Imagining Community-Based Math Teaching

Working in conjunction with the LUCID project, Kanwal spent several weeks in 2006 interviewing artists, elders, and other participants in the Haida Role Model program. His hope was to find connections between the Western mathematics curriculum and the ways in which mathematical thinking is used in everyday life, as a step towards developing more engaging ways of teaching mathematics to First Nations students.
   In keeping with the collaborative philosophy of LUCID, Kanwal worked closely with Haida Gwaii Project Leader Vonnie Hutchingson and Project Director Mark Fettes on the design, implementation, and interpretation of his research. His visits to the islands included workshops for teachers and community members, and his thesis went through numerous drafts over the course of an entire year, as the committee sought to ensure that it accurately reflected the viewpoints of the Haida participants.
   The culmination came on November 26, 2007, when nearly a hundred people crowded into a room at SFU’s Surrey campus to hear Kanwal defend his work in front of his committee (including Ms. Hutchingson and Dr. Fettes) and two external examiners. It was an unusual turnout for a doctoral defence: testimony both to  the high esteem in which Kanwal is held by colleagues and friends, and to the significance of his work. Even so, the examiners made acceptance of the thesis conditional on several changes to the chapters on methdology and conclusions, to better convey the depth of consultation and collaboration involved.
   A 2008 calendar, specially printed for the event, gave participants some sense of the astonishing beauty and variety of the practices documented in the thesis. Copies have now been provided to all of the schools on the islands — the first step in a long-term process of changing the ways in which mathematics is taught and learned on Haida Gwaii, and perhaps in many other communities as well.

Mark Fettes