Tag Archives: ways of knowing

Show Me Your Math: Connect Math to Our Lives and Communities

Module 2, Post 5

“Show Me Your Math: Connect Math to Our Lives and Communities” compiles the work that is a joint endeavor between St. Francis Xavier University’s Faculty of Education and Mathematics Department and local Mi’kmaw and African Nova Scotian communities. The program invites Aboriginal Students in Atlantic Canada to explore the mathematics that is evident in their own community and cultural practices. Through exploring aspects of counting, measuring, locating, designing, playing, and explaining, students discover that mathematics is all around them and is connected to many of the cultural practices in their own communities. Each year students gather for the annual math fair and celebrate the work they have done.

While this website contains samples of student SMYM projects, it also includes resources for doing culturally-based inquiry projects, research relating to decolonizing mathematics education for Indigenous students, and information about a related Math Outreach program. All of this work is dedicated to transforming the experiences of Indigenous children and youth in learning mathematics and to increase both student achievement and student affinity for mathematics.

One page on the website, Connecting Math to our Lives and Communities (CMTOL) is filled with curricular ideas that connect science to our land and current issues such as Invasive Species, Environmental Racism in Nova Scotia, The Mathematics of Food Security, Water Security, Climate Change, Soil Degradation, Soil and Social Justice, Star Stories, and Structures and Engineering, to name a few.

Another webpage includes project-based and inquiry learning through the learning activities that are linked to the land or cultural traditions. The website also includes a few years of archived student projects, such as this one:  MathFishing.

I also found “Fostering Mawikinutimatimk in Research and Classroom Practice” (Lunney & Wagner, 2006) that discusses the challenges of mawikinutimatimk – learning together- as related to a mathematics classroom. The report profiles that North American aboriginals have the lowest participation of any cultural group when it comes to mathematics and highlights the importance of educators recognizing the long-term impacts that colonization has had on this segment and seeking solutions that foster higher inclusivity.

References

Lunney Borden, L. (2011, November 14). MathFishing.m4v [Video]. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9Fd2OkXCdQ

Lunney, L. A. & Wagner, D. R. (2006). Fostering mawikinutimatimk in research and classroom practice. In Alatorre et al. (Eds.), Proceedings of the Twenty Eighth Annual Meeting of the North American Chapter of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education. (pp. 505 – 507). Universidad Pedagógica Nacional. http://www.pmena.org/pmenaproceedings/PMENA%2028%202006%20Proceedings.pdf

Show Me Your Math. (n.d.). CMTOLC Outreach Connecting Math to Our Lives and Communities. http://showmeyourmath.ca/outreach/

 

Reconciling Ways of Knowing – Two Eyed Seeing and Beyond

Module 2, Post 4

Reconciling Ways of Knowing is a website with a wealth of information that is the result of Indigenous leaders and Western leaders building a relationship to share and build ways of being and knowing, with the belief that both are valid and that by joining forces together the benefits will be greater than each on their own. I came across this website as I was investigating more about Two Eyed Seeing, which has been described as  “To see from one eye with the strengths of Indigenous ways of knowing, and to see from the other eye with the strengths of Western ways of knowing, and to use both of these eyes together” (Bartlett, Marshall, & Marshall, 2012, p. 335).

This website is suited for anyone wondering how to merge the divide between Western and Indigenous perspectives in being and knowing, particularly as it relates to scientific research in the environment, and this suggests that these need not be two dichotomous perspectives, but that they are in many ways compatible.

There is a total of 10 forums archived on this site:

References

Bartlett, C., Bartlett, A., & Marshall, M. (2012). Two-Eyed Seeing and other lessons learned within a co-learning journey of bringing together indigenous and mainstream knowledges and ways of knowing. Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, 2(4), 331 – 340. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/257804329_Two-Eyed_Seeing_and_other_lessons_learned_within_a_co-learning_journey_of_bringing_together_indigenous_and_mainstream_knowledges_and_ways_of_knowing

Reconciling Ways of Knowing. (n.d.). A conversation of national and planetary significance. https://www.waysofknowingforum.ca/about