Ethnomathematic Education.

Education is a strategy formed by societies to encourage creativity and citizenship.

• Creativity promotes to helping people to fulfill their potentials to the utmost of their capability.

• Citizenship promotes to showing people their rights and responsibilities in society.

The educational systems through history and in all civilization have been driven by two issues: to transmit values from the past and to promote the future.

D'Ambrosio (1979) justified why mathematics should be in the school curriculum during a forum, he discussed "the nature of mathematical knowledge needed to give attention to history, philosophy and cognition beyond those traditionally focused on the history of mathematics and the larning of mathematic. He also introduced emphatically, the idea that there are ways of doing mathematics that emerge in different culutre.

The Australian Curriculum - Mathematics aims to ensure that students:

• “are confident, creative users and communicators of mathematics, able to investigate, represent and interpret situations in“their personal and work lives and as active citizens”

• “develop an increasingly sophisticated understanding of mathematical concepts and fluency with processes, and are able “to pose and solve problems and reason in Number and Algebra, Measurement and Geometry, and Statistics and Probability”

• “recognise connections between the areas of mathematics and other disciplines and appreciate mathematics as an accessible and enjoyable discipline to study.”

The Australian Curriculum has entitles each student to gaining knowledge, understanding and skills and makes clear to teachers what is to be taught across the years of schooling. It also makes clear what students should learn and the quality of learning expected of them as they progress through school. But are all students given the opportunity to succeed?

The Western concept of mathemathics is by no means the only one. There are many ancient cultures that have developed some sort of mathematical system in their environment. For instance:

• Wa'lade hama'gan (Bowl and Dice) is one of many similar games played by early Native American tribes. The Penobscot Nation in New England called it Hubbub because of the chanting that accompanied the tossing of the dice. The dice were traditionally made from carved bone or antler, animal teeth, or small stones. They were engraved, burned, polished, or painted to distinguish the sides. This is a probability game, where five or six dice were tossed in a bowl or basket. The game then involved getting as many as possible to land on the same side.

• The ancient Mayans civilisation recognised many patterns in their observations of the universe, and developed mathematical relationships and symbolic systems to describe these patterns. The Mayans were astronomers who established a system of calendars to track the solar and lunar cycle and other environmental events.

Gerdes defines that "ethnomathematics is its openness to acknowledging as mathematical knowledge and mathematical practices elements of people's lives outside the academy, in cultures that have been denigrated, at various times, by terms such as primitive, underdevloped, nonliterate and the practical intelligence of people in our own society. ( Geer, Mukhopadhyay, Powell & Nelson-Barber 2009)

We have a great deal to learn from the ethnomathematic principles of Indigenous cultures. By researching what has been done by different Indigenous groups can help us relate to working towards an outcome which will benefit students. Everyone whether litrate or non-literate has grown up in their own culture, and mathematics is created by human culture. It involves counting, measuring, designing, investigating or explaining, it is not to be restricted to academic mathematics. All cultures have contributed to ideas and procedures of mathematics in some form. We as a society have to understanding and respect these differences and encourage that these have the same criteria which can be applied to classify what is knowledge in all cultures.

Reference:

ACARA. (2015) Australian Curriculum. Mathematics. Retrieved from http://www.acara.edu.au/default.asp

D'Ambrosio, U. (2003). Stakes in Mathematics Education for the Societies of today and tommorrown. Retrieved from https://www.unige.ch/math/EnsMath/EM-ICMI/Ubi.pdf

Geer,B. Mukhopadhyay, S. Powell,A. Nelson-Barber, S. (2009). Culturally Responsive Mathematics Education. 1st Edition. New York. Routledge.

McCoy, L. (2004). Mathematics Activities from Diverse Cultures. Retrieved from http://www.wfu.edu/mccay/mgames.pdf.