This work uses narrative research, including accounts of personal experiences, to explore the margins of science and ethics. Boundaries between science and other cultural and disciplinary forms of knowledge are illuminated through studying the inter-relationships between identity, knowledge and power, using narratives both in and as a form of philosophical reflection on educational practice.The story centres on a contemporary real-world context of minority-language science education, showing how this fits into longstanding trans-disciplinary intercultural debates about the nature of science and of knowledge in general. The narrative form is used to bridge and interweave the multiple discourses influencing both the real-world context and the approach to its investigation. This analysis clarifies the linkages between paradigms of critical postcolonial research and post-positivist epistemology, and illustrates how social science, including educational research, may use science and technology to assist, rather than delimit, our understanding of complex human phenomena such as education, culture, language and science.