Challenges Regarding the Integration of Ethnomathematical Perspectives into Geometry Teaching

What is it about?

A significant gap exists, as research has revealed that teaching mathematics in classrooms is usually unrelated to the sociocultural contexts of the learners. This embedded mixed methods study explored the challenges mathematics teacher educators face in integrating ethnomathematical perspectives into Euclidean geometry teaching in the classroom. The mathematics teacher educators' accounts revealed college and educator-related challenges, including inadequate/lack of cultural examples in the geometry curriculum, a lack of clarity on how to integrate ethnomathematical approaches into geometry teaching in the curriculum, cultural diversity, financial constraints, time constraints, and gender discrimination. The quantitative study observed a statistically significant difference between the male and female cases in their response to the challenge of inadequate/lack of cultural examples in the geometry curriculum. In all, the findings obtained from the qualitative investigation revealed differences among male and female mathematics teacher educators regarding what they perceive as challenges regarding the integration of ethnomathematical perspectives.

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Why is it important?

From the study, we concluded that several challenges confront Ghanaian mathematics teacher educators at the colleges of education in integrating ethnomathematical perspectives into the teaching of Euclidean geometry. This calls for mathematics teachers to have adequate assistance in their training to handle these variances effectively.