A Narrative Inquiry Into My Experiences Co-Teaching Alongside Cree Educators: Indigenization and School Mathematics
Date
2020-08-18
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ORCID
Type
Thesis
Degree Level
Doctoral
Abstract
My research puzzle began through considerations around the meaning of Indigenization in school mathematics. I used a narrative inquiry methodology to explore the following research wonder: What are my experiences as a White Euro-Western mathematician working alongside Cree educators as we co-teach school mathematics to predominantly Cree children? Working alongside three Cree teachers, the inquiry focused on my experiences co-teaching elementary school mathematics in the middle of institutional mandates of Indigenization. My intention of the inquiry was to provide a more nuanced understanding of Indigenization in elementary school mathematics.
Field texts (data) created by this inquiry included written artifacts (such as student work and lesson activities), my field notes as the researcher, and audio-recorded conversations with the three teacher participants: Miss Moore, Miss Scribe, and Miss Mitchel. This dissertation includes four threads of experience as lived and told stories of my experiences in these three teachers’ mathematics classrooms. The first thread emerged as I attended to the methodological commitments of narrative inquiry, Critical Race Theory (CRT), and anti-racist education (ARE) as my interpretive frames of Indigenization. The second thread explains my conceptualizing of Cree mathematizing as a partial representation of identity-making and Indigenization. The third thread developed from tensions when I disrupted experiences of the Cree teachers through my Euro-Western ideologies of generalization in mathematics. The fourth thread explains my learning of miyō-pimōhtēwin (walking in a good way) as a way of being in relation in the mathematics classroom. Each thread constitutes a chapter in this dissertation.
Description
Keywords
Narrative Inquiry, Indigenization, School Mathematics, Anti-Racist Education, Decolonization, Cree
Citation
Degree
Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)
Department
Educational Foundations
Program
Educational Foundations