Culturally Situated Design Tools: Ethnocomputing from Field Site to Classroom

Abstract

Ethnomathematics is the study of mathematical ideas and practices situated in their cultural context. Culturally Situated Design Tools (CSDTs) are web‐based software applications that allow students to create simulations of cultural arts—Native American beadwork, African American cornrow hairstyles, urban graffiti, and so forth—using these underlying mathematical principles. This article is a review of the anthropological issues raised in the CSDT project: negotiating the representations of cultural knowledge during the design process with community members, negotiating pedagogical features with math teachers and their students, and reflecting on the software development itself as a cultural construction. The move from ethnomathematics to ethnocomputing results in an expressive computational medium that affords new opportunities to explore the relationships between youth identity and culture, the cultural construction of mathematics and computing, and the formation of cultural and technological hybridity.

Humanizing Mathematics through Ethnomodelling

“…This perspective is crucial in giving minority students a sense of cultural ownership of mathematics, rather than a mere gesture toward inclusiveness [6].…”

“…Mathematical concepts related to a variety of mathematical procedures and cultural artifacts form part of the numeric relations found in universal actions of measuring, calculation, games, divination, navigation, astronomy, and modelling [6].…”

“…Indigenous designs may be analysed simply as forms and the applications of symmetrical classifications from crystallography to indigenous textile patterns [6]. On the other hand, many researchers in ethnomathematics use modelling to establish the relations found between local conceptual frameworks and mathematical ideas embedded in numerous designs.…”

“…On the other hand, many researchers in ethnomathematics use modelling to establish the relations found between local conceptual frameworks and mathematical ideas embedded in numerous designs. We define this act as ethnomodelling; the very act of translation that forms an essential part of the mathematical modelling process [16] In some cases, translation into Western-academic mathematics is direct and simple, such as that found in counting systems and calendars [6]. However this is not always the case.…”

Generative contexts: generating value between community and educational settings

“…While computer programming was not standardized in this class, many technology teachers make it part of their curriculum, acknowledging the increasing importance of coding and computational thinking in work and higher education. Cornrow Curves is designed to build braiding as an educational asset that has curricular relevance for technology teachers and as a cultural asset that has relevance for parents and other community members (Eglash et al, 2006). In its current version, Cornrow Curves aids in computer programming lessons through simulating cornrow hairstyles (Lachney, 2016).…”