This article explores a number of challenges, uncertainties, and opportunities facing science education as new and complex global processes affect the ways in which knowledge is produced and circulated. Major themes of the article include the difficulties of implementing Western science education programs in cross-cultural and/or multicultural settings and the extent to which the doctrine of "constructivism" resolves issues of cultural difference, even for those science educators who are particularly attentive to the cultural contexts of science and science education. It is argued that although Western science educators cannot speak from outside their own Eurocentrism, asking questions about the globalization of science education as a cultural practice might help to make both the limits and strengths of Western science's knowledge traditions more visible.
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