Ethnomathematics of Indigenous Peoples of the North

Abstract

Education of the value to a particular society in the Northern regions of the Russian Federation is connected with socio-cultural and economic transformations in the places of dense residence of small-numbered peoples of the North, which leads to the necessity of improving the system of upbringing and education of children in encampments. In this regard, the process of education should organically include axiological aspects of human life: the interiorization of nomadic peoples’ values, ensuring the development of a student's personality. The article discloses the content of the regional-ethnic component of mathematics education in which the learning content is in unity with the basics of mathematical science and ethnomathematics of indigenous peoples of the North. The leading approach to study this problem, allowing to identify the main content of the course "Ethnomathematics" of the regional-ethnic component, is the analysis of scientific, educational, fiction literature and systematization of the knowledge accumulated by many generations (astronomical, phenological, economic) and elementary issues on the development of numbering, mathematical terminology, the emergence of measures associated with a unique culture and traditional economic activities of the nomadic peoples of the North. The main results of the article: ethnomathematics was being formed by the course of the history of the region’s reclamation, was being enriched by the adaptive features, as well as by the spiritual and economic practices of the Northern peoples. It is possible to talk about the viability of the proposed contents of the specialized course "Ethnomathematics" of the regional component in the regions of Russia with the indigenous small-numbered peoples of the North.

DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n2s3p233