Kay Owens investigated how to improve teaching practices to enhance Indigenous students numeracy skills by using data from a case study of “a rural city on Wiradjuri country in New South Wales Australia” (p. 55) with an school Aboriginal population “below 10%” (p. 56). The school was chosen as it was part of the Stronger Smarter Learning Communities (SSLC) project set up by the Stronger Smarter Institute SSI. To provide background information the author discusses the socio-economic status of the area as well as the effects of colonization and oppression. I found it interesting the school studied within the paper was just beginning the revitalization and recognition of the Aboriginal culture and language (p. 56) as the paper was published in 2014. For the case study “over 42 were interviewed” (p. 61), these people included teachers, principals, students, parents, and community members. The study determined when teachers received leadership training and learned to incorporate the 8 way project developed by Tyson Yunkaporta (p. 55);
- Connecting through the stories that are shared;
- Picturing pathways to knowledge;
- Seeing, thinking, acting, making, and sharing without words;
- Keeping and sharing knowledge with art and objects;
- Working with lessons from land and nature;
- Putting different ideas together and creating new knowledge,
- Working from wholes to parts – watching then doing; and
- Bring new knowledge home to help family/community
they were able to change their practices and create a more positive interaction with their Aboriginal students. This 8 ways project reminded me of BCs First Peoples Principles of Learning. The study also discussed ethnomathematics and ecocultural pedagogy which was interesting and I need to research more.
Owens, Kay. “Changing the Teaching of Mathematics for Improved Indigenous Education in a Rural Australian City.” Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education, vol. 18, no. 1, 2015, pp. 53-78.