Lisa Lunney Borden

What's the Word for... ? Is There a Word for... ? How Understanding Mi'kmaw Language Can Help Support Mi'kmaw Learners in Mathematics.

As part of a larger project focused on decolonising mathematics education for Aboriginal students in Atlantic Canada, this article reports on the role of the Mi’kmaw language in mathematics teaching. By exploring how mathematical concepts are talked about (or not talked about) in the Mi’kmaw language, teachers and researchers can gain insight into how Mi’kmaw children think about mathematical concepts. It is argued that much can be learned by asking questions such as “What’s the word for…?” or “Is there a word for…?” Numerous examples of such conversations are presented. It is argued that particular complexities arise when words such as “flat” and “middle” are taken-for-granted as shared, but in fact do not have common use in the Mi’kmaw language. By understanding these complexities and being aware of the potential challenges for Mi’kmaw learners, teachers can better meet the needs of these students. It is argued that understanding Aboriginal languages can provide valuable insight to support Aboriginal learners in mathematics.

Considerations From Places Where Indigenous and Western Ways of Knowing, Being, and Doing Circulate Together: STEM as Artifact of Teaching and Learning

The editors have challenged us to consider STEM within the Canadian educational context. We find that the push to STEM is based on stories that frame the need for STEM within an economic imperative. Though some people are questioning the prevailing story and attempting to tell stories about STEM as a more integrated approach to teaching and learning, this work remains based in Western assumptions and philosophies. Based on our work alongside Aboriginal people, peoples, and communities, we offer another take on STEM, not as a framework for teaching and learning but rather as an artifact that emerges from teaching and learning.

Aiming for Equity in Ethnomathematics Research

We reflect on the discourse patterns in our interactions in Mi’kmaw communities. Beginning with ethnomathematical conversations with elders and teachers, our interest in supporting cultural connections for community mathematics students turned our focus to supporting an initiative (the Show Me Your Math contest) that had students report on the mathematics they found in their communities. With this shift in positioning we observed a release from a colonialist hold on mathematics learning for students, but also noted further challenges relating to interactions among the people of the communities and the larger society. For our reflections we analyzed excerpts of the initial ethnomathematics interactions, of the conversations developing the contest, and of classroom resources that make cultural connections. This highlights important questions: To whom are students reporting their mathematics? Whose problems/needs are students addressing when they do the tasks assigned to them? How are people and communities represented in applications of mathematics introduced in school?

Discursive Authority and Sociocultural Positioning in the Mathematics Classroom: New Directions for Teacher Professional Development

This article discusses findings from a two-day teacher conference focusing on discursive authority and sociocultural positioning in mathematics classrooms. The conference was designed to study how research on classroom discourse could be transformed into effective professional development activities. We describe how the focus on discourse, positioning, and authority was operationalized and made pragmatic for the teachers by focusing very closely on specific language use in classrooms. For each of the six workshops of the conference, we outline the goal of the workshop, the activities that were structured to reach those goals, and the theoretical constructs that were introduced to the teacher participants. We then draw on (a) transcripts of video and audio recordings, (b) material produced by the teachers, and (c) survey data, to discuss how these theoretical constructs were taken up and leveraged by participants as a means of reflecting on their own and other’s practice.RésuméCet article se penche sur les conclusions issues d’un colloque sur l’enseignement, d’une durée de deux jours, centré sur l’autorité discursive et le positionnement socioculturel dans les cours de mathématiques. Le colloque visait à faire le point sur les façons dont la recherche sur le discours en classe pouvait être transformée efficacement en activités de développement professionnel. Nous expliquons comment l’analyse du discours, du positionnement et de l’autorité a été rendue plus pragmatique pour les enseignants en ciblant particulièrement l’utilisation d’un langage spécifique en classe. Pour chacun des six ateliers du colloque, nous donnons le but de l’atelier, les activités structurées conçues pour atteindre ce but et les construits théoriques présentés aux enseignants participants. Nous avons également utilisé les transcriptions d’enregistrements vidéo et audio, le matériel produit par les enseignants et les données provenant d’enquêtes. Les résultats montrent que ce type d’activités de développement professionnel a un impact significatif sur les enseignants, car il augmente leur capacité d’aborder et de maˆıtriser des construits théoriques puissants dans le but d’analyser aussi bien leurs propres pratiques d’enseignement que celles d’autres enseignants.

Common Sense and Necessity in (Ethno)Mathematics

“You just take a [piece of birch] bark and hold it over the circle. Fold it in half and fold it in half again to get the centre.” Mi’kmaw elder, Diane Toney, was well known for the quality of the boxes she made out of porcupine quills. For her, folding a round piece of bark to find the centre of a circle was common sense; it was not mathematics.

Echoed Rememberings: Considering Mathematics and Science as Reconciliation

The editors of this volume have challenged us to consider the concept of transdisciplinarity within our own practices of teaching and learning. We begin by positioning transdisciplinarity as an instance of echoed rememberings, ideas Indigenous peoples have not forgotten. We suggest that such rememberings open up possibilities for transversing, transgressing and transcending what mathematics and science teaching and learning might be, in ways that welcome life and living back into mathematics and science through projects such as Show Me Your Math in Nova Scotia and the Indigenous Teaching and Learning Gardens at the University of Alberta. These illustrative examples suggest how we might create opportunities in K-12 and teacher education to centre Indigenous understandings as places from which learning emerges and provide a means for moving towards reconciliation.

Naming Method: “This is it, maybe, but you should talk to …”

This conversation between a former doctoral student and advisor examines the student’s choice to use a Mi’kmaq word to describe her methodology for her research in Mi’kmaw communities. The power relations associated with names and their sources were important in her choice, especially because of the colonialist history of the community and the tradition of generalisation in the academy. Nevertheless, the declaration of a methodology raises issues about the relationship among contexts in any research. In the search for the right word, community members always hedged their suggested words and referred the doctoral student to others in the community. This pattern of articulating a good description, recognising its limitations, and directing further conversation-based investigation was evident in her search for the word, but also relates to the methodology itself, to her findings about mathematics teaching and learning, and to the reporting of her work and of this conversation.