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Indigenous Students in Mathematics Education

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Encyclopedia of Mathematics Education

Introduction

Definitions of Indigenous people differ, and while some countries acknowledge their Indigenous people, other countries label similar groups as tribal or minority nationalities (Sanders 1999). In mathematics education research, Indigenous students have come to be considered those who belong to communities who originally controlled land and developed distinctive cultures before the arrival of colonizers, generally Europeans, and who presently attend educational institutions which closely resemble those of Western countries (Meaney et al. 2012). Within this definition, there is an acknowledgment that Indigenous cultures are heterogeneous with different sets of behaviors and understandings or cultures both within and across groups.

The teaching and learning of mathematics by Indigenous students has been part of mathematics education research for schooling for more than 50 years. For example, drawing on their work with the Kpelle in Liberia, Gay and Cole (1967) proposed the...

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Correspondence to Tamsin Meaney .

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Meaney, T., Trinick, T. (2020). Indigenous Students in Mathematics Education. In: Lerman, S. (eds) Encyclopedia of Mathematics Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15789-0_76

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