Birch bark biting involves folding thin pieces of bark and biting shapes into the bark to create designs. When folding the learners think of fractions, angles , symmetry and creating designs. Lunney Borden focused his study on the Mi'kmaw community found in the Atlantic Canada who used to practise the tradition art of birch bark biting over many years. In 2010, He concluded that disconnect between school based mathematics and Mi'kmaw ways of reasoning mathematically can impact mathematics learning for their students.
The introduction of "Show Your Maths" [SYM] to the Mi'kmaw students was a very fascinating idea used to encourage and improve mastery of mathematics concepts. It developed sense of wholeness which resist fragmentation and created quality mathematics experiences amongst the learners. This inspired Doolittle [2006] and said that it helps in considering how we might be able to pull mathematics into indigenous culture rather than mathematics to be pushed into culture or culture to be pulled into mathematics. This idea is quite encouraging and should be used by teachers especially in many parts of Africa where education is still treated as means of robbing culture. The Turkana of Kenya perceive educated members of their clans as people who do disappears to the major towns, marry from the other tribes, and men who are not able to carry on with traditions of raiding neighbouring tribes off livestock which they very much value and for the girls , cannot move further in search of education since they are married off at a very early age. This practise cut across many African tribes eg Masai,Borana, Samburu, Pokot of Kenya and Karamojong of uganda.When using this method one has to explore practises relevant to the community.
Mathematics can be pulled in through identifying types of reasoning inherent in the community that can help students to make sense of school based mathematics. It also means creating learning experiences that helps learners realise that mathematical reasoning is part of their daily life experience and has been in existence for generations.
QUESTION
Explain how mathematics can be pulled to indigenous culture in a multicultural class ?
Your example from Kenya is quite interesting James. I think your example highlights two things that link to your question: 1. Every indigenous culture is different. You talked about using practices relevant to the community, I totally agree. Even in Canada, there are several First Nations and so pulling mathematical content into indigenous culture looks different depending on where one is (for example Katzie is in Surrey BC and 50 km away Sto lo is what we now Abbotsford and Chilliwack; there cannot be blanket lesson plans that work everywhere). 2. Your example from Kenya also brings up the idea that culture is contentious, changing and so closely linked to identity. I think this will make for a fruitful discussion on Thursday.
ReplyDeleteThis is a difficult question, James!
ReplyDeleteBishops (1991) identifies six fundamental mathematics activities which can be observed in any cultures: Counting, Locating, Measuring, Designing, Playing, and Explaining. We have to find and utilize the above activities in the cultures the students have, and explore the topics that pull mathematics into their classroom. To achieve this challenge, mathematics educators need to know both significant knowledge of mathematics and connection to the filed other than mathematics. Moreover, there will be many obstacles to get the knowledge of some culture that mathematics educators cannot easily access such as Indigenous cultures. In this case, the best way I think is that mathematics teachers should contact to their students' parents or communities and discuss mathematics activities with them. Students share their own unique mathematics among a whole class to find the new perspectives each other in the mathematics class.
Regarding to your questions (and aforementioned Bishops' finding), I am wondering if there are any Indigenous cultures which have no mathematics activities at all. (But this might be in the area of Anthropology.)
Thanks James, Sharon and Tsubasa!
ReplyDeleteJames, could you also write a short post about the topic you would like to work on for your short and long papers for this course? Thanks.