STEM Emerging From and Contributing to Community

• In Event: 64.034 - Reimagining the M in STEM: Mathematical Actions for Innovative, Resilient, and Culturally Rich Communities

Abstract

Purpose: Our intent in teaching and learning is not to begin with STEM expectations/outcomes but rather in places we know have the potential to teach. That is, in and alongside communities with a focus on their questions, their priorities, and their ways of knowing, being, and doing. As such, mathematics is not the focus of teaching and learning, but rather an artifact of teaching and learning that emerges in engagement in and exploration of interesting questions and problems defined locally (Lunney Borden & Wiseman, 2016). In this paper, we examine how mathematical artifacts, emerged through three different community-based STEM projects: Show Me your Math; The READress Project; and First Nations Math Voices Project.

Perspectives/theoretical frameworks: The projects are based in Indigenist research methodologies (IRMs) (Rigney, 1999), sometimes allied with qualitative methodologies that “assume a relationally constructed aspect of knowledge production” (Kovach, 2009, p. 34)—such as hermeneutics and participatory action research. IRMs are based on the interrelatedness of resistance, political integrity, and privileging Indigenous voices and act as a methodological means for decolonizing research (Denzin, 2005.

Contexts and Methods: Show Me Your Math: Connecting Math to Our Lives and Communities involves inquiry-based and hands-on learning in Mi’kmaw and African Nova Scotian communities and the schools that serve these communities. Community partnerships are key as community leaders, teachers, elders and knowledge keepers help shape the focus of school projects and provide support to students’ learning experiences. The READress Project is also inquiry-based. It is initiated by Grade 7 students in a Canadian private girls’ school where all staff and most students identify as non-Indigenous. READress is based on artist Jamie Black’s “aesthetic response” to Canada’s issue of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. Our third project, First Nations Math Voices, involves Anishinaabe Elders, knowledge keepers, and artists–along with non-Indigenous educators–collaboratively exploring the connections between mathematics inherent in Anishinaabe cultural practices and mathematics found in the Ontario elementary curriculum. Seven teams across the province have co-designed and co-delivered units of instruction based on these connections.

Data Sources: Data collected across the projects include transcribed audio and video of classes/explorations, elements of student work, fieldnotes, and interviews with educators and students.

Results: Across the three projects we find: 1) how mathematics emerged through the inquiries and activities such as exploring questions of water security in First Nation communities or knowledges embedded in ancient Mi’kmaw legends; (2) how in some cases, such as the READress Project mathematics was actually secondary to the overall learning in the project; and 3) how collaborative partnerships resulted in culturally meaningful and mathematically robust learning.

Significance: Our research points to the importance of community, context, and cultural relationality (Donald, Glanfield, & Sterenberg, 2011) in reimagining mathematics for students across a range of contexts, for students seeking to learn more about and respond to current issues important to them, and community collaborative curriculum making to better serve local Indigenous students and to learn from Indigenous pedagogical perspectives to improve mathematics instruction for all students.

Authors

• Lisa Ann Lunney Borden, Saint Francis Xavier University

• Dawn Wiseman, Bishop's University

• Ruth A. Beatty, Lakehead University

• Ellen Carter, St. Francis Xavier University

• Limin Jao, McGill University