The relevance of mathematics textbook tasks to indigenous cultural context

Abstract

This paper reports about a study, which examines the mathematics textbooks used by the schools in the Sámi area of Norway. The Sámi are Indigenous people of Norway and neighboring countries (Finland, Russia and Sweden). Handcraft and reindeer herding are prevalent activities in Sámi culture. Drawing on the theory of didactical phenomenology, the study examines the relevance of textbook tasks to the cultural background of Indigenous children. Document analysis was used to extract and analyze the data from the old and new textbooks. The results indicate that the tasks in the old textbook are hardly relevant to Sámi culture. Though the old textbook had tasks, which could be adopted, the topic containing such tasks is no longer available in the new textbook. The adoption of such tasks could have helped to achieve the goal set in the new curriculum about teaching Sámi history and culture to all Norwegian children. It could also have helped to achieve another goal, which is about interdisciplinarity, because the tasks are about timeline in Norwegian history. The study has implications. In addition to using the tasks in the already available studies about the Sámi, we need more studies about designing tasks which utilize the Sámi cultural context. Additionally, adopting tasks, which use  Indigenous contexts similar to the Sámi context, should also be considered instead of a mere translation of the mandated textbook into the Indigenous language. Another option is, consistent with earlier studies, designing a separate textbook for the Indigenous children based on their culture.

Keywords: mathematics curriculum, Indigenous culture, measuring, textbook.