Mathematics and culture in Micronesia

Abstract

Wheatley and Frieze‟s book, Walk Out Walk On, provides the conceptual framework for an examination of Project MACIMISE, a National Science Foundation funded project that focused on the languages and cultural practices of nine Pacific islands and the state of Hawai„i. MACIMISE, pronounced as if spelled „maximize‟, is a 5-year Project. The Project‟s task is the development of elementary school mathematics curriculum units sensitive to local mathematical thought and experience. There were twenty-one participants (who call themselves the Macimisers) in the Project. The participants were educated in ethnographic and anthropological research strategies to enable them to retrieve/uncover cultural practices extant in the communities where they lived. This academics work was accomplished partially via distance learning when the participants were registered in advanced degree programs at the University of Hawai„i—Mānoa. In this paper, the Project is analyzed in terms of the concepts (scaling across, start anywhere—follow it everywhere, intervention to friendship, the art of hosting and the use of circle) advanced by Wheatley and Frieze.

Keywords

• Indigenous mathematics
• distance learning
• mathematics curriculum development