Indigenous Mathematics: The Concept of Probability in the Inuit Culture

• In Event: Challenges and Successes in Early-Grades Mathematics Education in Low-Income Contexts

Abstract

Inuit live in the circumpolar regions of Canada and integrate culture in their educational curricula. For thousands of years, they have hunted and fished in order to survive in the harsh environment, and up until the middle of the 20th century, most of them were nomads. These important factors contribute to shaping the Inuit culture. These differences in their culture can present may challenges and issues for learning mathematical concepts in school, including probability. In their culture, probability is not formally defined and does not take the same meaning as in conventional mathematics. This misalignment can have negative impacts on students’ learning. The Inuit numeration system is in base-20, presenting challenges when implementing base-10 Canadian curricula and standards. Furthermore, the numbers have different names, according to the context in which they are used. For instance, the number three is said differently depending whether the three objects are over, on, or under a table. The origins of the words are rooted in base-20, but only a few Inuit are able to use these context-specific number names (Baillargeon et al., 1977; Poirier, 2007). For many, the meaning has been lost, since the names of the numbers are very long and do not extend past a few hundreds. Over the years, the general population has increasing begun to use English number names.
For the Inuit, bringing the culture into schools means more than being able to count fish using pictures – it means that the practice should be connected to the traditional and actual ways Inuit share fish. It should relate to their daily lives, but not in a superficial way (Garii, Silverman, & Barta, 2008), and also help and motivate students to fully participate and contribute in the society (D'Ambrosio, 2001; ten Dam & Volman, 2004). Informed by Gay (2010), evidence confirms the support of mathematics understanding through culturally relevant pedagogy, meeting the academic and social needs of all students. Looking to bridge the gap between those two different cultural meanings, I used an ethnomathematical model (Author, 2008; Author et al., 2014) to design, with the assistance of Inuit teaching consultants, four learning situations for grade 3 students based on the traditional culture. I found that authentic situations grounded in the sociocultural context of a group especially important for the Inuit people because of their isolation and their need to survive in their environments.
In this paper, I present the learning situations that bridge together the Inuit culture and the development of probabilistic reasoning and discuss how this bridge was created and allowed students to make sense of their culture. I will present the benefits of these learning situations on the students’ learning process.

Author

• Annie Savard, McGill University