Indigenous math

[Mia Kalish]

I absolutely agree, Susan, and I am working on the materials issue in my
dissertation. Being a techie, and recognizing the difficulty with
incorporation the culturally appropriate math stories, I am developing a
technical structure so that stories can be related directly to the
curriculum, and with a few grants for community involvement in the
development of curricular materials, we can make massive amounts of
materials in Indigenous languages. We can make them fast, we can make them
good, and we can encourage families and communities all to take part. And
with a little help from some hardware geeks, we can make them portable, like
game boys, PSP2s, and cell phones. (Yep, cell phones. Kids have those great
eyes, you know :-)).

 

Happily, 

Mia

 

  _____  

From: Indigenous Languages and Technology [mailto:ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU]
On Behalf Of Susan Penfield
Sent: Saturday, April 22, 2006 7:51 AM
To: ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU
Subject: Re: [ILAT] Indigenous math

 

Thanks Rudy, Jess and Mia
This discussion is very interesting but, to me, what it underscores is the
need to have more fluent, trained Native teachers involved in curriculum
development. (an old refrain...)

Years ago, I was heavily involved with training teachers for public schools
which served tribal communities. These cullturally-appropriate math stories
were shared, and may have served to raise awareness, but did little to
really change the way math was taught overall. The only places where real
active involvement and inclusion of culturally grounded math activities
happened were in the rare classrooms where the teacher was a member of the
community. 

Although the numbers of certified Native American teachers have increased
since then, there are still not nearly enough and it is still such an up
hill battle for them to make substantial changes to established and, now,
standardized test-driven curricula of most schools. 

Certainly, the charter school movement offers more potential for the
inclusion of culturally-appropriate and guided math activities and certainly
there are some such curricula developed for non-public schools serving
reservation communities,  but it is still a difficult task to lay out  more
than a few isolated lessons, i.e.,  establish a complete  set of lessons,
which reflect a range of culturally-grounded math activities.


Susan



On 4/22/06, jess tauber <phonosemantics at earthlink.net> wrote:

With regard to Rudy's post and mine, just wondering whether language TYPE
might also have any relevance as to what kind of mathematical knowledge and
operations might be found, statistically, in a normal cultural setting (that
is unmodified by formal Western-style or other imposed-from-outside
training)- how much does level of culture influence? 

Jess Tauber




-- 
Susan D. Penfield, Ph.D.

Faculty Affiliations:
  Department of English (Primary)
  American Indian Language
        Development Institute 
  Department of Linguistics 
  Second Language Acquistion and 
        Teaching Ph.D. Program
  Dept. of Language,Reading and Culture
      
Phone for messages: (520) 621-1836 

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