Indigenous Knowledge

CESLA is cognizant that our assistance in educational and scientific literacy is based on quality communication. As such, communication is an interactive process, and educators and science communicators who think only of the "message" and not of the "audience" are likely to fail. For "communication" to be effective, it is as much a matter of listening as it is of "communicating." Consequently, CESLA is utilizing indigenous knowledge, incorporating it into programming wherever practical, to promote relevancy and understanding.

In the quest for "relevancy," as a foundation on which to build educational and scientific literacy, indigenous knowledge is a "reference to an already existing piece of knowledge or experience." The "western approach" to education often dismisses any emphasis on intuitiveness and / or analogy to promote understanding of aspects of scientific methodology. This complicates the already difficult task of communicating some scientific principles. CESLA's approach is to provide learners the opportunity to make sense of what they have learned by giving that information additional meaning. By comparing what is already known within the learner's cultural paradigm, to new experiences, a logical connectivity is established.

Compared to all others, the rural communities appear to be some of the most disenfranchised. The use of relevant indigenous knowledge systems can link "the old with the new" when it comes to teaching and to learning scientific principles. One such example will be a program using the Zulu "star stories" to lead into a study of astronomy, thus connecting the elder and his "star stories" to the young students' quest for knowledge of the stars and planets in our universe. This will provide an added bonus of involving all persons of a community, not just the student learners.

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