Thoughts on Indigenising maths and physics at university, with a view to the needs of preservice teachers and apprentice academics in our disciplines

Speakers: Judy-Anne Osborne and Amelia Dickenson-Jones
Affiliations: CARMA (and previously Monash) and St John's College Woodlawn, respectively

This is a joint Maths and Physics colloquium. The speakers will be sharing their experiences and insights about Indigenising maths and physics curriculum, a topic relevant to many of us. 

Abstract

School teachers are required to Indigenise curriculum.  University lecturers are increasingly asked to do the same.  But role models with experience in this are few.  For many of us as non-Indigenous practitioners, we are in the first generation who is being asked to do this, and we are looking for examples and principles from which to build.

We are two academically minded practitioners, one who has worked mainly in School Maths Departments, and one who has worked mainly in University Maths Departments, who have each spent roughly a decade or more thinking about Indigenising practice in our contexts.  We will share with you some of the insights we have gained over this period, working with Indigenous and non-Indigenous colleagues, and trying things out in our contexts.

We focus this talk in terms of the needs of two cohorts of University students: pre-service schoolteachers and students who may become academics. Part of our reason is that these groups, like us, are similar in that they need to learn not just a fixed body of knowledge, but to be able to create with it: to conceptualise, explain, critique and extend whatever we provide.  This focus also allows a critique of some differences between the two educational contexts of Schools and Universities, and relevant relationships between the two.

Some ideas we will share relate to: ways of knowing Maths and Physics, ways of teaching in our disciplines, ways of experiencing value and meaning, intrinsic interest in the possibilities that arise from bringing together Indigenous perspectives and Maths/Physics disciplinary traditions, and moral considerations of what it might mean to do this work well.