Models, Incommensurability, and Multiculturality of Scientific Notions in Indigenous Children

This study presents an analysis of the incommensurability about the representations or models elaborated by children from an Indigenous community within three areas or cultural domains, namely, the ethnic, daily (domestic), and school domains and their implications in relation to science education. The children belong to an Indigenous Nahuatl community which is located in the Sierra Norte of Puebla, México. The analysis is based on the children’s model constructions concerning two scientific topics: (1) the mixture of colours and (2) the Earth’s shape and day-night cycle. Both topics belong to the school program. The children’s models are the result of previous investigations that are analysed within this work from an epistemological approach where non-translatability criteria are used to determine the incommensurability of the corresponding models to the different cultural areas. The results show that the models in each area are effectively incommensurable and are therefore coexistent without any integration or displacement process or the presence of conflict among the three cultural areas on a daily life basis. A brief discussion is showed on the implications of results on the difficulties of crossing border processes and the potential conceptual conflicts in young students.