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Math Ed Res J (2013) 25:129150
DOI 10.1007/s13394-012-0061-4
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Jerry Lipka & Monica Wong & Dora Andrew-Ihrke
Received: 15 December 2011 /Revised: 10 September 2012 /Accepted: 28 October 2012 / Published online: 15 December 2012# Mathematics Education Research Group of Australasia, Inc. 2012
Background
The United States Constitution (Article 1, Section 8, Clause 3) has established a special government-to-government relationship between the U.S. federal government and sovereign tribes. Presidential executive orders affirm that relationship and apply it to education, emphasising the importance of the role of the tribes culture and language in the education of American Indian/Alaska Native students. Further, federal reports have, for almost a century, advocated using the tribes natal culture and language as a way to improve their academic performance (Executive Order No. 13336, May 5 2004), while connecting school and community (Beaulieu 2000; Executive Order No. 13336, May 5 2004; Meriam et al. 1928).
The University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) developed the Cross-Cultural Education Development Program in the early 1970s to increase the number of Indigenous teachers, in hopes of improving the education of Alaska Native students by connecting the knowledge and practices of the community with schooling (Lipka,
Part of this work was presented at the AAMT-MERGA Conference 2011, Alice Springs, Australia, 37 July, incorporating the 23rd biennial conference of the Australian Association of Mathematics Teachers Inc. and the 34th annual conference of the Mathematics Education Research Group of Australasia Inc.
J. Lipka : D. Andrew-Ihrke
Math in a Cultural Context, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Fairbanks, AK 99709, USA
J. Lipkae-mail: [email protected]
D. Andrew-Ihrkee-mail: [email protected]
M. Wong (*)
Faculty of Education and Social Work University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia e-mail: [email protected]
M. Wong
School of Education Australian Catholic University, Strathfield, NSW 2135, Australia
Alaska Native Indigenous knowledge: opportunities for learning mathematics
130 J. Lipka et al.
with Mohatt and the Ciulistet Group 1998). In the early 1980s, Jerry Lipka and Dora Andrew-Ihrke1 met when Lipka was hired by the UAF as a faculty member in the Cross-Cultural Education Development Program in Bristol Bay, in a southwest Yupik Eskimo region.2 He and many others went on to develop Math in a Cultural Context (MCC) project as a way to incorporate local Indigenous knowledge from local ways of communicating...