Imagine a classroom where science isn’t confined to a textbook, but comes alive through cultural songs, plants, and ancestral teachings. Sainimere Balenacagi (MS ’27, BIO) is helping make that vision a reality by integrating culture into Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander classrooms. Her research explores how traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) bridges scientific concepts with student’s identities and lived experiences.
Growing up in Fiji, Balenacagi’s Pacific Islander heritage played an impactful role in her life. “What I love about Pacific Island cultures in general is how communal they are,” she explains. “Like, if you walk past my home, and I don't know you, I'll invite you over for dinner.” Balenacagi credits this cultural compassion as a driving factor in her research.
While attending high school in Fiji, Balenacagi quickly saw a gap between the culture and the curriculum taught. Island curriculum includes national senior exams at the end of the year. “All of Fiji gets the same exam," she shares. Questions on the senior exams focus on content primarily from U.S. textbooks, which are hard to understand and relate to. These exams determine whether students go to college or not. Balenacagi initially struggled with these exams, but after retaking a biology course—this time from The University of the South Pacific, a native university—she saw a surprising shift: “I got A's in biology for the first time in my life. I was like ‘What? How am I suddenly getting biology?’”
She credits her increased comprehension to how the university course utilized local ecology by incorporating native plants to create a familiar environment. Balenacagi recognized the potential of integrating culture into the curriculum. Keeping the geography and culture of Pacific Islanders in mind, this intentional curriculum could be very beneficial in enhancing students’ understanding and improving scores.
Truth is truth, whether it's discovered in the classroom, in labs, by ancestors, in culture, or in the Sacred Grove, like Joseph Smith.
While finishing her undergraduate degree at BYU Hawaii, Balenacagi taught biology and science at the Church College of Fiji. She wondered if there was a better way to teach hard sciences—one that allowed students to see themselves as scientists rather than define themselves by their grades. During this time, she began to develop the idea of incorporating TEK—local indigenous knowledge passed down from one generation to another about how people and nature interact—into native classrooms to create a more culturally inclusive curriculum. This vision ultimately led her to further education at BYU where she could study the intricacies of pedagogy and culture in the sciences.
Under the guidance of biology professor Dr. Liz Bailey, Balenacagi is collaborating with Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander populations to create lesson plans that blend traditional ecological knowledge with scientific concepts. She is aiming to make science more accessible and relatable for every student. She is also incorporating videos and images from coral reef protection research in Hawaii into her lessons plans, using materials collected by Dr. Gill (Biology) and Dr. Mangelsen (Engineering) to foster connections with Indigenous communities.
Balenacagi is eagerly looking forward to implementing these lessons in the classroom and collecting data to determine its effect on students. She hopes that bringing culture into science will help make learning more meaningful, boost student confidence, and increase their sense of belonging in STEM. “That's the whole purpose of this. It's not just Pacific Island and native Hawaiian cultures,” she explains. “We hope to help education recognize that incorporating Indigenous knowledge helps students connect with the content and increase their buy-in by making science relevant and culturally affirming.”
Balenacagi is a great example of the power of unifying truths to create understanding. “Truth is truth, whether it's discovered in the classroom, in labs, by ancestors, in culture, or in the Sacred Grove, like Joseph Smith,” she adds. No matter where we live, the most important truths are that we are all children of God, and our cultural differences are something to be celebrated and interwoven in our lives.