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Making Sense of Mathematics: Harnessing Pre-Colonial Knowledge, History, Neuroscience, and Inclusive Education to Address Gaps

Tue, March 12, 9:30 to 11:00am, Hyatt Regency Miami, Floor: Terrace Level, Tuttle North

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

Mathematics, regarded as a universal language with a well-defined logical structure, encompasses a body of knowledge concerning numbers and space (Butterworth, 1999). This knowledge enables us to draw conclusions about the world we live in. With a rich history dating back to protomathematics, which predates written records, mathematics has played a crucial role in human civilization for millennia. The first evidence of mathematics was seen in the Ishango Bone, discovered between the modern-day borders of Uganda and Congo and dating back twenty-five thousand years (Joseph, 2011).

Despite the historical importance of mathematics in our world, there are significant challenges in the current-day learning and teaching of mathematics, which follows the “classical” Eurocentric Trajectory. This trajectory limits and disregards the pluralistic nature of mathematics, especially in countries colonized by European countries, such as countries in Africa, pre-Columbian America, India, and the Islamic World. To better understand the present-day challenges, this panel, through a pedagogy of protest lens, aims to explore the existing gaps in mathematics education by understanding pre-colonial knowledge systems in mathematics and leveraging current-day neuroscience. Through an inclusive education lens, the panel seeks to provide recommendations for future work in this area. The authors of this panel specifically focus on the mathematical skill of fractions.

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