From Cultural Awareness to Integration: Faculty Attempt to Incorporate the Outside-of-School Geometry into Geometry Teaching

Research has revealed a deficiency in cultural congruence in the pedagogy and acquisition of geometrical knowledge as the cause of students’ poor performance in geometry. Drawing upon the historical context of mathematics education and its evolution, incorporating ethnomathematical perspectives was introduced as a potential remedy. This embedded mixed methods study explored how mathematics teacher educators incorporate the mathematics found outside of school into geometry teaching in the classroom. Eight mathematics teacher educators were included in the qualitative phase through purposive and convenience sampling. The qualitative data obtained through classroom observation was analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis. On the other hand, 128 mathematics teacher educators were included in the quantitative phase through cluster and quota sampling. The quantitative data obtained through the survey was analyzed using the Mann-Whitney U test. Based on the findings, male and female mathematics teacher educators at the colleges of education tend to employ culturally responsive teaching (a pedagogical perspective of ethnomathematics) to integrate the mathematics found outside of school into geometry teaching in the classroom. Nonetheless, only a few mathematics teacher educators (one from each case) strove to incorporate the forms of mathematics found outside of school to teach plane geometry by citing appropriate cultural examples. Implications for teaching and future research are reported.