Introduction to Nine Lessons for The Little Crooked House

Abstract

This article is from a book of nine lessons based on the work done by Miuty E. Nokar in the context of his participation in the MACIMISE project. The original lessons in indigenous mathematics can be found in his paper, A culturally based mathematics unit for grade seven students on Chuuk State, submitted to the University of Hawai`i at Manoa in the context of his Master’s program. In that paper, Nokar (2013)  identifies major problems with the teaching of mathematics in Chuuk:
• the current approach to teaching and learning of mathematics in the classroom is inappropriate
and not meaningful,
• the ‘western’ (sometimes called ‘main land’) approach to the teaching of mathematics adversely
affects students’ perceptions of the value of their own culture, and consequently produces
mathematic knowledge that is not useful nor beneficial to the needs and practice of the
Chuukese people’s indigenous ways of working and interacting, and
• the transition to the learning of classroom mathematics, because of its explicit exclusions of
culture, has very little effect on students’ success in the learning of mathematics. (Nokar,
p. 4)
The lessons follow the successive stages in the building of a traditional Chuukese house as portrayed in
the storybook, The Little Crooked House. Each lesson presents a stage in the house construction and the
mathematics embedded in each stage.