Decolonizing school physics through an indigenous artifact mediated pedagogy

In this commentary, I consider several theoretical and methodological aspects of Nadaraji Govender and Edson Mudzamiri’s study. The commentary starts with an examination of the purpose for making physics understandable to learners of indigenous background and decolonization of school physics in Govender and Mudzamiri. Next, I offer an alternative Ubuntu/Unhu conceptual framework-based interpretation of Govender and Mudzamiri’s reported findings. To end the paper, I discuss the key contributions of Govender and Mudzamiri’s study wherein I bring to the attention of researchers in indigenous knowledge and science education the need to design their studies with due consideration of aligning research frameworks and methodologies to the decolonizing of school science contemporary reform. © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V.