Abstract

Science education needs to look beyond its epistemic boundaries to be relevant to the social, environmental, and cultural realities experienced by communities. However, such an approach needs to acknowledge and address the legacies of violent histories. In Chile, an authoritarian dictatorship directed violence towards teachers, leaving a legacy of mistrust and silence, reinforced by a strongly classified curriculum. Drawing on the findings of a critical ethnography, we explore how two communities of practice addressed this legacy through the practice of epistemic humility. We draw on Bernstein's concepts of classification and framing to illuminate how curricular organization both reflects and reproduces power relations in education and on Freire's and Weil's concepts of dialogue and attentive listening to conceptualize epistemic humility as a counter practice to such power relations. Epistemic humility acknowledges and recognizes the need for knowledge beyond the self which is essential to make possible alternatives and weaker classifications. Each community brought together school-based and university-based science educators. Practicing epistemic humility involved challenging a discourse of expertise and engaged listening with an expectation of personal and collective professional growth as essential for educators' professionalism. Becoming aware of a culture of silence in their schools and universities, educators were able to transgress subject boundaries to understand both themselves and science to exist within a web of expertise and knowledges. This insight transformed relations between group members and inspired some to instigate transdisciplinary collaborations within their institutions. We draw out implications for school-university collaborations