Indigenous math

[Jennifer Henderson]

As I continue to teach elementary Native students (on the rez) in a public 
school setting.  My students struggle with some of the basic westernized 
numeric operation.  Most of my students had a 20% chance of solving a double 
digit muliplication problem by traditional forms.  But this year we 
introduced an Egyptian method of solving multiplication.  And now most of my 
students have a 98% change of solving the problems correctly.

Pro:  alternative non-westernized methods do help native students as 
developing learners.

Con:  The No Child Left Behind Law has left little opportunity for 
experimentation with various methods of teaching curriculum.  NCLB states 
that curriculum must be "research based".  I am seeing less qualitative 
research backing our curriculum and most quantifiable data driven 
curriculum.  So the school are buying "packaged" curriculum developed by 
publishing companies with billion dollar marketing power.

Our school  (3,4,5,6 grades) tries to appliy the same reading, math, and 
writing curriculum programs to all the students.  Layer that with frequent 
computerized monitored assessments, then we are seeing some potentially 
bright native students falling through the cracks at an earlier age.


>From: Susan Penfield <susan.penfield at GMAIL.COM>
>Reply-To: Indigenous Languages and Technology <ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU>
>To: ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU
>Subject: Re: [ILAT] Indigenous math
>Date: Sat, 22 Apr 2006 06:51:22 -0700
>
>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