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Response: Models and Maps from the Marshall Islands

 

This was article provided a fascinating look at the way the Marshallese people navigated their waters. For me, the most interesting part of the article was the way the Marshallese people developed oceanic models that could be generalized across all the islands they were familiar with. The paper notes that in an exchange, one of the Marshall Islanders maintained that, "the chart was not where [a particular island] lay, but where land was. They stoutly maintained that it could be some island in another part of the world, one they had never seen" (p. 352). This deep understanding of the nature of wave movement around land is a clear example of the complex mathematical thinking that took place even if it doesn't look similar to the form of mathematics that we are familiar with in the Western world. 

I think embodied math is not just significant in the history of mathematics, but arguable essential. This paper gives an example of a group of people using a mathematical style of thinking and problem solving to address and issue they were facing as a people group: how to navigate the islands by sea. The vast majority of mathematical discoveries and ideas have been generated by people encountering a problem they faced and coming up with a solution for that problem. 

Often when math is taught, it is disconnected and abstract. I think this makes it difficult to grasp initially and finding ways to embody math will hopefully help with understanding the concepts more deeply as well as understanding the significance of the concepts students are learning. A brief example of this might be in a slope/rate of change unit, having students walk up different slopes or roll objects down different slopes before learning how to calculate the more abstract slope formula in a later class. 


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