Annette R. Baturo

Contextualising the Teaching and Learning of Measurement within Torres Strait Islander Schools.

This paper reports on a mathematics project conducted with six Torres Strait Islander schools and communities by the research team at the YuMi Deadly Centre at QUT. Data collected is from a small focus group of six teachers and two teacher aides. We investigated how measurement is taught and learned by students, their teachers and teacher aides in the community schools. A key focus of the project was that the teaching and learning of measurement be contextualised to the students’ culture, community and home languages. A significant finding from the project was that the teachers had differing levels of knowledge and understanding about how to contextualise measurement to support student learning. For example, an Indigenous teacher identified that mathematics and the environment are relational, that is, they are not discrete and in isolation from one another, rather they mesh together, thus affording the articulation and interchange among and between mathematics and Torres Strait Islander culture.

Bridging the educational gap : Indigenous and non-Indigenous beliefs, attitudes and practices in a remote Australian school

Indigenous education remains of grave concern within Australian society (Fitzgerald, 2002). Systems are currently making limited educational impact in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities (Department of Education, Training and Employment, 1999). In particular, Indigenous students’ beliefs about the relevance of education, attitudes towards school, behaviour in school and attendance at school are affecting their educational performance (Bourke et al., 2000; Cataldi and Partington, 1998; Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs, 2002). This chapter reports on the success of a 3-year longitudinal professional learning project in a remote Australian school. Using mathematics as the vehicle, this project set out to improve Indigenous students’ learning outcomes by enhancing their beliefs, attitudes and practices and thus to begin to bridge the current educational gap between them and non-Indigenous students. The chapter reviews the literature relevant to the relationship between beliefs, attitudes, practices and performance, outlines the project generally and, for the particular school Albertown (pseudonym), describes findings with regard to beliefs and attitudes, and discusses the implications for future intervention projects.

Power and authority in school and community : interactions between non-Indigenous teachers and Indigenous teacher assistants in remote Australian schools

Traditionally, education for Indigenous peoples within the Australian context has had a highly Eurocentric flavour (Matthews et al. 2005; Rothbaum et al. 2000). As such, many Indigenous people who form part of this education system have found themselves in positions where communication has lacked cultural understandings and clarity, leaving them with undefined roles of minimal cultural significance. This has contributed to a sense of disempowerment for those Indigenous people who otherwise hold positions of power, respect and value within their own communities (Zajda et al. 2008b).

Pedagogies to support Indigenous students’ mathematics learning in rural and remote Queensland classrooms

The view, which has prevailed since the time of Plato, is that mathematics represents ‘eternal truths’, and that it is similarly objective in its portrayal of knowledge. The truthfulness and objectivity of mathematics are now being challenged by writers arguing that mathematics is culturally based, represents the views of a particular class and background and is a consequence of humans arguing over proofs (e.g., Bishop, 1988; Lakatos, 1976; Walkerdine, 1990; Wilder, 1982). Ethnomathematics, for example, takes the view that mathematics has developed differently in different cultures and that exploration of how different cultures understand mathematics and mathematical concepts is important, not only for mathematics but also for cultural understanding (Presmeg, 1997). Thus, as the Queensland education system reflects mainstream Eurocentric culture, non-Eurocentric cultures, such as Indigenous, find little relevance within traditional school mathematics. As Matthews, Watego, Cooper and Baturo (2005) argue The education system, as a reflection of the dominant society’s views (Jones et al., 1996; Matthews et al., 2003), has devalued Indigenous cultures as a primitive, simplistic society. This is further reinforced by the notion of ‘technological progress’, which has limited Indigenous peoples’ ability to participate in scientific endeavours and allowed the continual exploration of Indigenous knowledge for scientific purposes. An education based on these principles, only serves to marginalise Indigenous people and undermine the significance of their Indigenous identity.