Cultural Development of Mathematical Ideas: Papua New Guinea Studies, by Geoffrey Saxe

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Notes

¹ Geoffrey Saxe acknowledges the assistance of Indigo Esmonde on the title page of this book. Some of the material was adapted from previous publications with her (Saxe & Esmonde, 2005a, 2005b). She also assisted in data collection in the field with Saxe in 2001.

² The chapter by Cole and Hatano (2007) focused on three kinds of change, phylogeny, cultural history (sociogenesis), and ontogenesis, but they mentioned microgenesis. This book mentions phylogeny at the end but focuses on the other three types of change.

³ The figure that he designed to display this counting practice has often appeared in textbooks that discuss cultural differences in indigenous mathematics. In this book, new versions of this figure appear that show how innovations were introduced by individuals or cohorts.

⁴ See Hatano (2005) for a critical review of these intersecting genetic analyses and Saxe and Esmonde (2005b) for a response.

⁵ As cash employment increased in the area in 2001, more families could afford to send their children to school. This unfortunately resulted in overcrowding in the community school. The third-grade teacher was responsible for 91 students who were taught in two different half-day sessions.

⁶ Interested readers will notice that the debate between Sfard and Saxe reported in this special issue in 2005 is continued in this book’s preface.