Dr Joël Rioux
Dr Joël Rioux has substantive mainstream experience with learning and teaching in the Montessori Method in Australia and New Zealand. For eight years, he taught Aboriginal adolescent students in Woorabinda, a small community in Central Queensland. He taught Aboriginal pre-service teachers at Batchelor Institute (NT) from 2012-2022, as part of the initial Teacher Education course. His doctoral thesis built on his experience exploring the integration of Indigenous and western knowledges and the learning experience and engagement of students in their education and learning journey. He is currently the principal of Noosa Montessori school.
28 October, Saturday
1:00pm – 2:00pm
concurrent workshops - select one
Ethnomathematics can offer keys to being a more Prepared Adult and keys to becoming a mathematically and culturally responsive pedagogue. The potential for conflating both Western (conventional) and local Indigenous mathematical perspectives is stimulating for Montessori educators because mathematics is about Reconciliation. Reconciliation in this context means to investigate the humanising of the mathematics and not only looking at the customary and predominant mathematics curriculum. The child, school, community can be part of a process of “mutual interrogations” of the different mathematics available in the schools’ region. Contextualisation to culture means using local materials. Contextualisation of mathematics aims at bringing relevance into education for Indigenous students. For non-Indigenous Montessori students, ethnomathematics brings an element of respect, reverence, of history, of mathematical humility.