^Look Into the Mirror, Not Outside of the Window^: Illuminating Culturally Responsive Teaching for Better Rural Physics Education
Izzah Mardhiya Mohammad Isa, Muhammad Abd Hadi Bunyamin, Fatin Aliah Phang Abdullah

School of Education,
Faculty of Social Science and Humanities,
Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, UTM
Skudai, Johor, Malaysia

Abstract

Rural physics education often put the major spotlight to implement many policies to improve students^ performance including physics subjects. However, the performance of rural students is rarely proportional to the superiors^ efforts, as learners frequently struggle to comprehend physics concepts and phenomena. The imaginary concept of physics influences students^ epistemic beliefs regarding the irrelevance of physics to real life. Thus, it is time to give the audacity to rural students and teachers on what and how they want physics to be taught and implemented. Scholars advocate funds of knowledge (FOK) conceptual lens in the culturally responsive teaching (CRT) framework to make physics lessons meaningful. However, little is known about how teachers bridge students^ rural FOK that is relevant to physics for students^ engagement during learning. To address this knowledge gap, we conducted an ethnography multiple case studies for a year in three different rural districts of the poorest state in Malaysia, which is Sabah. We conducted interviews with outstanding physics teachers, collected artifacts of relevant materials, and visited students^ homes for participant observation, interviews, and artifact collection. The cross-case data were analyzed thematically using the constant comparative method technique. The findings reported that understanding the value of rural FOK, high expectation, mutual trust, and probing students to let them speak indicated how students and teachers wanted physics to be implemented to bridge physics with students^ life for a better engagement. The findings will contribute to the current literature on FOK and help educators plan their physics lessons to be more culturally relevant and FOK-based to make sense of physics while capturing the policy makers^ attention for a new vantage point to upgrading the physics curriculum into culturally aligned and rural-friendly.

Keywords: Funds of Knowledge, Culturally Responsive Teaching, Rural, Physics Education

Topic: Physics Education