FORUM Paradigm wars, dialogue or dance: is rapprochement possible and/or desirable? Bal Chandra Luitel Æ Elisabeth Settelmaier Æ Les Pereira Æ Paula Joyce Æ Emilia Nhalevilo Æ Alberto Cupane Æ Peter Charles Taylor Received: 5 May 2009 / Accepted: 5 May 2009 / Published online: 10 June 2009 Ó Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009 Abstract In focusing on the Kincheloe and Tobin paper, ‘The Much Exaggerated Death of Positivism,’ this forum explores the hegemony of positivism in the professional prac- tices of a group of educators whose research expertise lies in the fields of science edu- cation, mathematics education and leadership education. Responding to the first question, ‘What is your personal/professional experience of the hegemony of positivism?’, four key issues arise: is positivism part of the external world or is it within us (and thus what is our agency)?, the role of positivism as a driver of Western cultural imperialism, dualism as the chief logic of positivism, and the difficulty of responding to positivism from a pluralist perspective. The second question, ‘Is rapprochement between positivism and other para- digms possible and/or desirable without being re-colonised?’, raises a number of key issues that, although relatively new to science education, are of increasing interest to cultural studies researchers keen to embrace alternative research paradigms with which to create B. C. Luitel  E. Settelmaier  P. Joyce  P. C. Taylor (&) Curtin University of Technology, Perth, Australia e-mail: p.taylor@curtin.edu.au B. C. Luitel e-mail: p.taylor@curtin.edu.au E. Settelmaier e-mail: e.settelmaier@curtin.edu.au P. Joyce e-mail: ptjoyce@iinet.net.au L. Pereira Dalyellup College, Bunbury, WA, Australia e-mail: Leslie.Pereira@det.wa.edu.au E. Nhalevilo  A. Cupane Pedagogical University, Maputo, Mozambique E. Nhalevilo e-mail: emiliafonso@gmail.com A. Cupane e-mail: acupane@hotmail.com 123 Cult Stud of Sci Educ (2009) 4:529–552 DOI 10.1007/s11422-009-9216-3