SOAS Research Online

Abstract

During the late 1990s, the Papua New Guinean Department of Education introduced a new elementary school mathematics curriculum that utilised the country’s rich and diverse cultural traditions. The resulting changes saw patterns, one of a family of practices related to the decorative arts, take on a prominent role as a tool for understanding number, space, time, measurement, all of which form the basis of mathematics. Drawing primarily on the author’s own anthropological fieldwork, this chapter examines the culture of pattern in community life in order to understand its selection as a cultural resource for mathematics learning. It will demonstrate that while pattern is not spoken about, people are nevertheless especially adept at engaging with it. Since Papua New Guinea is full of patterns, and pattern plays such a robust role in the mathematics curriculum, the chapter demonstrates how pattern can be understood as an expression of the mathematical mind at work.