Indigenous knowledge (hereafter referred to as IK) has been publicly incorporated into the science curriculum of countries that have a large population of Indigenous People, such as the United States of America, Canada, and Australia. Despite this, Japanese awareness of the Ainu people as an Indigenous People of Japan has not been sufficiently deepened, and IK has rarely been discussed in the JSSE. Although the revised curriculum for fiscal 2020 provides more opportunities to learn about the history and culture of the Ainu people in social studies and other subjects, there is no mention of any IK of the Ainu people in science textbooks. The IK of the Ainu people is only touched upon by some schools in Hokkaido that are enthusiastic about Ainu culture learning, but there are some issues such as teachers’ anxiety about teaching the subject, and a lack of teaching materials. ‘Knowledge native to Japan’ is considered to be different from both Western science and IK. Primary and secondary science (RIKA in Japanese) education in Japan, which has been developed with this knowledge system, is said to include not only Western scientific objectives such as the acquisition of ‘observational and experimentation skills,’ and ‘problem-solving skills’ but also the emotional objective of ‘loving nature and living things.’ Thus, Japanese science education is said to be unique in that students learn both Western science and ‘knowledge native to Japan.’ Despite the issues mentioned here, it is suggested that by adding more IK from Ainu culture to this unique Japanese science education, an even more diverse and comprehensive science education can be developed.
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