Indigenous Culture-Based School Mathematics in Action: Part I: Professional Development for Creating Teaching Materials

Abstract

: This first of a pair of articles describes a professional development project that prepared four non-Indigenous mathematics teachers (Grades 5-12) to implement Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s (TRC, 2016) notion of reconciliation: cross-cultural respect through mutual understanding. The researchers collaboratively mentored the teachers to enhance their mathematics teaching with Indigenous mathematizing 3 . The teachers’ focus was on developing and revising lesson plans for other teachers to teach. This process explicitly and implicitly revealed precise supports that need to be in place for a teacher to succeed at innovating with this Indigenous culture-based school mathematics (ICBSM). Part I is a template for scaling up the development of much needed Indigenous resources for mathematics teachers. Part II reports on the research results of this year-long research project.