2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Despite global and national calls and efforts to bring Indigenous knowledge and peoples into engineering and Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education, these populations continue to struggle in these fields because their ways of knowing are not recognized or legitimized due to settler colonialism. Consequently, Indigenous peoples view Indigenous knowledge and STEM education as two separate entities. Decolonization research is in the beginning stages to develop culturally relevant STEM education for Indigenous populations to heal their identities and bring back their knowledge and its motivations. This narrative literature review focuses on analyzing these implementations of reconnecting STEM education and Indigenous knowledge in North America using the research question: How has Indigenous knowledge of North America been (re)incorporated into culturally relevant STEM education? Using review procedures including specified database search terms and inclusion and exclusion criteria, I identified 20 articles focused around incorporating Indigenous knowledge into STEM education as a form of culturally relevant pedagogy. Using inductive coding and thematic analysis, I identified three themes: centering Indigenous ways of knowing, ensuring Elder involvement, and recognizing all knowledge holders. By comparing exemplary implementations of Indigenous knowledge into STEM education for all three themes, I illustrated the meaning and benefits of each. Finding the common thread between the three themes provides one answer for the research question. I propose spiritual knowledge as the binding thread that connects the themes and (re)connects Indigenous knowledge and STEM education. Spirituality can become a theorizing space to help with the decolonizing of engineering education by challenging the dominant knowledge types and bringing in other ways of knowing.

Keywords: Culturally Relevant Education, Indigenous Knowledge, Spirituality