Investigating the Advantages of Constructing Multidigit Numeration Understanding through Oneida and Lakota Native Languages.

This paper documents a culturally specific language strength for developing number sense among Oneida- and Lakota-speaking primary students. Qualitative research methods scaffolded this research study: culture informants were interviewed and interviews were transcribed and coded for analysis; culture documents were selected for analysis; and culture informants served as consultants, validating accuracy, during the writing process. Of all U.S. ethnic groups, Native Americans have the smallest percentage of secondary and postsecondary students performing at advanced levels of mathematics. This limited participation and poor performance in mathematics can be traced to the loss of Native languages through generations of forced assimilation in boarding schools and difficulties among primary students in constructing and using multidigit concepts in English. American children in general demonstrate limited proficiency in foundational concepts of number. One reason may be that for English number-words, place-value meaning is implicit rather than explicit. In contrast, Asian languages such as Japanese and Korean explicitly name number place-values, and children that speak these languages have outperformed U.S. children in assessments of base-10 understanding. Analysis of Oneida and Lakota number-words and interviews with Oneida and Lakota speakers about the linguistic structure of number revealed that like Asian languages, Oneida and Lakota describe base-10 number quantities explicitly. Teaching Oneida and Lakota primary students in their native languages as well as English would help them to develop better number sense. Contains 31 references. Includes numbers vocabulary in Oneida and Lakota. (SV)