipline, or it could be understood implicitly as being part of science (incorporating also its non-Western body of knowledge), the history and philosophy of science (referring to the different history and maybe varying philosophy of non-Western science), and aspects of sociology, anthropology, and ethics.

A model of reference disciplines for science education (Duit 2007 )

A research-based model to dig into the content and context of indigenous knowledge for science education is the Model of Educational Reconstruction (MER) (Duit et al. 2005 ). This model links (1) the analysis of content structure, (2) research on teaching and learning, and (3) development and evaluation of instruction. It may also provide a framework to allow an educational reconstruction of indigenous science content in such a way that the resulting instruction meets students’ perspectives, abilities, and needs. Incorporating indigenous science perspective by educational reconstruction might provide a complex representation of indigenous science for education. The complexity may result from the integrated environmental, social, and idiosyncratic contexts, in order to demonstrate their role for the life of the individual in society. The integration of indigenous science as a sociocultural context for scientific questions can also provide social demand in science learning. Diethelm et al. ( 2012 ) and Grillenberger et al. ( 2016 ) adapted social demands in educational construction to develop the innovative topic of computer science. This approach suggests identifying social demands that are relevant for students to cope with requirements that society puts on them in their everyday lives. Transferred to the aspect of indigenous knowledge in science education, a resulting didactic model might look as suggested in Fig.  5 .

Educational design framework to incorporate indigenous knowledge with science education (developed based on: Diethelm et al. 2012 )

Based on the educational design framework, any phenomenon or process from indigenous science in question shall be analyzed both from the Western and indigenous perspectives. The analysis can provide a different view on one’s own knowledge system as well as it has the potential to enrich both perspectives to create a thoughtful dialog (Stephens 2000 ). The context and content relevant to the }indigenous science issue, which are contrasted by the Western view on the phenomenon/process, are analyzed based on the three perspectives Western modern science, students, and teachers. The analysis is suggested to facilitate the process of elementarization and the construction of the scientific content structure for instruction that can be enriched by putting it into contexts that are accessible for the learners (Duit 2007 ). The indigenous perspective on the phenomenon/process has potential to offer authentic contexts for science learning and encompasses sociocultural aspects from local wisdom values (e.g., tradition, beliefs, ethics, supernatural) (Pauka et al. 2005 ; Rist and Dahdouh-Guebas 2006 ) as well as from sustainability values (e.g., nature conservation and adapting to climate change) (Snively and Corsiglia 2000 ; Snively and Williams 2016 ). It is necessary to analyze also the social demands of educational significance of the context generated from the indigenous perspective. It offers a chance to reflect Western views on science and nature in science education for contributing to the development of more balanced and holistic worldviews as well as the development of intercultural understanding and respect (Brayboy and Maughan 2009 ; Hatcher et al. 2009 ; de Beer and Whitlock 2009 ). Moreover, the indigenous ways of knowing can be used as starting points and anchors for scientific knowledge (Roth et al. 2008b ). Thus, the indigenous ways of knowing might also help to shape the knowledge already held in Western societies. The investigation of teachers’ and students’ perspective on indigenous knowledge is needed in order to identify their attitude, belief, and experiences towards the system of knowledge (Cronje et al. 2015 ; Fasasi 2017 ). The analysis also provides valuable information to avoid the conflict that could arise when the learners face different knowledge systems.

For the purpose of curriculum design, different perspectives (science, students, teachers, and society) are suggested to be analyzed to identify suitable content, contexts, and phenomena/processes for teaching about indigenous science. The structure in Fig. 5 takes into consideration that Diethelm et al. ( 2012 ) added two significant components to the original educational reconstruction model by Duit et al. ( 2005 ). One component is that contexts and phenomena are integrated, which suggest that science learning should start from a “real-world” phenomenon embedded in a context to open connections to prior experience of the student. This aims at encouraging students’ interest, and to show application situations of the intended knowledge. The second improvement is the analysis of social demands, which is a very important step to consider the educational significance of intended learning content, especially when it comes to integrating indigenous knowledge as part of a society’s wisdom other than Western modern science. The social demands might differ substantially in different places and cultures (countries, school, rural, or city areas). Accordingly, it is necessary to assess the educational significance of a certain topic respecting the specific circumstances, especially if it is culturally bounded. Analysis of social demands is a very important step to identify the educational significance of a certain topic (Diethelm et al. 2012 ). In the context of indigenous science, the analysis could be emphasized on the role of indigenous ways of knowing to promote education for sustainability. By drawing on indigenous knowledge, the issues connected to sustainability education can be included in the curriculum to provide an essential context for learning science.

The analysis of the science content structure informs how the phenomenon can be explained scientifically as well as to determine the required knowledge needed to understand the phenomenon or process (Diethelm et al. 2012 ). This step decides which concepts of modern science have to be dealt with in the lesson (Diethelm et al. 2012 ; Grillenberger et al. 2016 ). Meanwhile, the investigation of the students’ perspectives includes their cognitive and affective perspectives (Diethelm et al. 2012 ; Kattmann et al. 1996 ). The aim is to find out more general perspectives of certain groups of learners and different conceptualizations that students have when explaining scientific phenomena, concepts, or methods. Diethelm et al. ( 2012 ) considered this perspective an “official” scientific view, even if it was correct or not. The teachers’ perspective is needed as a key factor for the learning design and its implementation. This is because every teacher has different domain-specific knowledge and attitudes. In order to investigate the perspective of the student and teachers’ perspective about the phenomena of indigenous science, Snively ( 1995 ) introduced a five-step approach for exploring the two perspectives (Western science and indigenous science), when teaching about one concept or topic of interest. The process includes the following: (1) choose the topic of interest, (2) identify personal knowledge, (3) research the various perspectives, (4) reflect, and (5) evaluate the process (Table 6 ). This approach emphasized that discussion of the two perspectives might interpret the scientific phenomena differently, but the learner should see the overlap and reinforce each other.

The selection of phenomena is the central focus of the suggested framework in Fig. 5 . It emphasizes that learning science—as one out of different options—can start from a relevant indigenous context. Accordingly, certain phenomena should be perceived with senses and ideally have a surprising or mysterious element and thus triggers curiosity (Grillenberger et al. 2016 ). Indigenous science contains scientific phenomena embedded with spirits, magic, religion, and personal experiences (Pauka et al. 2005 ). Spiritual aspects of indigenous society are not used as religious instruction in the curriculum, but as an acknowledgement of the responsibility and dependence of living beings on ecosystems and respect for the mysteries of the universe (Kawagley et al. 1998 ). It can provide an interesting topic for the students as well as encourage them to explore local wisdom behind the scientific phenomena. Indigenous ways of knowing can become starting points and anchors for useful scientific knowledge (Roth et al. 2008b ). Figure 5 suggests that indigenous science deals with scientific phenomena to be explained by science. Furthermore, the scientific phenomena are embedded in a particular cultural context that can be used to encourage students to explore the differences and similarities between their ideas, beliefs, values, and experiences between those coming from indigenous knowledge and Western science, respectively.

Design and arrangement of learning should include development and implementation as well as reflection of teacher and student experience. This process identifies ideas and concepts relevant for teaching as well as it includes developing design principles. The reflection can be repeated in order to suit the learning environments to the particular demands of a given setting (Grillenberger et al. 2016 ). For the process of design and development, Diethelm et al. ( 2012 ) proposed the Berlin Model of planning processes (e.g., Zierer and Seel 2012 ; Duit 2015 ), which encompasses four different decision areas: intentions (objectives, competencies, outcomes), content (topics, knowledge), teaching methods, and media. In the development of learning design, it should be considered the pedagogical approach which accommodates the relevance of science learning for learners as well as to promote sustainability. Eilks et al. ( 2013 ) used ESD-type curricula to develop the general skills of students facilitated by science education to achieve the goals of education for sustainable development. This pedagogical approach also involved socio-scientific issues to raise relevance in science learning that implicates the role of science and technology for society both present and future (Marks and Eilks 2009 ). Burmeister et al. ( 2012 ) pointed out four different basic models to implement issues of sustainable development into science education:

Adopting principles from sustainable practices in science and technology to the science education laboratory work

Adding sustainable science as content in science education

Using controversial sustainability issues for socio-scientific issues which drive science education.

Science education as a part of sustainability-driven school development

Models 2 (context-based) and 3 (socio-scientific issues-based) seem suitable for the integration of indigenous science context into science education. Indigenous science can provide the contexts for science learning with a view on sustainability when learners at the same time explore the Western science perspective related to the indigenous way of knowing and behind any natural phenomena. Moreover, students can be encouraged with socio-scientific issues (SSI) relevant to indigenous people including a discussion of differences in the ways indigenous and Western science, respectively, view natural phenomena, how modern Western and indigenous people develop solutions, and the reasons why they do so. This can establish a base for discussion about environmental and technological issues between people with (post-)modern Western and indigenous thinking for establishing sustainable societies (Snively and Williams 2016 ).

Accordingly, the SSI approach in the learning activity should give more attention to students’ soft skill development such as argumentation (Belova et al. 2015 ), decision-making (Feierabend and Eilks 2011 ), reasoning skills (Sadler and Zeidler 2005 ), and using appropriate information (Belova et al. 2015 ). In sociocultural means, for instance, it is about using the argumentation-based course to enhance the understanding of different worldviews (nature of science and indigenous knowledge) in global awareness of the impact of scientific, technological, and industrial activities on the environment (Ogunniyi and Hewson 2008 ). Another example is the discussion about the controversial issue regarding Western and traditional medicine. It can be discussed in terms of reflection on the moral principles that underpin science (de Beer and Whitlock 2009 ) and can be useful to develop argumentation and reasoning skills.

The integration of indigenous knowledge in science education also should consider the learning objectives based on the different target of educational level (school science, higher education, and across educational levels). In school science, some studies used context-based learning about indigenous knowledge to motivate and foster interest in science learning (Abonyi 2002 ; Hiwatig 2008 ; Fasasi 2017 ). This approach also could lead to intercultural understanding and respect in science learning (Brayboy and Maughan 2009 ; Hatcher et al. 2009 ; de Beer and Whitlock 2009 ), as stated by Burford et al. ( 2012 ) as interculturality, which means “the inherent equality of different knowledge systems is acknowledged, with collaborative decision-making and an awareness of learning together towards share goals” (p. 33). In terms of sustainability, the learning attention should emphasize to bring together indigenous and non-indigenous students to learn about the environments, respecting their each culture, and educating future citizens to make wise decisions regarding long-term sustainable communities and environments (Snively and Williams 2016 ). This is, however, not limited to the inclusion of indigenous knowledge but should aim at all the different cultures present in multicultural classrooms.

In higher education, indigenous perspectives can contribute to greener science (e.g., ethnochemistry, ethnobotany, ethnomedicine). This includes learning about other substances and processes adopted from indigenous science, which are also in the focus of green chemistry (e.g., Sjöström and Talanquer 2018 ) and green agriculture. For instance, it can involve learning activities that involves the discussion about the development of highly effective biodegradable pesticides from neem tree oil ( Azadirachta indica ) by East Indian and North African peoples over 2000 years ago (Snively and Williams 2016 ). The information about biodegradable pesticide compounds from the neem tree could be used as a starting point to develop green chemistry lab activities. Across the educational levels, the focus of learning can give more emphasis on the nature of science views (more transdisciplinary and holistic), which parallels the discussion on sustainable and green science. The learning activity must shift to a transformative style by using ideas from the science classroom and multi-perspective views about sustainable science to see and experience the world differently in learner everyday lives (Murray 2015 ; Pugh et al. 2017 ). Accordingly, transformative education should be driven to reform the existing ways of knowing and understanding, to critically reflect on the values, beliefs, and worldviews that underpin them as well as to share the meanings that can contribute to sustainability (Sjöström et al. 2016 ; Tejedor et al. 2018 ; Mack et al. 2012 ).

7 Conclusion

Indigenous knowledge about nature and science generally differs from the traditional and dominant Western modern view of science in research and technical applications (Nakashima and Roué 2002 ; Iaccarino 2003 ; Mazzocchi 2006 ). It provides a different, alternative perspective on nature and the human in nature on its own right (Murfin 1994 ; Ogawa 1995 ) and therefore becomes authentic to persons having an indigenous background. It is also interesting that—more or less—similar ideas to the local wisdom of indigenous science also exist in Eastern spiritual thinking and alternative Western thinking. Such ideas are relevant to promote intercultural and intergenerational understanding and respect (Brayboy and Maughan 2009 ; Hatcher et al. 2009 ; de Beer and Whitlock 2009 ). From the discussion provided in this paper, it is suggested to carefully adopt views on and from indigenous knowledge into science education. Indigenous knowledge can provide further perspectives on nature and help us to reflect the nature of science. It offers rich contexts to initiate learning and connect science education with more holistic worldviews needed for promoting sustainability (e.g., Aikenhead and Michell 2011 ; Kim and Dionne 2014 ; Kim et al. 2017 ).

There is a lot of literature justifying a more thorough inclusion of culture into (science) education (e.g., Savelyeva 2017 ; Moon 2017 ; Wang 2016 ; Sjöström et al. 2017 ; Sjöström 2018 ). Justifications can be derived from different sources, like the concept of Bildung (Sjöström et al. 2017 ), as shown above. Indigenous cultures can play a role by strengthening the cultural component of science education (Hatcher et al. 2009 ; Murray 2015 ). For this, research on indigenous knowledge in science needs to be analyzed with respect to its potential for science education. It might be educationally reconstructed for integrating it into science teaching and learning. Here we have presented some frameworks and didactic models for how to elaborate on and design science education for sustainability that take indigenous knowledge and related non-Western and alternative Western ideas into consideration. Further work needs to focus on evidence-based curriculum development in science education on the integration of indigenous knowledge. This development, however, needs special care and sensitivity because it deals with different cultures, worldviews, and ethical considerations. Further discussion might also include aspects of the historical development of indigenous knowledge, the history of colonialism, and the long-term effects colonialism still has on societies and science education in many parts of the world (e.g., Boisselle 2016 ; Ryan 2008 ). Such a discussion, just like the discussion in this paper, needs respect to indigenous communities; if possible, it could be done in cooperation and exchange with persons from the corresponding communities.

Change history

13 march 2021.

A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11191-021-00194-2

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Zidny, R., Sjöström, J. & Eilks, I. A Multi-Perspective Reflection on How Indigenous Knowledge and Related Ideas Can Improve Science Education for Sustainability. Sci & Educ 29 , 145–185 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11191-019-00100-x

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The Dilemma of Traditional Knowledge: Indigenous Peoples and Traditional Knowledge

This essay deals with the issue of traditional knowledge and critically assesses the relevant provisions of the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity. It also analyses “soft law” instrument, the so-called, Akwé: Kon Voluntary Guidelines. The essay illustrates the problems relating to the regulation of indigenous knowledge by examples from practice.

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Are we romanticizing traditional knowledge? A plea for more experimental studies in ethnobiology

• Marco Leonti 1  

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In answer to the debate question "Is ethnobiology romanticizing traditional practices, posing an urgent need for more experimental studies evaluating local knowledge systems?" I suggest to follow-up on field study results adopting an inclusive research agenda, and challenge descriptive data, theories, and hypotheses by means of experiments. Traditional and local knowledge are generally associated with positive societal values by ethnobiologists and, increasingly also by stakeholders. They are seen as a way for improving local livelihoods, biocultural diversity conservation and for promoting sustainable development. Therefore, it is argued that such knowledge needs to be documented, protected, conserved in situ, and investigated by hypothesis testing. Here I argue that a critical mindset is needed when assessing any kind of knowledge, whether it is modern, local, indigenous, or traditional.

Introduction

In this essay I take a broad view on ethnobiology highlighting the often-heterogenous origin and fuzzy character of local and traditional knowledge and the importance of being enriched with modern and outside knowledge. As a follow-up on a previous debate about the question of whether ethnobiology should “…abandon more classical folkloric studies” and instead “foster hypothesis-driven forefront research…” I asked for the approval of a call on “are we romanticizing traditional knowledge and is there a need for more experimental studies in ethnobiology” [full stop]. Here I acknowledge the need for descriptive and hypothesis-driven studies but also point out their limitations and the value of experimental studies as a means for overcoming the inherent subjectivity of human observation. Some of the experimental studies I refer to are not strictly ‘ethnobiological’, but they could have been so, if only experimental approaches were more frequently implemented.

Experimentations were instrumental for human cultural progress [ 1 ] and are also used for understanding cultural evolution [ 2 ]. Experiments are conducted to challenge hypotheses, assess the probabilities of efficacy, or have an exploratory character. It is distinguished between true experiments, where participants or treatments are assigned randomly or quasi-experiments where participants or treatments are selected for groups [ 3 ]. The scientific strength of experiments lies in their reproducibility and the consequent logical analysis of the results obtained. In laboratory experiments variables can be controlled for while field experiments are closer to reality [ 4 ]. Natural experiments are going on permanently around us and cannot be manipulated by researchers but only evaluated. Since the data is recorded in a natural setting it is crucial to capture the baseline data of the identified variables and to understand which hypothesis is actually being tested [ 1 , 4 ]. The experiment is an essential part of the scientific progress process [ 5 ]. Active involvement in descriptive studies, hypothesis testing and experimental research, grants a more nuanced sense of what evidence is, and insights into the difficulties of human observation.

What is traditional and local knowledge and what are the dynamics?

Traditional knowledge and customs (referred to also as indigenous and local knowledge) have been reported by natural philosophers and chroniclers since around 2000 years (e.g., [ 6 , 7 , 8 ]). With the help of written documents, cultural remains and archaeological artefacts, we understand persistence and dynamics of traditions and knowledge. Besides of being maintained or abandoned, traditional knowledge can synchronize with ‘outside’ knowledge and syncretize, blend with newly generated knowledge, evolve gradually, be reinvented, or invented intentionally [ 9 , 10 , 11 ]. For instance, the cheese ‘fondue’, a Swiss national dish, probably now considered traditional by many, was ad hoc invented to promote the consumption of Swiss cheese during the 1930ies and presented to an international audience at the New York World’s Fair 1939/40.

So, what is it that makes knowledge to become ‘traditional’? In the context of herbal medicine, traditional knowledge is defined and distinguished from a current fashion or a trend in that its transmission must involve at least three generations, including two steps of knowledge transmission or, alternatively, three ‘training generations’ where knowledge is being passed on to apprentices [ 12 ]. The definition of traditional knowledge in general is fuzzier and many of our daily activities, (e.g., preparing food) contain traditional elements. However, not all activities are traditional just because they have been practiced ever since or because they are sustainable. For instance, collecting rainwater for plant irrigation purposes, is not per se traditional ecological knowledge (TEK). People would collect rainwater for plant irrigation also if they had never observed this practice anywhere else. Moreover, having a theory of mind and observational skills individuals can understand the poor quality and unsustainability of (chlorinated) tap water for watering plants and thus try to avoid the associated economic costs. Collecting rainwater such as roof run-off is just intuitive and logic. On the other hand, complex and elaborate water collection and irrigation systems adapted to specific landscapes and climatic conditions are often grounded on traditional knowledge [ 13 ]. It is the culture-specific way of doing things that characterizes the local or the traditional and not necessarily actions per se.

From documents of culture-historical importance we learn that while many traditional practices and customs did not stand the test of time and were wisely abandoned, others persist to date. For instance, many medical treatments were not effective or even dangerous. Bloodletting or purging by means of poisonous botanical drugs with strong emetic and cathartic effects were eventually abandoned along with European humoral medicine [ 14 ]. Other botanical drugs have been used continuously throughout the centuries, many of them with acceptable safety profiles [ 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 ]. However, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) does not confuse generation-long use with efficacy or effectiveness. In absence of clinical data supporting traditional applications the EMA confers the status of ”traditional use” where “sufficient safety data and plausible efficacy are demonstrated” (e.g., any application of extracts derived from Panax ginseng C.A. Meyer, underground organs) which is different from products with “recognised efficacy” (e.g., application of 20 mg EtOH (60%) extract obtained from Vitex agnus-castus L. fruits with a DER of 6-12:1) for premenstrual syndrome.

The tradition of whaling (the hunting of whales, mainly for blubber) was not sustainable and brought several whale species to the brink of extinction which is the reason why whaling got banned in many countries by 1969. Some traditions were given up because of changing moral and ethical standards and by the introduction of new laws. Disputes about the expansion of slavery caused the American Civil War resulting in an official legal ban of slavery in 1865. Many other traditions ignoring individual’s freedom, right to integrity and equality such as female genital mutilation (in many African countries, the Near East and Indonesia), early child marriage (Africa, Near East, the Indian subcontinent, and South-East Asia) or the Indian caste system [ 20 ] continue to be practiced while the legacy of Roman law is still present in Western legal thought [ 21 ].

Example of Italy and the economization of TK

Let’s take for example modern Italian culture and economy which are rooted in the country’s rich history and local traditions. Italy shows a marked North–South economic disparity, associated with geography and culture. The varied history of the different Italian regions is reflected in the distinct traditions in food production, cuisine, and craftsmanship. Italy has currently the highest share of elderly people (> 65 years of age) and one of the lowest birth rates within all European countries. This is also conditioned by the late financial independence and economic insecurity of young Italians permitting them to start a family only relatively late in life. This situation poses serious challenges to health care, old age benefits and economy.

Small- and medium-sized enterprises constitute the backbone of the Italian economy with around 75% of all businesses in family hand [ 22 ]. The knowledge for securing the highest quality of raw products at the best conditions and the steps, processes, recipes, tools, and machines used during production are well-kept secrets and associated knowledge transmitted only within the family. Since it is easier to collect taxes from a few large businesses than from many small family businesses, Italian tax authorities face more difficulties than other European countries in this regard. Besides that, a low taxpayer commitment, organized crime, corruption, bureaucracy, low productivity due to lack of process innovation [ 22 , 23 ] are other traditional problems afflicting the Italian economy. Though Italy being a relatively wealthy country the traditional business structure and reliance on local knowledge is also a drawback for economic growth because innovation and modernization occur too often on a relatively low scale which reinforces Italy’s traditional set up.

Example of Switzerland and TEK

It was recently showcased how TEK is often maintained because of lack of economic resources that would permit the use of more technological equipment and not because of ecological concerns [ 24 ]. Also, others (e.g. [ 25 ]) concluded, that in the more economically developed regions TEK practices will have a chance to survive only in protected areas where they are used as a tool for biodiversity conservation and where they are fostered by consumers requesting organic and ecologically sustainable food. Topography also plays an important factor in the maintenance of TEK. In mountainous and alpine regions such as the European Alps, TEK and its application is more prominent than in the lowlands, conditioned by the fact that the inclination of the terrain and the marked seasonal changes do not allow for intensive land management and the use of heavy equipment and machinery. This applies also to natural estuaries, river, sea, and lake shores. Agriculture is subsidized all over Switzerland but more heavily in mountainous regions, where otherwise production would not be profitable at all. Switzerland is a wealthy and rich country, which can afford to subsidize agriculture and traditional ways of food production. Thereby, food sovereignty and indigenous food production systems including TEK are maintained at least partially. According to Article 104 of the Federal Constitution, agriculture has a mandate to provide public services. These are each subsidized with a specific type of direct payment. These services include, for example, near-natural, environmentally friendly, and animal-friendly production, the preservation of natural resources and the maintenance of the cultural landscape. In 2022, the federal government paid out a total of around CHF 2.8 billion in direct payments for agriculture [ 26 ].

Also, religious denomination can affect land management practices in Switzerland. The sociocultural differences between the protestant canton of Bern and the catholic canton of Lucerne are amongst others reflected in the fact that contrary to the practice followed in the canton of Lucerne, the grassland in the canton of Bern gets cleaned from bitter dock ( Rumex obtusifolius L.), a noxious weed [ 27 ]. In the past also a catholic and a protestant way of tilling the land existed in Switzerland [ 28 ]. Historically, the large number of non-working days in the canton of Lucerne and the heavy demands on the population were blamed by numerous travellers and writers for the region’s lagging behind in terms of industrialisation and agricultural development [ 29 ].

With the example of Italy, I tried to explain how traditional, and local knowledge can serve as a starting point for innovation, but that success depends on the effective adoption of global knowledge and economic structures. With the example of Switzerland, I tried to highlight that besides economic resources and consumers preferences also topographical particularities, and religion can have a direct influence on the maintenance and practice of TEK. With both, the example of Italy and Switzerland I also tried to highlight the difficulty of defining and identifying ‘systems’ of traditional knowledge. Thus, ‘traditional knowledge systems’ as such can be difficult to grasp because traditional and modern knowledge are often combined and blended in processes that may give way to new traditions. Therefore, here I rather focus on traditional and local knowledge as such and avoid talking about ‘systems’, which are nowadays to be found only in remote areas and isolated civilizations and communities [ 30 ].

In summary, history shows, that non-sustainable practices are often abandoned but, also that societal power structures can help to maintain archaic traditions and that traditional and local knowledge, in combinations with purposeful technological experimentation and invention led to innovation which was instrumental for shaping the world and the various human cultures we know today. However, in my view there is nothing wrong or dramatic about abandoning outdated traditions and practices. Here I argue that traditional knowledge should not only not be romanticized [ 24 ] but critically questioned, also with the help of experiments, like any other knowledge.

Are we howling at the moon?

The question as of whether there is an urgent need for more experimental studies evaluating local knowledge systems is related to a previous debate in this series focusing of whether ethnobiology and ethnomedicine should more decisively foster hypothesis-driven forefront research able to turn findings into policy and abandon more classical folkloric studies. I think that there is no need for dramatizing and that the ‘urgency’ is rather related to the question of whether or how proximate ethnobiology is thought to evolve into a branch of multidisciplinary science adopting an inclusive research protocol.

Clearly, for ethnobiology to prosper both, descriptive and hypothesis-driven approaches are needed. Primary data is the basis for all science and descriptive studies fuel hypothesis-driven studies [ 31 , 32 , 33 , 34 ]. Though I would agree with the statement that well conducted and solid descriptive studies contextualizing and highlighting new data and perspectives are worthier than hypotheses-driven studies pursuing hypotheses for the sake of confirming already known relationships and facts in an anachronistic or non-contextualized way [ 32 , 35 ].

However, analysing descriptive data for novelty is not simple and requires extensive background knowledge because the tradition of reporting the use of biodiversity by human societies is as old as written history and an immense quantity of recorded data exists. This complicates data accession, handling, and assessment. The inherent difficulty of assessing novelty of ethnomedical survey papers has been noted by Verpoorte in 2008 who proposed the use of a ‘repository’ (database) where the list of plant species and associated data can be integrated systematically, organized in a way that information for specific taxa or uses can be retrieved easily [ 31 ]. A brief paper mentioning methodological aspects and providing background data together with a short discussion was suggested to be published along with the database entry. However, this idea has not caught on. A Spanish initiative, however, has realized a reasonable way forward. Besides a national inventory database including traditional knowledge related to biodiversity that is based on descriptive reports, an online interactive platform was created that allows users to submit personal knowledge related to biodiversity and retrieve specific information [ 36 ].

While open databases allow for information exchange and their (changing) content for the formulation of hypotheses, Reyes-Garcia has correctly pointed out that results obtained from hypotheses-driven studies do not automatically translate to approved policies or scientific reorientations [ 33 ].  Here I must acknowledge that neither do experimental studies. The strengths of ethnobiology and ethnomedicine lie in the possibilities to “draw on theories and methods from the natural sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities” [ 33 ]. The flip side of this asset is that the vast breath of ethnobiology potentiates the complexity of seemingly simple research questions augmenting the possibility for overlooking or not being able to account for important confounders. Here lie the benefits of experiments. In experiments variables can be controlled, providing evidence of additional and specific support in favour or against theories and hypotheses. Ethnobiologists often blindly rely on their findings or on the motivation of researchers with different backgrounds and from different disciplines to pick up and draw on their data for experimental research, instead of taking on the challenge themselves and bring their research to the next level. I argue that by including experimental approaches and engaging in translational research next to describing reality and testing hypotheses the contribution of ethnobiology to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) could be more relevant.

Clearly not all hypothesis testing, and experiments are automatically constructive. Lakatos proposed to focus on research programmes instead on isolated hypotheses as the descriptive unit of achievements [ 5 ] because research programmes have “auxiliary hypotheses” and a problem-solving machinery serving as a “protecting belt” in place. In the case of interdisciplinary research programmes such as ethnobiology, ethnobotany and ethnopharmacology the protecting disciplines are biology, history, phytochemistry, pharmacology, medicine, cultural anthropology, ecology, agronomy, and economy, including all their methodological and experimental approaches [ 35 ].

Experimental studies in the context of ethnobiology

Probably conditioned by Brent Berlin’s studies (e.g., [ 37 ]), for me ethnobiology is closely tied to human interpretation and classification of environmental sensory inputs and the perception of taste, smell, chemesthesis, vision, acoustics, and touch. Berlin and Kay’s research that led to the proposal of basic colour terms as a biological law was based on an experimental approach [ 38 ]. The proposed rule about the lexicalization of the colour space associated with stages of linguistic evolution got later relativized by Berlin and Kay themselves and by others [ 39 ] but breached a new dimension in ethnobiological research.

It was a natural experiment that lent support to the hypothesis that natural views as opposed to urban sceneries, may have a restorative effect. Patients assigned to a hospital room with a window view on trees were discharged earlier, required less analgesic medication, and suffered from fewer postoperative complications [ 40 ]. The positive effect on general health and well-being of practicing Shinrin-yoku (forest bathing) has been assessed by clinical trials [ 41 ]. This practice of mindful engagement with sensory stimuli emitted by forest environments originated in Japan. For instance, a comparative study of the physiological and psychological effects of Shinrin-yoku suggests a positive outcome on mental health and blood pressure [ 42 ]. A simultaneous contribution of different factors such as physical activity, overall relaxing effect of acoustic signals [ 43 ], green environment [ 44 ], the pharmacologic effect of plant volatiles and the volatilome [ 45 ] are plausible. Music is a universal cultural achievement used in healing rituals and ceremonies [ 46 ] and for directing emotions in general (e.g., film industry). Cumulative experimental evidence supports the idea that music has therapeutic potential [ 47 ] (especially for improving cognition and memory with patients suffering from dementia and Alzheimer’s disease [ 48 , 49 ].

In the specific case of forest bathing experiments could help to assess efficacy of individual factors, including their intensity or dose, and their potentiating and synergistic effects lending additional scientific credit to this practice. On the contrary, homeopathy, a more recent alternative and complementary form of medicine that was invented ad hoc has not shown any efficacy beyond the placebo effect, i.e., the meaning response [ 50 , 51 ]. Evidence-based data is important for informing practitioners, patients, and social security to allow for informed health care choices and health care provision. Clinical studies on the therapeutic efficacy of sensory inputs serves decision making so that, instead of getting prescribed homeopathic medicines or tranquillizers, patients eventually get prescribed a walk in the woods or a combination of different treatments. A meta-analysis including experimental studies found evidence for the efficacy of smell-training on the recovery of olfactory loss [ 52 ]. Olfactory loss (anosmia) and taste loss were also frequent symptoms of COVID-19 and found to be the only symptom associated with depressed mood and anxiety following infection [ 53 ]. A systematic review based on experimental studies highlighted that in general, depressed patients had increased olfactory dysfunction compared to healthy participants while patients with impaired olfactory performance showed depressive symptoms progressing in severity with increasing olfactory dysfunction [ 54 ]. On the other hand, aromatherapy was found to be effective in clinical trials with patients suffering from anxiety and stress [ 55 ]. There is thus substantial experimental evidence stemming from a variety of approaches, experiments and perspectives that spending time in nature and the frequent use of aromatic herbs in the treatment of psychological problems in traditional medicine [ 56 , 57 , 58 ] has an evidence base. I think this is very nice to know beyond any personal preferences or morbidities.

Also, taste and flavour properties of botanical drugs are often reported to be important selection cues in traditional medicine [ 14 , 59 , 60 , 61 , 62 ]. However, chemosensory qualities in ethnobiological studies are rarely experimentally assessed with the help of double-blind tasting panels and by challenging research participants with samples. Conducting a tasting panel can be fun and provides much more reliable data than simply asking for taste and flavour properties trying to retrieve participants’ memories. In fact, plant drugs can elicit a range of chemosensory perceptions and they do so to varying degrees. Recently we used chemosensory qualities of 700 botanical drugs assessed by 11 panel participants to predict therapeutic uses as described in an ancient medical text. The results, corrected for shared ancestry of botanical species, suggest that chemosensory perception and perceived physiologic effects guided ancient therapeutic knowledge linking it to modern pharmacology albeit aetiologies have completely changed [ 14 ]. Experimental evidence also suggests that it is not simply bitter which is the ‘better’ as suggested [ 62 ] but that those bitter tasting edible herbs are concomitantly salty or umami in taste which makes them more palatable and acceptable for food [ 63 ].

Especially in medicine many new discoveries were made through experimentations, evaluated by means of standardized experiments and due to serendipity in the context of experiments [ 64 , 65 ]. Without medical and pharmacological experiments most of us would not sit here and read these lines. If the claims made in traditional medicine were all correct there would be no need for ethnopharmacology or evidence-based medicine at all. The panacea would be within anyone’s reach, and we would probably live in a brave new world [ 66 ]. However, this is not the case and although indigenous people are generally not waiting for field researchers to poke their nose into community affairs, once accepted as a foreign investigator or collaborator of their medicinal customs, indigenous people are interested in knowing whether their medicines are effective (personal observation). Often, it is impossible to give an informed response because data are not available for all botanical drugs, or they are not meaningful for the traditional context (e.g., antioxidant in vitro effects). This anecdote highlights that also indigenous people may nurture doubts about the efficacy of their medicines and that there exists interest in knowing the other, Western perspective, as well. In this context it is important to distinguish between efficacy which describes the capacity of an agent to produce an effect under standardized conditions and effectiveness, describing the therapeutic success in real-life practice and within a cultural setting [ 67 , 68 ]. Traditional use can give some indications about safety profiles but adverse effects that manifest with delay such as hepatotoxicity or nephropathy (kidney disease) are not easily recognized. For many indications effectiveness is even more difficult to appreciate because of confounding factors such as severity of symptoms, self-limiting diseases (such as infections) and the restorative power of the human body. Therefore, ethnopharmacologists design laboratory experiments reflecting as accurately as possible the traditional application to provide information about the medicine’s efficacy and possible adverse effects [ 69 , 70 ].

Importantly, descriptive studies besides informing experimental studies also serve as a basis for meta-analyses and review papers that consider associated experimental studies. Lack of systematic reviews about experimental data providing evidence or its absence regarding traditional and complementary medicine in Mesoamerica and other regions of the world is linked with insufficient health care strategies and culturally pertinent health materials [ 58 ]. Integrative medicine is an important pillar for achieving universal health coverage (UHC) for underserved populations and access to appropriate medical care is central for achieving Sustainable Development Goal three (SDG 3 “Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages”; https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal3 ) of the UN Agenda 2030 [ 71 , 72 ]. In order to fill this gap, we used a consensus approach based on the Mesoamerican Medicinal Plant Database to reflect acceptability and therapeutic importance for a critical assessment of the available pharmacological and toxicological data of botanical drugs [ 58 ].

The development of medicines for chronic illnesses and life-promoting medications that can be commercialized in the affluent Western world are appreciated more by stakeholders. In urban areas food supplements and remedies for life-style diseases are important product sectors sourced from herbal drugs and plant-based medicines. However, in a situation of health emergency termed double-burden of disease [ 73 ] marginalized populations, in addition to combatting insurging life-style diseases, continue to fight neglected infectious diseases with botanical drugs [ 58 , 74 ]. Investigations of traditional treatments of rare and neglected parasitic and infectious diseases [ 75 , 76 , 77 , 78 ] deserve more attention by ethnobiologists and ethnopharmacologists because major pharmaceutical companies show little interest in developing medications for a segment of the population with limited purchasing power [ 79 ]. Clinical studies involving humans are beyond what single academic groups can do. A possible way to assess the effectiveness of traditional medicines is by conducting retrospective treatment outcome (RTO) studies (open field experiments), where defined disease-related parameters are retrospectively assessed for clinical outcomes [ 80 ]. Food drugs qualify as good candidates for RTO studies because they generally show a high acceptance and are associated with low toxicity. Also, the field of veterinary research is accessible for ethnobiologists [ 81 ]. For instance, a placebo and antibiotic standard treatment-controlled study assessed the effect of garlic ( Allium sativum L.) on weight gain and postweaning diarrhoea in piglets. Garlic showed positive effects on weight gain but no prophylactic effect on postweaning diarrhoea leaving the search for anti-diarrhoeal herbal products able to reduce antibiotic treatment open [ 82 ].

The therapeutic value of crude animal drugs is often limited to culture-specific symbolism [ 83 ]. Belief in therapeutic effectiveness of animal products prompts illegal trade resulting in a negative impact on the probability of survival of wild animal populations as well as the welfare of individual animals [ 84 , 85 ]. Redirecting therapeutic demand towards products without conservation issues are more likely to be crowned by species conservation success than simply trying to reduce demand without offering alternatives. It was shown that Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) users remained unaffected by information appealing to reduced consumption but that especially the more regular TCM users had a positive attitude towards the idea of buying alternative botanical products [ 86 ]. In another study, using an online survey directed to 1000 medical practitioners in China, 86% of respondents reported the willingness to substitute animal-based materials with botanical drugs, provided, that safety and effectiveness was comparable [ 87 ]. Though it is challenging to find culturally acceptable plant-based substitutes this might be achieved in close collaboration with traditional healers, vendors, and an experimental assessment of consumers preferences. This proposal is not about trumping indigenous peoples’ rights to maintain their traditional health-care practises, but to actively involve them in generating information protecting their environment and traditions.

Conclusions

While we should avoid transfiguring modern knowledge and science as categorically superior over traditional knowledge there is also no need to romanticize traditional knowledge. Which approaches, strategies and knowledge can provide the best solutions depends always on the specific context. However, for achieving most of the SDGs there is no way around insights gained from experiments. There is much space for ethnobiologists for engaging in experimental research dedicated to sensory biology and health, traditional medicine, ethnopharmacology and ethnoveterinary research, traditional ecological knowledge, domestication of wild edible plant species, food preferences (landraces, wild vegetables and fruits versus commercial crops, evaluation of traditional recipes), pet-therapy (healing with animals), aromatherapy as well as the analysis of music, or incense and smoke constituents in the context or healing rituals. For an impactful ethnobiology, as with most scientific fields, broad interdisciplinary knowledge and a research agenda including next to descriptive, and hypothesis-driven studies also experimental work is essential. Though ethnobiology and TEK have a strong spiritual component, science as practiced today cannot capture it. It is important that ethnobiology avoids spiritual bypassing and that it builds its science on evidence and not on opinions.

Availability of data and materials

Not applicable.

Abbreviations

Drug extract ratio

European medicines agency

Ethyl alcohol

Sustainable development goal

Traditional Chinese medicine

Traditional ecological knowledge

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Leonti, M. Are we romanticizing traditional knowledge? A plea for more experimental studies in ethnobiology. J Ethnobiology Ethnomedicine 20 , 56 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13002-024-00697-6

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• Experimental studies ethnobiology
• Traditional knowledge
• Local knowledge
• Sustainability
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Indigenous knowledge, traditional knowledge and local knowledge: what is the difference? An informetrics perspective

Global Knowledge, Memory and Communication

ISSN : 2514-9342

Article publication date: 14 July 2022

Issue publication date: 13 February 2024

This study aims to explore the similarities and differences between the three concepts that are commonly used to describe the knowledge of traditional and indigenous communities, namely, indigenous knowledge, traditional knowledge and local knowledge, with a view to contributing to the discourse on conceptualizing indigenous knowledge.

Design/methodology/approach

Data was extracted from the Scopus database using the main terms that are used for indigenous knowledge, namely, “indigenous knowledge” (IK), “traditional knowledge” (TK) and “local knowledge” (LK). Data were analyzed according to the themes drawn from the objectives of the study, using the VOSviewer software and the analytical tool embedded in the Scopus database.

The findings indicate that whereas IK and LK are older concepts than TK, TK has become more visible in the literature than the former; there is minimal overlap in the use of the labels in the literature; the three labels’ literature is largely domiciled in the social sciences; and that there were variations in representation of the labels according to countries and geographic regions.

Practical implications

The author avers that the scatter of literature on the knowledge of traditional and indigenous peoples under the three main labels has huge implications on the accessibility and use the literature by stakeholders including researchers, students, information and knowledge managers and information service providers.

Originality/value

This study demonstrates the application of informetrics beyond is traditional use to assess trends, nature and types of research patterns and mathematical modeling of information patterns to encompass the definition of the scope of concepts as covered in the literature.

• Indigenous knowledge
• Traditional knowledge
• Local knowledge
• Bibliometrics
• Content analysis

Onyancha, O.B. (2024), "Indigenous knowledge, traditional knowledge and local knowledge: what is the difference? An informetrics perspective", Global Knowledge, Memory and Communication , Vol. 73 No. 3, pp. 237-257. https://doi.org/10.1108/GKMC-01-2022-0011

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Introduction

Is indigenous knowledge (IK) traditional knowledge (TK) and/or local knowledge (LK)? Conversely, are traditional knowledge and local knowledge indigenous knowledge? An examination of the published literature indicates that the three concepts are more often than not used interchangeably in the literature ( Kihwelo, 2005 ; Getha, 2010 ; Santha, Fraunholz and Unnithan, 2010 ). In some cases, one term is used in place of another, not so much because the terms are seen as different but because authors prefer the use of one term over another for various reasons. In other cases, the terms are used together to reflect their distinctive but intertwined nature ( Antweiler, 1998 ). Boven and Morohashi (2002 , p. 6) treat indigenous knowledge as local knowledge and defines the concept as “a complete body of knowledge, knowhow and practices maintained and developed by peoples, generally in rural areas, who have extended histories of interaction with the natural environment […] these sets of understandings, interpretations and meanings are part of a cultural complex that encompasses language, naming and classification systems, practices for using resources, ritual, spirituality and worldview”. On his part, Grenier (1989 , p. 1) considers the three terms to be synonymous and defines them as “knowledge existing within and developed around the specific conditions of women and men indigenous to a particular geographic area”. Odora Hoppers (2005 , p. 2) define TK as the “totality of all knowledge and practices, whether explicit or implicit, used in the management of socio-economic, spiritual and ecological facts of life,” while Warren and McKiernan (1995) argue that LK is IK and Janke and Sentina (2018) believe that TK is a component of IK.

It is not surprising, therefore, that the concept is said to be lacking a universally agreed definition ( Kihwelo, 2005 ; Ngulube and Onyancha, 2011 ; Onyancha et al. , 2018 ). As a result, several scholars have made efforts in scoping indigenous knowledge (herein used to cover the three concepts under investigation in the study) in an attempt to find a uniform terminology for the many concepts used for indigenous knowledge ( Onyancha et al. , 2018 ). The attempts to seek for a uniform terminology for indigenous knowledge is made complicated due to its diverse nature in types of knowledge, systems, and concepts and labels associated with it ( Kok, 2005 ; Dekens, 2007 ; Ngulube and Onyancha, 2011 ; Onyancha et al. , 2018 ). The diverse nature in terms of the labels associated with indigenous knowledge is well illustrated in Ngulube and Onyancha (2011) , who identified a total of 17 names for indigenous knowledge. It has also been noted that the concept is multidisciplinary ( Hirwade and Hirwade, 2012 , p. 240), thereby strengthening the arguments on its diverse nature. In view of the above, it is acknowledged that the concept requires continued discourse for deeper and clearer understanding of its scope and subject domain. For purposes of conducting this study, we adopt the definitions offered in Ngulube and Onyancha (2011) for the three concepts.

Related studies

Informetrics/scientometrics studies to examine IK and its associated terminologies are rare, and rarer are the studies that have sought to conceptualize indigenous knowledge using bibliometric techniques. There are equally few studies that have examined the literature to explore the trend and patterns of research in the subject domain. Although the current study is not necessarily assessing the latter and focuses more on the former, this section highlights some findings on studies regarding research outputs on IK and its related terms. Regarding research production in the subject domain, all studies ( Kwanya, 2016 ; Ali et al. , 2016 ; Brook and McLachlan, 2008 ; Singh and Harish, 2016 ; Fung and Wong, 2017 ; Maluleka and Ngulube, 2019 ; Njiraine et al. , 2010 ; Ocholla and Onyancha, 2005 ; and Pathak and Bharati, 2018 ) that have been conducted to assess the growth of literature on indigenous knowledge, have reported similar patterns in different geographical contexts. The studies have revealed an upward trend of growth of the number of publications on indigenous knowledge. For instance, South Africa has witnessed an upward trend in the number of publications on indigenous knowledge since 1990 ( Ocholla and Onyancha, 2005 ; Njiraine et al. , 2010 ) but the same study and that of Kwanya (2016) found that Kenya’s research productivity is low and sometimes on a downward trend. In their bibliometric analysis of indigenous knowledge research in Africa, Maluleka and Ngulube (2019) noted a steady increase in the number of publications after 2008. A bibliometric study of the global trend of research on indigenous knowledge by Ali et al. (2016) shows a tremendous increase in the number of papers on TK, from just 3 papers in 1989 to a total of 2465 papers in 2015. It was noted, however, that the increased interest in this otherwise marginalized knowledge (Ocholla and Onyancha, 2005) is a recent occurrence, as depicted in the above-mentioned studies. The number of papers on indigenous knowledge have had a sharp increase after mid-1990s. Besides the assessment of the trend of publication of the IK literature as indexed in various databases or as published in some journals, the aforementioned studies have also sought to determine, among others, the journals publishing IK research, citation analysis of the IK literature, contributing authors, and organizations/institutions and countries. These aspects were, however, not the subject of the current study.

In terms of conceptualizing the different IK labels using bibliometrics or informetrics techniques, studies such as Singh and Harish (2016) , Brook and McLachlan (2008) have identified the fields of IK application. Although the intention of the authors was to demonstrate the dispersion of the IK literature in different research fields, they nevertheless conceptualized the concept according to fields and disciplines of study. For example, Kwanya (2016) noted that IK research is largely conducted on the themes of agriculture, health, ecology and environment, thereby implying the close link of indigenous knowledge to agriculture, health, ecology and agriculture. Similar observations have been made by Ocholla and Onyancha (2010), and Njiraine et al. (2010) , who noted that indigenous knowledge literature is covered or indexed under the following broad subject areas: culture, health and medicine, environment, agriculture, education and law, among others. Maluleka and Ngulube (2019) observed that the bulk of indigenous knowledge research was conducted in envrinmental sciences, and medicinal and pharmaceutical sciences. According to Maluleka and Ngulube (2019) , the Web of Science (WoS) subject categories within which indigenous knowledge featured prominently included Environmental sciences and Ecology, Plant sciences, Public environmental occupational health and Pharmacology/pharmacy. On their part, Ngulube and Onyancha (2011) found that indigenous knowledge research is largely located in the social sciences, and arts and humanities fields of study or research. The aforementioned studies did not however distinguish the subject areas per indigenous knowledge labels but ascribed the subject areas to the indigenous knowledge, in its broad sense. Perhaps, the closest studies to the current one are Ngulube and Onyancha (2011) and Onyancha et al. (2018) , who used publications count and citation analysis to conceptualize the various indigenous knowledge labels. Ngulube and Onyancha’s (2011) paper titled “What is in a name? Using informetric techniques to conceptualize the knowledge of traditional and indigenous communities” reported that the most common labels used in the literature are IK, LK and TK. The authors further assessed the title keywords to assess the most common terms by which the IK labels can be conceptualized. In their paper titled “Towards a uniform terminology for indigenous knowledge concepts: informetrics perspectives,” Onyancha et al. (2018) conducted a citation analysis of the IK literature and found, similar to the findings of Ngulube and Onyancha’s (2011) study, that LK, IK and TK were the most cited concepts, thereby implying that the three concepts are the most preferred to describe the knowledge of traditional and indigenous communities. While citation analysis and publications counts may reveal the popular concepts, the visualization and mapping of author-supplied keywords as well as broad subject areas may reveal patterns that may reflect the scope and breath of a concept. Furthermore, the two studies, while comparing research outputs for different indigenous knowledge labels, fell short of assessing whether or not the patterns of publication of research was similar or different across the labels through statistical analysis techniques such as correlation analyses. The studies adopted numerical counts of publications and percentages to draw conclusions on the similarities or differences between the labels. It is within this understanding that this study was conducted with the aim of exploring the differences and similarities between IK, LK and TK in terms of the trend of publication of the literature, the number of publications, overlap of the literature and subject terms and topics covered in the literature as well as the preference of the concepts in different geographic regions and countries.

Purpose of the study

examine number of documents published in under IK, LK and TK over time;

determine the trend of research for IK, LK and TK;

determine the extent of the overlap that exists between IK, LK and TK, using the number of publications;

examine the most commonly used terms to describe the literature for IK, LK and TK through the analysis of the author-supplied keywords;

explore the Scopus subject categories in which the literature for each label is indexed to situate IK, LK and TK in specific disciplines; and

identify the countries from which the IK literature originates to determine country-based preferences for the IK, LK and TK terminologies.

Methodology

The study adopted an informetrics research design, domiciled within the quantitative research approach to explore the trend and conduct of research on the three labels that describe the knowledge of traditional and indigenous communities. The source of data was the Scopus database, which is one of the largest and key bibliographic sources for informetrics and scientometrics data ( Onyancha and Ocholla, 2009 ). A search, using the three concepts as search terms, was conducted within title, abstract and keywords fields to extract bibliographic details (i.e. citation information, bibliographic information and abstract and keywords) of publications on IK, LK and TK. The search filter document type was used to limit the search to articles, books, book chapters and conference papers, so as to obtain data for research-related documents, which often supply author-supplied keywords, which formed part of the aspects for analysis in the current study. The relevant data was downloaded on 10 September 2021. The distribution of the publications, according to document type, that were obtained for analysis is shown in Table 1 .

assess the trend of publication for each concept over time until September 10, 2021;

determine overlap among the concepts;

determine the topics associated with the three concepts;

compare the disciplinary orientation of the concepts; and

discuss the countries’ preferences for each of the concepts.

In terms of the overlap, the overlap ration was computed as follows to determine the extent to which the use of the concepts overlaps in the literature: O v e r l a p   x , y = ( x   ∩   y ) ( x   ∪   y )

Where x and y denote the number of publications on a given concept.

We further measured annual growth rate (AGR) as the percentage change in the quantity of publications for each year except the year zero. We used the equation: AGR = [(Ending Value - Beginning Value)/Beginning Value] x 100. The AGR was meant to assess the annual change in each label’s volume of publications so as to measure the level of growth. The average annual growth rate (AAGR) was computed to compare the performance of each label as well as determine the researchers’ preference or interest in each of the labels.

The Pearson correlation test was used to gauge relationships among the three concepts by examining the publications that had been published on each of the concepts. The following relationships were examined through correlation tests: trend of publication; distribution of publications according to the broad subject areas or disciplines; and preference of the concepts by geographical territories. Finally, the VOSviewer software was used to analyze the data by author-supplied keywords to identify and visualize the common terms associated with the IK, LK and TK (see Figure 2 ).

Results and discussion

Trend of publication of indigenous knowledge, local knowledge and traditional knowledge literature.

Table 2 and Figure 1 illustrate the trend of publication of IK, LK and TK literature. Table 2 shows that earliest document that mentioned any of the three concepts was published in 1889. The document mentioned local knowledge within its abstract. Thereafter, there were 11 papers on LK, scattered between 1927 to 1970. The IK and TK concepts were first mentioned in the literature’s titles, abstracts, or keywords in 1979 and 1974, respectively. The concepts IK and TK are therefore late entrants into the literature when compared to LK. This finding is in concurrence with Ali, Ambika and Chikkamanju (2016) who found, in their article titled Bibliometric Analysis of the Global Traditional Knowledge during 1989–2015, that TK was first published in 1989. In terms of growth of literature on the concepts, Table 2 reveals that the trend can be divided into three main periods of growth and therefore development in IK, LK and TK. In the first period, from 1971 to 1989, the publication of the literature was slow and almost constant from one year to another but picked up rather quickly in the second period between 1991 and 2004, after which there has been a rapid growth in the final third period. Similar patterns of growth of the literature, touching on different labels associated with indigenous knowledge, have been reported in Ngulube and Onyancha (2011) and Kwanya (2016) , among others. Another observation that can be made from both Table 2 and Figure 1 is that the literature on TK has surpassed the IK and LK literature in the recent past (post-2007). Although TK overtook IK and LK at different time periods, it was not until 2008 that TK showed dominance over the other two concepts as shown in Figure 1 . We think that the prominence or preference of TK to the other two labels and more particularly the IK has much to do with the reference of indigenous as primitive ( Medeiros, 2021 ), which has connotations of inferiority ( MacDonald, 2011 ). This explanation may also apply when assessing the preference of LK to IK, whereby the former has shown stronger presence in the literature than the latter, particularly since 1985, safe for a few instances where IK publications were more than LK publications.

Although the line graph for each concept shows that TK has overtaken IK and LK, the computation of the AAGR reveals that, in fact, the TK (AAGR = 18.86%) is growing at a slow pace when compared to IK (AAGR = 23.13%) and LK (AAGR = 23.52%). The other aspect that is worth noting is that the data fitted better when we plotted an exponential trendline than when the linear trendline was plotted, thereby implying that the growth of publications is exponential as opposed to linear, with the concepts posting the R-squared values as follows: TK ( R 2 = 0.8184), LK ( R 2 = 0.8876) and IK ( R 2 = 0.8822). A correlation test to gauge relationships among the concepts in terms of their literature’s growth trends yielded high Pearson correlation coefficients at p < 0.05, that is IK vs LK ( r = 0.9865), IK vs TK ( r = 0.9854) and LK vs TK ( r = 0.9900), thereby confirming a general growth pattern that was closely similar, despite the AAGR revealing some differences in the AGR patterns.

Extent of overlap of the literature on indigenous knowledge, local knowledge and traditional knowledge

The assessment of the overlap between two finite sets of variables is meant to gauge their similarities or distinctiveness. Firstly, the current study examined the number of papers that mentioned one or more of the concepts under investigation and expressed that number as a percentage of the total number of papers for each label, as shown in Table 3 . To start with, the number of papers in which one label appeared AND NOT the other was very high, accounting for more than 85% of the total number of publications for each label, while those papers that mentioned at least two of the labels constituted between 4% and 15% of the total number of publications for each label.

In the second phase of the analysis of the overlap of papers in the IK, LK and TK literature, the formula that was used to compute the level of overlap yielded the following coefficients: O v e r l a p   I K ,   T K = 730 6025 + 8089 - 730 = 0.055 O v e r l a p   I K , L K =   314 6025 + 7129 - 314 = 0.024 O v e r l a p   T K , L K =   1078 8089 + 7129 - 1078 = 0.076

The data presented in Table 3 and the coefficients computed above show that whereas there were overlaps of papers that discussed a pair of the labels, the said overlap was almost negligible. The overlap between TK and LK was the largest (n = 1078; overlap = 0.076), while IK and LK ( n = 314; overlap = 0.024) registered the lowest coefficient. The overlap between IK and TK was n = 730; overlap coefficient = 0.055. The results may be interpreted in several ways. One, although the labels refer to the same knowledge, the concepts are understood and considered as distinct. Two, the labels are considered to be synonymous and as such the authors do not find it necessary to mention more than one label in the title, abstract or keywords. However, whereas using two synonyms in a title sounds far-fetched and seldom, there are high chances of abstracts and keywords listing synonyms and as such one would have expected more concept co-occurrences in the IK, LK and TK literature and therefore more overlaps found in the current study. Three, the labels might be synonymous but are used interchangeably in the literature, perhaps with geographical preferences for one label over another dictating their usage.

Subject content of the indigenous knowledge, local knowledge and traditional knowledge literature

This section compares the subject coverage or focus areas of the IK, LK and TK literature. Table 4 provides the broad subject areas, which reveals that the three labels are found in most subject categories, implying that the knowledge of indigenous communities is spread in many disciplines and therefore is multidisciplinary, as has been observed by various scholars. For instance, Hirwade and Hirwade (2012 , p. 240) has observed thus:

The traditional knowledge or indigenous knowledge can be found in multitude fields such as nutrition, agriculture and fisheries, human health, veterinary care, handicrafts, performing arts, folk songs, religion and astrology, and many other day-to-day customs and practices.

Table 4 further reveals that there was only one exception, namely that there was no IK paper that was indexed under the broad subject area of Dentistry. Regarding the discipline or subject area that indexed the highest number of papers, the ranking of the subject categories according to the number of papers for each label shows that Social Sciences was ranked position one for all labels and subsequent overall ranking. The subject area yielded 54% of IK, 41% of LK and 39% of TK literature. In the second position is Environmental Sciences, followed by Agricultural and Biological Sciences; Medicine; and Arts and Humanities, to name just the top five ranked subject areas. The percentage representation in Table 4 may also be indicative of the preference of the labels according to the subject fields and disciplines. For instance, in Computer Science, the label local knowledge accounts for 13% of the total number of papers on LK when compared to IK’s 5% and TK’s 6%.

The indexing of three concepts in the broad Scopus subject areas was similar across only three disciplines, namely Social Sciences, Environmental Sciences and Agricultural and Biological Sciences, whereby the concepts were ranked 1 st , 2 nd and 3 rd respectively. The ranking of each label’s representation in terms of papers indexed in the other subject areas produced mixed patterns with minor variations in many subject areas. The ranking ranges (i.e. R 1 - R 2 ) varied from 1 to 10, with most ranges being below 5, thereby indicating patterns of representation that are very close across the three labels. This pattern was further evidenced in the Pearson correlation test, which showed that the representation of the labels in Scopus’ broad subject areas was high and significantly correlated, with the following correlation coefficients: IK vs LK ( r = 0.9487); IK vs TK ( r = 0.9343); and LK vs TK ( r = 0.9367).

In addition to assessing representation of the labels in different subject areas, the study compared the labels using the author-supplied keywords in their respective papers and found that the provision of author keywords in papers was similar across the three labels, with each label yielding 2 keywords per paper. It should be noted, however, that a substantive number of papers do not often provide author keywords, partly because some journals do not require authors to supply keywords ( Onyancha, 2020 ). This may explain the low average keywords per paper in Table 5 . Be that as it may, if the average number of keywords per label was to be used as an indicator of the content and complexity associated with a topic, then there is very little that separates the three labels, as they are treated the same by the authors.

The visualization of the author-supplied keywords, as reflected in a sample of papers that had five or more keywords, yielded additional information with which to compare the three labels, as shown in the second part of Table 5 . There were 644, 711 and 888 keywords that appeared five or more times in the IK, LK and TK papers, respectively. The keywords formed several clusters, with the 888 TK-associated keywords forming the highest number of clusters, i.e. 21. The number of clusters, links and the total link strength (TLS) reflect the relationships between and among the keywords. While the number of clusters, links and link strength may be dependent on the number of keywords that are mapped and analyzed, in situations where the number of keywords are almost the same across several sets of variables as is the case in this study, the results in the lower part of Table 5 reveals similarities in terms of the links and total links strength per keyword, which implies that IK, LK and TK share similar characteristics, even in terms of the provision of author-supplied keywords. This aspect is well illustrated in the number of author keywords that were found to be common in the sampled IK, LK and TK papers. Some of these keywords are reflected in Table 6 and Figure 2 .

Table 6 , which provides the top 30 author-supplied keywords in IK, LK and TK papers, reveals some similarities and differences in terms of ranking of the common keywords found in three labels’ papers. All the top 30 keywords listed in Table 6 were common in the three labels’ literature. However, the analysis of the keywords that appeared five or more times in the papers revealed the following: 148 author-supplied keywords were common in the three labels’ papers; 156 co-occurred in LK and TK; and 197 were common in IK and TK; while 156 author-supplied keywords were common in IK and LK. Table 6 further shows that the three labels featured prominently in each other’s list of top author keywords. Among the most prominent and common keywords were climate change, ethnobotany, conservation, traditional ecological knowledge, medicinal plants, sustainability, sustainable development, adaptation, knowledge, and biodiversity, among others. The top keywords explain the ranking witnessed in Table 4 , where Environmental Sciences, Agricultural and Biological Sciences and Medicine produced the greatest number of IK, LK and TK papers.

The network map of the most common author-supplied keywords depicted in Figure 2 produced six clusters, with the main three clusters revolving around the three labels. In cluster one, where local knowledge was mapped, were other author-supplied keywords including traditional ecological knowledge, which appeared 488 times in the IK, LK and TK papers. The other keywords, which featured prominently alongside LK in cluster one, are local ecological knowledge (198), ecosystem services (131), agroforestry (118), indigenous people (106), and GIS (103). The author-supplied keywords that formed the second cluster, together with the label indigenous knowledge, included the following in descending order of frequency of occurrence: indigenous (319), sustainability (278), knowledge (231), sustainable development (188), culture (179), indigenous knowledge systems (126), innovation (119), governance (111), knowledge management (108), and education (101). TK was mapped in cluster three together with ethnobotany (812), medicinal plants (689), conservation (456), traditional medicine (229), ethnomedicine (173), and ethnopharmacology (102), to just name the keywords that appeared more than 100 times in the literature. The fourth cluster revolved around climate change, which appeared 594 times, together with adaptation (262), resilience (215), agriculture (136), and vulnerability (125). Although Climate change was grouped in a different cluster from IK, LK and TK, it had links to all the three concepts, with the highest link strength being with IK (ls = 93), followed by LK (ls = 85) and TK (ls = 64).

It can be argued that whereas TK is mostly associated with medicinal plants/traditional medicine and botany, IK is largely linked to cultural issues and sustainable development, while LK is closely linked to environmental issues, including agroforestry, the study of ecosystems and ecological conservation. Nevertheless, it should be noted that each of the labels under investigation in this study are intertwined and therefore overlap in many cases, as demonstrated in Table 6 . The VOSviewer that was used to map the author keywords in Figure 2 allocates keywords to a single cluster and as such no keyword would belong to more than one cluster, and therefore the relationship between keywords that appeared in the literature of the three labels (see Table 6 ) and the labels themselves is not apparent in Figure 2 . Instead, Figure 2 shows the keywords that were the most associated with each of the labels, thereby indicating the specific areas in which each label is mostly applied. The results are concurrent with the analysis of the literature according to the Scopus’ broad subject areas in Table 4 , which shows variations of representation of IK, LK and TK in the different subject areas.

Preferences for the labels across countries or geographic regions

Appendix provides the contribution of each country in each label under investigation in the current study. The analysis was meant to assess the preference of labels across the countries and territories, with the assumption being a country’s number of papers for each label as a percentage of papers produced on each label may indicate the country’s label of preference. The results in Appendix indicate that, with the exception of the USA, which was ranked in position one in terms of the number of papers across the three labels, all the other countries’ ranking varied from one label to another, with some countries posting a ranking variation (range) of as high as 92 in Tunisia (LK r = 68; IK r = 160) and Eswatini (formerly known as Swaziland) (TK r = 159; IK r = 67). In addition, an examination of the percentage contribution to each label reveals variations for each country. For example, the USA’s contribution to IK, LK and TK literature stood at 18.01%, 23.14% and 19.33%, respectively, while Canada and the UK, which were placed in positions 2 and 3, respectively, contributed 11.15% and 6.97% (IK), 6.34% and 13.55% (LK) and 9.71 and 8.29% (TK). This pattern was similar across all the countries, whereby variations were witnessed in terms of the countries’ percentage contributions for each label and subsequent overall ranking. The percentage variations, calculated as a country percentage contribution in one label minus its percentage contribution in another label, were highest in India’s share of the LK (i.e. 2.62%) and TK (i.e. 16.05%) literature, where the range in percentage was 13.43. The second highest range was recorded between TK and IK in South Africa (i.e. 7.81%), while the range between LK and IK in the same country recorded the third-highest percentage difference (i.e. 7.57%). There were several countries that yielded the same percentage contributions across two labels, as shown in Appendix . These are the countries that did not publish any papers across two labels. However, there was no single instance in which a country registered the same percentage contribution across the three labels. Although there were variations in the number of papers and percentage contribution as well as the rankings for each label in each country, a Pearson correlation based on the number of papers revealed a closely similar pattern across the countries. The coefficients yielded from a Pearson correlation test on the number of papers produced in each country for each label were as follows: IK vs LK ( r = 0.8321), IK vs TK ( r = 0.8635) and LK vs TK ( r = 0.8482). These coefficients are said to be moderately high and therefore depicts moderately strong relationships among the labels.

The three competing labels that are used to describe the knowledge of traditional and indigenous communities have enjoyed a growing and almost similar interest among scholars and across countries, as exhibited in their number of papers indexed in the Scopus database. The interest in each of the labels, dating as far back as 1889 in the case of local knowledge, has continued to grow as shown in Table 1 and Figure 1 , with TK overtaking IK and LK, which were previously the leading in terms of the number of papers. The label traditional knowledge yielded the most papers in the database, thereby implying that it is the most preferred or most researched concept among the three labels. The concepts are rarely mentioned together in the publications’ titles, abstracts and/or as keywords, as reflected in the small overlap ratios. This implies that although the labels are used to refer to the same type of knowledge, their usage in the literature may be different or synonymous to warrant the use of one of the labels. Subject-wise, the three labels exhibited several differences as well as similarities in their coverage and indexation in the database. However, it was noted that the concepts are largely domiciled in and therefore belong to the broad subject area of Social Sciences. Nevertheless, the knowledge is applied across the 27 Scopus subject areas or disciplines. Despite the countries’ percentage share of the total number of publications for each label revealing variations, the Pearson correlation test shows that the pattern was similar across the countries. The variations, however, show that the authors in some of the countries preferred one label to another. Whereas the top ranked countries’ preferences for one or another of the labels was not very clear, an examination of the percentage contributions of each of the countries shows that LK was the most preferred in the USA, while South African authors seem to prefer IK to LK and TK, just to mention two examples. These variations may be attributed to high school and/or university curriculum content which may emphasize one label over another, a situation that may influence the use of the labels when conducting research related to the said knowledge.

Recommendations for further research

The study was limited to the data obtained from Scopus, and therefore, a study that examines the coverage of the IK literature in other bibliographic databases is recommended to validate the results of the current study. Furthermore, regional studies may help to understand the usage of the labels in various contexts, in an endeavor to contribute to the understanding of the different labels used to describe the knowledge of the traditional and indigenous communities around the world. Finally, it is well acknowledged that the quantitative data expressed in this paper may not provide adequate explanations on the publication patterns of and preferences for IK, LK or TK, and therefore, this study recommends a qualitative study to explain the results presented herein.

Implications of the study

The usage of the three concepts as synonyms, on the one hand, as well as their usage as separate and distinct concepts, poses challenges for different stakeholders who include subject librarians, reference librarians, knowledge organizers (indexers, abstracters, and cataloguers) and knowledge users. The implications for organizing and accessing the literature on indigenous knowledge are therefore substantial. In terms of knowledge organization, Cherry and Mukunda (2015) have underscored the challenges associated with classifying indigenous knowledge using conventional library classification systems. The findings of this study may present scholars and indexers with an additional tool to use in refining the existing classification systems for the indigenous knowledge literature.

Although the study’s findings yielded small overlap ratios between the concepts, there were many publications that were common among the three concepts’ literature, and as such, we believe that information users will require to use all the labels, including those identified in Ngulube and Onyancha (2011) to organize and/or obtain maximum benefits, using Boolean operators, to yield maximum search results. This is particularly important in informetrics studies, which rely on the extraction of representative samples of research outputs to yield desired results. For example, while Ali et al. (2016) used the term traditional knowledge alone to conduct a bibliometric analysis of the global traditional knowledge research between 1989 and 2015, Kwanya (2016) used the search terms indigenous knowledge, traditional knowledge and local knowledge to examine indigenous knowledge research in Kenya through bibliometric techniques. An examination of the other bibliometric studies reviewed in this study reveals discrepancies in the use of search terms to extract data from databases.

On matters of policy, stakeholders such as government agencies and educational institutions may use the study’s findings to develop thesauri for use within their jurisdictions. The variations witnessed when comparing the use of the concepts in different countries should be considered in policy formulation on various matters such as curriculum development. We believe that the preference of one concept to another, depending on geographic regions, may have implications on the teaching and learning of indigenous knowledge. Nevertheless, we note that the three concepts are used in most countries listed in Appendix . In addition to the theoretical implications of the study, this paper compliments the efforts and attempts of several scholars who have examined the need for a universally accepted concept to represent all the concepts used to describe the knowledge of traditional and indigenous communities. Despite their usage as synonyms, the concepts have some differences in their usage in the literature, which may imply their uniqueness.

Trend of publication of IK, LK and TK literature, 2000–September 2021

Network map of most common author-supplied keywords in IK, LK and TK literature

Publication outputs in IK, LK and TK by document types

Trend of publication of IK, LK and TK literature, 1989–September 2021

Overlap of IK, LK and TK papers in the Scopus database

Representation of IK, LK and TK literature in Scopus’ subject areas

Comparison of IK, LK and TK using author-supplied keywords’ characteristics

Top 30 author-supplied keywords in IK, LK and TK papers

Distribution of the literature according to the geographic region or country

Key: n = number of papers; % = percentage contribution for each country in each label; R = Ranking of each country using the number of papers in each label

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Further reading

Gadgil , M. , Berkes , F. and Folke , C. ( 1993 ), “ Indigenous knowledge for biodiversity conservation ”, Ambio , Vol. 22 Nos 2/3 , pp. 151 - 156 .

Siluo , Y. and Qingli , Y. ( 2017 ), “ Are scientometrics, informetrics and bibliometrics different? ”, 16th International Conference on Scientometrics and Informetrics Conference Proceedings , Wuhan University , Wuhan , pp. 1507 - 1518 , available at: http://issi-society.org/publications/issi-conference-proceedings/proceedings-of-issi-2017/ ( accessed 30 January 2020 ).

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• v.7(5); 2006 May

Western science and traditional knowledge: Despite their variations, different forms of knowledge can learn from each other

Fulvio mazzocchi.

1 Fulvio Mazzocchi is at the Institute for Atmospheric Pollution of CNR, Monterotondo, Italy. [email protected]

Cultures from all over the world have developed different views of nature throughout human history. Many of them are rooted in traditional systems of beliefs, which indigenous people use to understand and interpret their biophysical environment ( Iaccarino, 2003 ). These systems of managing the environment constitute an integral part of the cultural identity and social integrity of many indigenous populations. At the same time, their knowledge embodies a wealth of wisdom and experience of nature gained over millennia from direct observations, and transmitted—most often orally—over generations.

The importance of this traditional knowledge for the protection of biodiversity and the achievement of sustainable development is slowly being recognized internationally ( Gadgil et al , 1993 ). For example, Article 8 of the Convention on Biological Diversity urges us to “…respect, preserve and maintain knowledge, innovations and practices of indigenous and local communities embodying traditional lifestyles relevant for the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity….” ( United Nations, 1992 ). In addition, traditional or indigenous knowledge has been rediscovered as a model for a healthy interaction with, and use of, the environment, and as a rich source to be tapped into in order to gain new perspectives about the relationship between humans and nature.

However, our difficulty in approaching the knowledge from indigenous cultures is already reflected in the way in which we describe and name it. No universal definition is available, and many terms are used to establish what indigenous people know ( Berkes, 1993 ), including traditional knowledge or traditional ecological knowledge, local knowledge, indigenous knowledge or science, folk knowledge, farmers' knowledge, fishers' knowledge and tacit knowledge. Each of these terms carries different implications, and there is an ensuing discussion about which one is the most appropriate. The word ‘traditional', for example, places the emphasis on the transmission of knowledge along a cultural continuity, but might ignore the ability of traditional societies to adapt to changing circumstances. Another widely used word, ‘indigenous', is meant to highlight the autochthonous nature of this knowledge, but it might overlook knowledge from populations who are not officially recognized as indigenous. The word ‘local' can be applied to different geographic contexts, but it lacks specificity. At present, traditional ecological knowledge is interpreted as a cumulative body of knowledge, practices and representations that describes the relationships of living beings with one another and with their physical environment, which evolved by adaptive processes and has been handed down through generations by cultural transmission ( Berkes et al , 2000 ).

…our difficulty in approaching the knowledge from indigenous cultures is already reflected in the way in which we describe and name it

Many indigenous populations have relied for centuries or even millennia on their direct environment for subsistence and autonomy. Over time, they have developed a way in which to manage and use their resources that ensures their conservation into the future. Such traditional societies are interested more in preserving their own social, cultural and environmental stability and integrity than in maximizing production. Consequently, there is no ‘exploitation' of nature—which they do not consider as a collection of commodities—in the interaction between humans and natural milieu. On the contrary, their way of life is based on a strong sense of interconnection and interdependence. This also applies to their social life. Ethics is explicitly part of the traditional approach. Relationships are based on reciprocity and obligations towards community members. Natural resource management is based on shared meanings and knowledge ( Berkes, 1993 ). Activities in traditional societies often include a strong symbolic dimension in which every action is highly ritualized, and allow humans to participate in the preservation of the natural order. Of course, these rituals differ between cultures, as each society has its own belief systems, which determine its cultural identity and type of technology.

Traditional knowledge has developed a concept of the environment that emphasizes the symbiotic character of humans and nature. It offers an approach to local development that is based on co-evolution with the environment, and on respecting the carrying capacity of ecosystems. This knowledge—based on long-term empirical observations adapted to local conditions—ensures a sound use and control of the environment, and enables indigenous people to adapt to environmental changes. Moreover, it supplies much of the world's population with the principal means to fulfil their basic needs, and forms the basis for decisions and strategies in many practical aspects, including interpretation of meteorological phenomena, medical treatment, water management, production of clothing, navigation, agriculture and husbandry, hunting and fishing, and biological classification systems ( Nakashima & Roué, 2002 ). Beyond its obvious benefit for the people who rely on this knowledge, it might provide humanity as a whole with new biological and ecological insights; it has potential value for the management of natural resources, and might be useful in conservation education as well as in development planning and environmental assessment ( The World Conservation Union, 1986 ).

Traditional knowledge has developed a concept of the environment that emphasizes the symbiotic character of humans and nature

Of course, I am not trying to assert the ideal of the ‘noble savage'. Not all indigenous people have lived or are living in peace and harmony with nature; history has seen many cultures disappear after they had exhausted the environment's ability to sustain their population, such as the Maya or the Anasazi in the Americas. However, many existing traditional practices are ecologically healthy, and we cannot simply dismiss them as primitive and unscientific belief systems.

In all cultures, humans have gained knowledge by conceptualizing empirical observations to better understand nature, and thus interpret and predict it ( Iaccarino, 2003 ). The problem is how to study and analyse indigenous knowledge and belief systems. Of course, we cannot depend only on their empirical aspects, but must embrace their specific worldviews. It is not possible to simply reduce them to practical knowledge that is exclusively based on experience as opposed to theoretical knowledge, which is developed through deductive or inductive reasoning. In any case, discovering the fundamental principles of dealing with nature in many far-off cultures is not an easy task. Western science—which is deeply rooted both in the philosophy of Ancient Greece and the Renaissance—and traditional knowledge systems have developed radically different strategies to create and transmit knowledge, and it is exceedingly difficult to analyse one form of knowledge using the criteria of another tradition.

Still, there is a vast body of literature on such comparisons between Western science and traditional knowledge systems, which has identified various characteristics and opposing views. Western science favours analytical and reductionist methods as opposed to the more intuitive and holistic view often found in traditional knowledge. Western science is positivist and materialist in contrast to traditional knowledge, which is spiritual and does not make distinctions between empirical and sacred ( Nakashima & Roué, 2002 ). Western science is objective and quantitative as opposed to traditional knowledge, which is mainly subjective and qualitative. Western science is based on an academic and literate transmission, while traditional knowledge is often passed on orally from one generation to the next by the elders. Western science isolates its objects of study from their vital context by putting them in simplified and controllable experimental environments—which also means that scientists separate themselves from nature, the object of their studies;-by contrast, traditional knowledge always depends on its context and particular local conditions ( Nakashima & Roué, 2002 ).

In general, traditional knowledge systems adopt a more holistic approach, and do not separate observations into different disciplines as does Western science ( Iaccarino, 2003 ). Moreover, traditional knowledge systems do not interpret reality on the basis of a linear conception of cause and effect, but rather as a world made up of constantly forming multidimensional cycles in which all elements are part of an entangled and complex web of interactions ( Freeman, 1992 ). Of course, there is always the risk of oversimplifying by reducing the things of interest to essentials and/or dichotomies. However, from this brief overview of the dissimilarities, we can gain an understanding of how hard it is to compare two systems of knowledge that are so profoundly different. Trying to analyse and validate traditional knowledge systems by using external (scientific) criteria carries the risk of distorting such systems in the process. At the same time, we cannot extract just those parts of traditional knowledge that seem to measure up to scientific criteria and ignore the rest. This process of cognitive mining would atomize the overall system and threaten traditional knowledge with dispossession ( Nakashima & Roué, 2002 ).

However, Western contemporary culture and philosophy does offer some interesting ideas as to how to deal with these problems. The Austrian-born philosopher Paul Feyerabend, for example, questioned the widespread assumption that only Western science holds the criteria to determine the truth. As Feyerabend pointed out, any form of knowledge makes sense only within its own cultural context ( Feyerabend, 1987 ). Similarly, the British anthropologist Gregory Bateson has compared knowledge about the material world to a map and the terrain it describes: the map itself is not the terrain, but only one representation of it ( Bateson, 1979 ). Just as different maps can give accounts of the same territory, so too can different forms of knowledge about the material world. Its actual representation ultimately depends on the observer's view.

…any form of knowledge makes sense only within its own cultural context

Contemporary hermeneutics—a branch of philosophy concerned with the theory of existential understanding and interpretation of texts—and, to a certain extent, complex thinking can offer useful approaches to compare different forms of knowledge and rationality. Complex thinking has provided new insights, and has contributed to a renewed interpretation of the concept of nature, and a new paradigm of science and epistemology. This new approach has brought a greater awareness of the shortcomings of simple explanations in comprehending reality. It aims to overcome the limits of both reductionism and holism by integrating them into a wider perspective, which investigates the complex structure of interconnections and retroactive relationships in the real world.

According to the classic epistemological approach, the creation of knowledge is a process of qualitative refinement and quantitative accumulation. Its goal is to disclose the ultimate foundation—the ‘meta' point of view from where we can see the ontological order and the objective truth—and to provide a neutral and universal language to explain natural phenomena ( Ceruti, 1986 ).

Complex thinking has strongly questioned this notion of a meta point of view along with its heuristic value as a principle for the creation of knowledge. Instead, it seeks and analyses the web of relationships among different perspectives. This is continually redefined in a dynamic process involving multiple points of observation and explanation. These places are fundamentally incommensurable, yet they can complement each other and be part of a constructive network. What matters, in fact, is the possibility of including multiple viewpoints that are vicarious in building a cognitive universe and can disclose a more complete picture of reality.

In this context, the hermeneutical notion of a ‘horizon' as expressed by the German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer seems to be highly relevant: “Horizon is the range of vision that includes everything that can be seen from a particular vantage point” ( Gadamer, 1960 ). Rationality intrinsically works from this point, which starts the process of comprehension through which we can interact with other and different horizons, and ultimately expand our own knowledge horizon.

The encounter between different cultures and knowledge systems can then be regarded as an encounter between different macrohorizons; such systems come from different traditions, and each has its own way of understanding phenomena and its own ‘logic' that allows the observed phenomena to be placed within an overall vision. Nevertheless, all representations of reality are expressions of the same cognitive features that are inherent in human nature.

…all representations of reality are expressions of the same cognitive features that are inherent in human nature

Traditional environmental knowledge is an important part of humankind's cultural heritage—the result of countless civilizations and traditions that have emerged over human history. This cultural diversity is as important for our future as is biodiversity. It is a potential source of creativity and enrichment embodied in several social and cultural identities, each of which expresses its uniqueness ( United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, 2002 ). However, European colonization has eroded and destroyed much of this traditional knowledge by replacing it with Western educational and cultural systems. The trend towards a global culture might even worsen this situation and enhance a process of cultural homogenization.

Scientific knowledge has long held a central role and attained a dominant position in our developed societies, but we cannot ignore the fact that other valid knowledge systems exist. The imposition of Western scientific ideas and methods not only causes disruption to existing social and economic relationships, but also might spoil the local knowledge. Allowing science to be the final arbiter of the validity of knowledge, and to establish the threshold beyond which knowledge is not worthy of its name, would create the conditions whereby an astonishing cultural heritage is transformed into a monolithic structure. Instead, we would be better advised to recognize the value of this heritage, and to devise strategies for its preservation for the benefit of present and future generations.

First, a renewed approach to dialogue among cultures is required. Such a dialogue can only take place if there is a common principle shared by all participants. All humans from all cultural backgrounds have the same biological nature. At the same time, however, a dialogue is only possible because there is diversity at various levels. Eliminating these differences or staying in rigid isolation eliminates the conditions needed for a potentially mutually beneficial converse.

By acknowledging the uniqueness of each knowledge system, we can go well beyond a mere pluralist approach to knowledge. Dialogue can become a tool for social cohabitation, as well as for discovering and enhancing knowledge. It should be based on a sense of profound hospitality because it arises from different identities and traditions, which are interested in exchanging their perspectives and experiences. This should not be anathema to Western science—in fact, it is through dialogue that new insights have emerged from the ancient Greek academies to today's laboratory meetings and scientific conferences. In this sense, a dialogue can catalyse the development of shared meanings, which are key factors in binding people and societies together as vehicles of social cohabitation ( Bohm, 1996 ).

Dialogue can become a tool for social cohabitation, as well as for discovering and enhancing knowledge

The real world is too complex to be compressed into static conceptualizations. Dealing with this complexity requires approaches and strategies that maintain a continuous openness and willingness to discover and learn ( Morin, 1990 ). This dialogue should take place with the unknown and the otherness. By shifting our perspective, and looking at other paths to knowledge that humans have developed and lived, we might create the necessary conditions for hitherto unknown knowledge to be revealed. All of these perspectives describe the human experience of reality. We need to open ourselves to participating in the experience of others, and yet we should also be aware that this opening can only start from where we already are—from our point of view or the tradition to which we belong. Our historical and culturally embedded perspective has been described by Gadamer as the “initial directedness of our whole ability to experience” ( Gadamer, 1967 ). Nevertheless, from our delimited horizon we can still accept the invitation of other paths to knowledge and might well learn from them.

For example, some authors ( Freeman, 1992 ; Iaccarino, 2003 ) have suggested that traditional knowledge systems can be helpful in dealing with complex systems: “The understanding of complex systems remains a major challenge for the future, and no scientist today can claim that we have at hand the appropriate methods with which to achieve this. Thus, we cannot discuss the future of science without taking into account the philosophical problems generated by the study of complexity. Modern, or Western, science may not be best suited to fulfil this task, as its view of the world is too constrained by its characteristic empirical and analytical approach that, in the past, made it so successful. We should therefore remember the contributions of other civilizations to the understanding of nature. […] Such traditional or indigenous knowledge is now increasingly being used not only with the aim of finding new drugs, but also to derive new concepts that may help us to reconcile empiricism and science” ( Iaccarino, 2003 ).

There is little doubt that modern science can gain a lot from such a dialogue. It has been extremely efficient in studying specific aspects of the natural world—those that are achievable through observation and experimentation—but operates in an environment that is either strictly controlled, such as a laboratory, or highly simplified. This approach is crucial in order to make generalized claims about the validity of scientific propositions, because it allows hypotheses under the same or highly controlled conditions to be tested and verified.-However, an increasing number of critical voices argue that an approach based on reductionism—as helpful as it has been in the past—might no longer be sufficient to analyse and understand higher levels of complexity ( Kellenberger, 2004 ; van Regenmortel, 2004 ). Moreover, scientists work only at specific levels of analysis. The theories formulated at each level are based on key observations, and, therefore, can explain only a specific set of facts ( Iaccarino, 2003 ). Hence, the integration of methods and results from different approaches and levels of analysis can become essential.

These considerations seem to be particularly relevant for studying biological, ecological and social phenomena that include different levels of complexity. As already mentioned, the Western tradition of thinking is developing a different approach to gaining knowledge from complex systems, but it would be equally useful to learn how traditional approaches explain such complexity. Not only are they more holistic, but also they seem to be better suited to coping with the uncertainty and unpredictability that are viewed as intrinsic characteristics of natural systems. Western science and traditional knowledge constitute different paths to knowledge, but they are rooted in the same reality. We can only gain from paying attention to our cultural history and richness.

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Introductory Essay: Traditional Knowledge, Spirituality and Lands

• Marc Fonda Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada

In times like ours, when people are inundated with notions of consumerist identities, culture is often seen mainly as a resource to be tapped into for economic development. This certainly is true of blatant consumerist culture produced by such economic behemoths as Hollywood, but it is a narrow view on the importance and functions of culture. The objective of this issue of the International Indigenous Policy Journal is to demonstrate the radical importance of culture and spirituality in not only defining a people and their society but also in affecting their well-being and how these things are all interrelated.

Copyright (c) 2011 Marc Fonda

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Exploring Miao Culture: The Differential Effect of Traditional 2D and Immersive 360° Documentary Formats on Viewer Learning

29 Pages Posted: 13 Jun 2024 Publication Status: Under Review

Xiaolin Sun

University of Nottingham Ningbo China

Eugene Ch'ng

Beijing normal university-hong kong baptist university united international college.

This study explores the comparative effects of traditional 2D and immersive 360° documentary formats on educational outcomes and knowledge retention about Miao culture. As digital platforms dominate cultural education, understanding how advancements in storytelling, particularly immersive media, impact learning is crucial. Using visual materials capturing Miao villages, folk dances, and crafts, the study produced documentaries in both formats. Eighty-four participants engaged with these documentaries, providing data on knowledge retention and viewer engagement. Participants viewing the 360° format reported higher self-assessed content recall compared to those viewing 2D documentaries. However, this perceived enhancement did not align with actual performance in quizzes, indicating a significant difference between perceived and actual knowledge retention. Findings suggest that while 360° documentaries enhance the sense of presence and immersion in cultural contexts, they do not improve memory retention over traditional 2D formats. The findings challenge prevailing assumptions on the educational advantage of immersive 360° technology and emphasise the importance of a thorough re-evaluation of these technological innovations in the context of digital heritage education.

Keywords: Ethnic minority representation, Digital cultural heritage, Cultural education, Immersive documentary, Knowledge acquisition and retention

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Xiaolin Sun (Contact Author)

University of nottingham ningbo china ( email ).

199 Taikang East Road Ningbo, 315100 China

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The use of ai in software engineering: a synthetic knowledge synthesis of the recent research literature.

1. Introduction

• What is the volume of the research on using AI in software engineering?
• What is the maturity status of the research?
• What are the volume and dynamics of the production of the research literature on AI use in software?
• How is the research geographically distributed?
• Which information sources informing the scientific community are the most prolific?
• Which funding bodies sponsoring research on AI in software engineering are the most prolific?
• What are the most prolific research themes?

2. Materials and Methods

• Research publications were harvested from the Scopus bibliographic database using the below search string.
• Descriptive bibliometric analysis was performed using Scopus’s built-in functionality.
• Author keywords were used as meaningful units of information in the content analysis. First, bibliometric mapping was performed using VOSViewer [ 6 ]. Next, using inductive content analysis of the most popular authors’ keywords, the node size, links, and proximity between the author keywords in individual clusters and their borders presented in the bibliometric map were analyzed to form categories and identify and name themes.
• Finally, the themes and subcategory terms were applied to form search strings to locate relevant publications associated with the theme. The most interesting and influential were selected and analyzed to describe the categories’ and themes’ scope.

TITLE-ABS-KEY((“artificial intelligence” OR “machine learning” OR “deep learning” OR “intelligent system” OR “support vector machine” OR (“decision tree” AND (induction OR heuristic)) OR “random forest” OR “Markov decision process” OR “hidden Markov model” OR “fuzzy logic” OR “k-nearest neighbor” OR “naive Bayes” OR “Bayesian learning” OR “artificial neural network” OR “convolutional neural network” OR “recurrent neural network” OR “generative adversarial network” OR “deep belief network” OR “perceptron” OR {natural language processing} OR {natural language understanding} OR {general language model}) and ({software engineering} OR {software design} or {software development})) AND PUBYEAR > 2018 AND PUBYEAR < 2025.

3. Results and Discussion

3.1. descriptive and production bibliometrics, 3.1.1. volume of research, 3.1.2. maturity of research and most prolific information sources, 3.1.3. geographical distribution of research, 3.1.4. most prolific funding bodies, 3.2. most prolific research themes, literature review of research categories and themes.

• Use of artificial intelligence in management of software development life cycle
• Ethical use of AI-based software engineering
• Use of fuzzy logic in software development and testing
• Automation of software testing in an agile environment
• Project management of software life cycle using fuzzy logic
• Data science and big data in software development
• Natural language processing (NLP) in software engineering
• Natural language processing in software development
• Natural language processing in software requirements engineering
• User stories understanding with natural language processing
• Machine learning in fault/defect prediction and effort estimation
• Software development effort estimation
• Data mining in software fault/defect prediction
• Machine learning and software metrics
• Deep learning in empirical software engineering focusing on code management
• Deep learning in program comprehension and vulnerability detection
• Technical depth and code smell detection
• COVID-19 influence on software engineering
• Mining software repositories to improve software quality
• Mining software repositories to enhance the quality of software and software maintenance
• GitHub and open source software as sources for mining software development data

3.3. Timeline of the Recent Research and Hot Topics

3.4. research gaps and challenges, 3.5. possible future research trends.

• Development of transparent, fair, ethical, responsible, and sustainable intelligent software development processes [ 95 ] to eliminate management and for-profit bias, reduce human oversight, improve privacy, reduce cybercrime, make software more robust and accountable, and finally, reduce the digital divide.
• Self-adapting software that adapts to evolving user requirements [ 96 ], frequently changing due to fast ICT development, new user needs and requirements, and similar. In that manner, the software could become more robust, easier, and cheaper to maintain, and software development could be more sustainable.
• Self-healing and self-reflecting software that returns to a more functional condition after faults or performance and cybersecurity issues [ 97 ]. In that manner, the use of the software might become safer, more cost-effective, and more user-friendly.
• Collaborative software development eco-systems where AI partners with human developers take team dynamics and self-organization into account [ 98 ], enabling significant improvements in productivity, code quality, and developer empowerment.
• Adaptive continuous-learning platforms for software developers and engineers [ 85 ] to enable them to stay ahead of new technologies.
• New software engineering curricula [ 86 ] to teach future software engineers about the trends mentioned above.

3.6. Study Strengths and Limitations

4. conclusions, institutional review board statement, informed consent statement, data availability statement, conflicts of interest.

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Kokol, P. The Use of AI in Software Engineering: A Synthetic Knowledge Synthesis of the Recent Research Literature. Information 2024 , 15 , 354. https://doi.org/10.3390/info15060354

Kokol P. The Use of AI in Software Engineering: A Synthetic Knowledge Synthesis of the Recent Research Literature. Information . 2024; 15(6):354. https://doi.org/10.3390/info15060354

Kokol, Peter. 2024. "The Use of AI in Software Engineering: A Synthetic Knowledge Synthesis of the Recent Research Literature" Information 15, no. 6: 354. https://doi.org/10.3390/info15060354

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Introductory Essay: Traditional Knowledge, Spirituality and Lands

2011, International Indigenous Policy Journal

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In times like ours, when people are inundated with notions of consumerist identities, culture is often seen mainly as a resource to be tapped into for economic development. This certainly is true of blatant consumerist culture produced by such economic behemoths as Hollywood, but it is a narrow view on the importance and functions of culture. The objective of this issue of the International Indigenous Policy Journal is to demonstrate the radical importance of culture and spirituality in not only defining a people and their society but also in affecting their well-being and how these things are all interrelated.

Victoria Marie

Sabina Magliocco

This brief paper, published in Anthropology News, the newsletter of the American Anthropological Association, examines the link between notions of indigenousness and authenticity, as well as their use in the politics of contemporary spirituality. It discusses Native American critiques of Euro-American cultural appropriation, the difficulties in using the copyright model to safeguard intangible cultural heritage, and the role of the anthropologist in disputes over indigenousness, spirituality, and authenticity.

Lucas Johnston

Studies in Phikosophy

samsul maarif

103 This paper proposes an indigenous religion paradigm as an alternative to world religion paradigm in examining varieties of religious practices of Indonesian indigenous peoples. Those varieties of religious practices have been dominantly described based on world religion paradigm. As a result, instead of being accounted as "religious", those practices have been labelled as "animistic", the ethnocentric theory of Tylor. Building on scholarship of indigenous religions, this paper will show that the world religion paradigm has misrepresented phenomena of indigenous religious practices, and argue that indigenous religion paradigm is more helpful and just to be employed. Indigenous religion paradigm is based on a cosmological concept that the cosmos is occuppied by different "persons" of human and non-human beings. Personhood is not identical to human beings, but perceived as extending beyond them. It is a capacity that may belong to the so-called "nature" (an essential category in a hierarchical cosmology along with "culture" and "supernatural"). This indigenous religion paradigm is used to specifically examine religious practices through which three groups of Indonesian indigenous peoples are engaged in environmental preservations and protections. The first is the Ammatoans of Sulawesi who have succeeded in preserving and protecting their customary forest from deforestation, the second is the Kend-hengs of Central Java who have been resisting a national cement company for their customary mountain and karst ecosystem, and the third is the Mollos of East Nusa Tenggara, eastern part of Indonesia, who succeeded protecting their costumary land by expelling marble mining companies. For those indigenous peoples, those costumary forest, mountain and land are "persons", whom they interrelate religiously for mutual benefits. They all engage in "inter-personal" relationship with those "natural" beings.

Comparative and International Education

W. Y. Alice Chan

Arkotong Longkumer

What counts as 'indigenous religion' in today's world? Who claims this category? What are the processes through which local entities become recognisable as 'religious' and 'indigenous'? How is all of this connected to struggles for power, rights and sovereignty? This book sheds light on the contemporary lives of indigenous religion(s), through case studies from Sápmi, Nagaland, Talamanca, Hawai'i and Gujarat, and through a shared focus on translations, performances, mediation and sovereignty. It builds on long-term case-studies and on the collaborative comparison of a long-term project, including shared fieldwork. At the centre of its concerns are translations between a globalising discourse (indigenous religion in the singular) and distinct local traditions (indigenous religions in the plural). With contributions from leading scholars in the field, this book is a must read for students and researchers in indigenous religions, including those in related fields such as religious studies and social anthropology.

Teaching Mysticism, edited by Dr. William Parsons, Rice University. Oxford University Press, 2011: 121-137.

Ashok Dasgupta

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