Declining enrollment in mathematics, science, and related fields has plagued schoolsall over the globe fo r a long time. In recent years, the flight from science andmathematics has more or less turned into an exodus. Hardest hit are schools indeveloping nations o f the world and in cultures different from the Euro-American(Western) culture. Although many students from Western cultural backgrounds alsoshy away from science and mathematics, the flight from these subject areas anddisciplines is concentrated among students from non-Western cultural backgrounds,jegede and Aikenhead (1999) proposed the constructs— cultural border crossing andcollateral learning— to explain how students move between their everyday life-worldculture and the culture o f school science and how they deal with cognitive conflictsbetiveen the two worlds. This article closely examines these constructs in relation tothe fields o f science and mathematics generally, and in particular with regard tocurrent teaching and learning practices. The main focus is on students from minorityand Indigenous cultural backgrounds across the globe, and its goal is to proposeclassroom strategies and approaches that would make science and mathematics moreattractive to these students.