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The marginalisation of Indigenous students within school mathematics and the math wars: seeking resolutions within ethical spaces

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Abstract

In mathematics education, there are (at least) two seemingly disparate and unethical issues that have been allowed to continue unresolved for decades: the math wars (traditional versus reform teaching and learning of mathematics) and the marginalisation of Indigenous students within K-12 mathematics. Willie Ermine, an Indigenous scholar, has proposed the use of ethical spaces to explore and analyse occurrences of unethical situations arising between the “intersection of Indigenous law and Canadian Legal systems” (Ermine, Indigenous Law Journal 6(1):193–203, 2007). This paper brings Ermine’s notion of ethical spaces to the field of mathematics education research as the theoretical framework for analysing the aforementioned issues. The result of this analysis is a potential single theoretical resolution to both dilemmas that can also serve as a significant factor in the processes of decolonisation.

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Acknowledgments

We acknowledge that, although we present these ideas for the first time in written (academic) form, there are yet unrecognised giants whose shoulders have afforded us this opportunity: the ancestors of the Indigenous peoples, who over the millennia have created, refined, and shared openly their Indigenous worldviews, despite the many campaigns to eliminate those beliefs, and all too often, even the people. We further acknowledge that our written knowledge has benefitted from the oral traditions of the Indigenous people and in doing so we seek to give back by both celebrating their knowledge and by attempting to resolve problems within mathematics teaching and learning, many of which have and continue to negatively impact the world’s Indigenous peoples. It is important that this acknowledgement be given, so that we do not consider this knowledge part of a “huge supermarket in which knowledge can be packaged up to be bought and sold…[without considering] the intellectual cultural property rights” (Smith 2000, p. 218) of Indigenous peoples.

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  1. College of Education, University of Saskatchewan, 28 Campus Drive, Saskatoon, SK, S7N0X1, Canada

    Gale L. Russell & Egan J. Chernoff

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  1. Gale L. Russell
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  2. Egan J. Chernoff
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Correspondence to Gale L. Russell.

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Russell, G.L., Chernoff, E.J. The marginalisation of Indigenous students within school mathematics and the math wars: seeking resolutions within ethical spaces. Math Ed Res J 25, 109–127 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13394-012-0064-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13394-012-0064-1

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