Culture-Based School Mathematics for Reconciliation and Professional Development

Abstract:

In Canada’s era of reconciliation, cross-cultural respect through mutual understanding was emphasized by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in its description of reconciliation. It matters how we do things among our three founding nations – Indigenous, English and French.

In this project, Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers will work collaboratively with four non-Indigenous teachers in a small rural town. The teachers will learn to go back and forth between two ways of interacting with the world mathematically (Western and Indigenous). They will instruct their students through activities, followed by discussions with the researchers about what they have learned concerning Western and Indigenous math. These outcomes will be closely monitored by two of the researchers.

At the same time, the teachers will develop their own capacity for cross-cultural teaching that will continue to evolve after the research project is completed. Moreover, their cross-cultural teaching can expand into other subjects such as science, which has had a cross-cultural curriculum and textbooks for several years.