'Cultural Mathematics' in the Oksapmin Curriculum: Continuities and Discontinuities

Abstract

We report an observational study of school mathematics instruction in Oksapmin, a remote Central Highlands community in Papua New Guinea. As a part of a national initiative, Papua New Guinea is engaged in implementing educational reforms that attempt to create strong links between activities in school and students' out-of-school lives. We show how reforms have mitigated some of the sharp discontinuities between activities in and out of school though at the same time they have created others. For example, the prior colonial-like system of education that did not allow use of indigenous languages in school classrooms (a discontinuity between in and out of school) has given way to elementary schools in which children are not only encouraged to use their native language in school, they are taught the indigenous mathematics of traditional life. However, in the process of incorporating the traditional mathematics into school instruction, that mathematics is altered in some fundamental ways, as teachers create explicit links to the base 10 English counting system. The transformations of out-of-school practices raise questions about the long-term impact of schooling on out-of-school mathematical practices and traditional ways.