The Ndebele indigenous games pertinent to primary school mathematics learning: why indigenous games are a vital tool for mathematics teaching and learning.

Abstract

The South African education system has for a very long time left out African students ' cultural backgrounds by completely adopting western ideals. It has contributed to learners from indigenous cultural contexts struggling to find the connection between home experiences and school education. Since South Africa’s teaching of mathematics is not embedded in the pupil culture, learning and teaching have contributed to the major mathematical failure. Ethnomathematics as a component of Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS) will promote the teaching and learning of various principles and ideas in mathematics that are practiced by different cultures. The AmaNdebele people of South Africa have very much weaved and eternal cultural activities that contain complex and varied mathematical ideas and concepts. Therefore, such cultural practices should be part of teaching and learning mathematics. Based on observation and the researcher's experience as a Ndebele, the study discusses how the Ndebele indigenous games played over the centuries can be used in primary school mathematics classes. Document analysis was also used to evaluate policy frameworks, which support the integration of indigenous knowledge into the curriculum. The results of this study indicate that indigenous games played by AmaNdebele have mathematical ideas and principles that can be incorporated into the teaching and learning of mathematics. Incorporating indigenous knowledge into teaching approaches in rural areas assists learners with seeing that mathematical ideas and principles are not isolated, but have a clear connection with their daily lives, cultural context, and worthwhile learning in this manner. Concerning indigenous knowledge systems, this study recommends integrating IKS into the curriculum to relate and interlink the taught content with the learners' cultural background.