Cultural Math

Hi MIMU,

I'm a Math teacher and I need to know how I can incorporate this idea of cultural diversity and Heritage Fairs into my teaching. Any suggestions?

Signed,

Marvelous Math

Thanks for the question, MM. I think you'll find this post to be really helpful. Yes, Heritage Fairs and teaching cultural diversity are all fine and good, but they cannot get in the way of teaching the course. I think you'll find everything you're looking for in this post. Have a read :)

In mathematics education, ethnomathematics is the subject of the relationship between mathematics and civilization. The goals of ethnomathematics are to contribute both to the understanding of mathematics and mainly to lead to an appreciation of the connection between two. The term ethnomathematics was introduced by the Brazilian educator and mathematician Ubiratan D'Ambrosio in 1977. A wide variety of cultures do math and each has different strategies in a variety of ways. In the diverse classroom always the subject of ethnic diversity in math grade is thus more than a question of different students' backgrounds and also a matter of the varied forms of maths. Thither are a great deal more questions coming up around this topic, for instance, Is mathematics a well defined scientific discipline? Do different cultures use different strategies of doing maths? What are the historical contributions of different cultures to mathematics?

         Agreeing to the idealist perspective on mathematics, mathematical concepts are regarded as ideal targets and cannot be immediately known  by mankind. The formalist view does not assume that mathematicians are ideal and does not vary. Instead, mathematics is viewed as a human invention. Fallibilism perspective on mathematics embraces elements of both idealist and  formalist perspective. With the emergence of fallibilism, the 1980s saw a few attempts to take students cultural backgrounds into account in mathematics classrooms. Mathematics curriculums are historical and cultural, too. The mathematics children learn in Canada is constantly evolving. Students coming to Canada, indigenous students, and children from mainstream culture bring different cultural backgrounds to the school.  Mathematics is dependent on the nomenclature and other applied sciences. Evidence indicates that language structure of numbers used in the Asian cultures facilitates an understanding of the decimal representation, giving students an advantage over non-Asian learners (Miura, Okamoto, Kim, Steere & Fayol, 1993; Ng & Rao, 2010). In other words technology of language affects mathematics learning in the early understanding of number representation. Maths, in several cultures, are attached to religious belief and other cultural values and feelings. For instance, in India math is related to vedas and vedas are the religious books and related with knowledge and wisdom.    

                  A sound understanding of maths not only enhances learning in scientific discipline and engineering fields, but also enhances fundamental skills relevant to many facets of cultural beliefs and values. Different states apply different types of strategies in the stratum.