It is important to preserve ability to do research and interact about it in your own language, therefore shifting to e.g. English medium instruction is at least two-fold. If you don’t do that you indeed limit access of the brightest of your population to the international community only, and it take larger efforts for the local kids to catch up. But apart from that science should be universal, and I don‘t really understand “community science culture”, at least definitely not for natural sciences. Perhaps, you meant totally different concept when mentioned peasant knowledge, in that case I’d love to hear more about what you meant.

This is a fascinating question! My field is environmental education, which is an interdisciplinary field. In environmental education, indigenous, traditional etc. knowledge is often promoted beside scientific knowledge. I think this relates to the understanding of education or teaching as inter- or transdisciplinary. It is important to understand, not just environmental science, but the values and cultural aspects connected to the environment. Furthermore, e.g. climate change can be viewed also from the perspective of individual experience,b eside climate science of course. In addition, changing environmental behaviour seems to require a change in worldview, which means reflecting issues through the language of worldview. This can mean relating environmental questions to e.g. indigenous or religious beliefs.

Dear Airat Khasianov

It is interesting to get an answer from Russia. Yes, I agree with all of us should research and interact in our languages. I admire that you disseminate your research results in Russian and English. My papers and documents in proceedings are only in Spanish. I am trying to enrich my experience and work reading not only in Spanish but in English, Portuguese, and German. I think it will allow me to understand different multicultural contexts.

Regarding the intercultural topic, I want to hear opinions about why should science be universal, but why should not the non-western knowledge be taught. I mean that people take for granted that science has value and should be taught, but people not always give value to the local knowledge and do not always consider that it should be taught at school. I do not talk about “community science culture”. I talk about “local systems of thought” -indigenous, or traditional, or peasant, or popular

My point is: science has a particular knowledge and epistemology. And as a chemistry teacher, I want to teach the knowledge and epistemology of the chemistry. However, I realize that in my country (and in many countries around the world) we are culturally diverse. It means we have diverse systems of thought with their own knowledge and epistemologies. And as a citizen, I think the cultures, knowledge, and epistemologies from my country are important. I want to teach to my students the chemistry epistemology and the local epistemology.

Finally, my question is: why is western knowledge-epistemology-culture only important to be taught at school? What about the local knowledge-epistemology-culture?

Thanks for your collaboration

Dear Essi Aarnio-Linnanvuori. Thanks for your answer.

I also work on environmental education (teacher education, in-service teacher support, communities support). I definitely think that EE is a propitious field to consider the indigenous or traditional knowledge, thinking, and practices as something important. Even, in EE they are so important that they are taught at school.

Some authors talk about crossing the border between different kinds of knowledge -western and non-western-. I want to know about practical experiences in which teachers teach about western and non-western knowledge in the class. I want to know experience in which teachers consider the same importance for western and non-western knowledge.

Here is one of my works:

Inclusive environmental education for civil society in multicultural cities: https://www.dvv-international.de/adult-education-and-development/editions/aed-842017-inclusion-and-diversity/section-3-method/inclusive-environmental-education-for-civil-society-in-multicultural-cities/

I wholeheartedly support Essi Aarnio-Linnanvuori who thinks this is an interesting question: indeed it is.

The response by Airat Khasianov proves that already in our "universe" of less than a handful contributors at least two different world views exist .

What does Julio mean with "peasant knowledge"? And, at least as important, can such knowledge ever rise from being anecdotal to scientific? Which, of course, gives rise to the question what science is - and now we are back to world views. From the view of critical rationalism (advanced by Popper), a theory may be regarded as scientific if it can be refuted (to simplify somewhat). For a long time Popper did not regard humanities as science for that reason, with the exception of economics (as he corrected himself in his later years). In this view science explains things.

Now let's take a hermeneutical stance. Here we basically interpret (especially human actions) and rather than explain, we try to understand. Needless to say that under both views very different notions of science are possible.

I now want to get back to "peasant knowledge" and - without exactly knowing what Julio means by it - I try to understand what he means. For this, allow me an example. Traditional Polynesian sailors, who, by Western standards, must be regarded as illiterates as they hardly knew how to read and write, have long been able to sail the the open Pacific Ocean in small crafts for thousands of miles. How they navigated is only slowly being understood now - definitely no scientific study in the "Western" sense was involved. I regard this as "peasant knowledge" or "community science culture", probably of one of the highest degrees. In my masters thesis on information literacy I argued that someone with such knowledge cannot be regarded as illiterate - in fact, he may even be regarded as "scientist".

And as such, knowledge of this type must not only be preserved, but also recognized and disseminated.

Dear Julio Cesar Tovar-Galvez,

That might totally make sense within Waldorf schools for instance, or other consistent educational system, where the education can be contextually enhanced with the local schools of thought (within different epochs for instance). Whatever we do, we should make sure our students survive and be competitive in the outside world. As a matter of fact, a new perspective might even give the students a competitive advantage. But that should be tested carefully. I also think, what you propose could significantly increase intrinsic motivation of the students.

Thank you for taking time to make your point clear! Good luck with your research!