Mathematics education for STEM as place

We contend that the earth, or more broadly creation (including the waters on the earth, the plants, the animals, indeed the entire cosmos) can serve as teacher. Consequently, in what follows we ask ourselves, “What does creation tell us about the research we plan to undertake?” In this question we, a collective of Indigenous and non-Indigenous authors, are following Indigenous tradition by beginning with creation.

A common theme in creation stories is the problem of humankind: how are human beings to be integrated into creation? The world is fine on its own, if perhaps a little boring, without humans. The appearance of humans starts the story, and immediately the rest of creation makes room, space, a place for humans. In the Haudenosaunee Creation Story, Skywoman is falling too quickly to earth from Sky World, so the geese intercept her to lower her gently. The animals prepare a space for her to land on the back of a turtle because she could not survive in the sea. She is an outsider, ill-equipped for life on earth without the assistance of the birds, the animals, the plants, and the sea creatures. The Haudenosaunee Creation Story is largely the story of creation kindly integrating humans into the world.

Métis Elder Elmer Ghostkeeper (2007) reminds us that we humans “are 70% air, water and heat—the same as the land” (Ghostkeeper as quoted in Surkan, 2018, para. 5). While this scientific fact should come as no surprise, in many ways the deeper meaning of Ghostkeeper’s point—that we are of the land, of place, and ultimately of earth has all but disappeared from our collective consciousness. More invisible are the self-similar ways which our human bodies, as microcosms, mirror earth as alive. Streams, tributaries, and rivers move through the land distributing water to sustain life on earth. Vessels, arteries, and the circulatory system do the same for the blood that courses through our bodies, carrying what we need to stay alive. Such is true for all patterns, whether atmospheric (e.g., weather), geologic (e.g., formations of earth), biologic (e.g., neural, digestive), spiritual, mental, emotional, linguistic, or physical (e.g., relationship with land). Each and together they form the pulse of the planet, creating and sustaining all life as earth breathes and gives breath (i.e., from Latin spirare and spiritus; and Salmón, 2000). Most fundamental and profound then is not only are we of the land, of place, and of earth, but our very ways of being (alive) are as well.

That perspective makes clear that there is little sense in assuming as humans we can know or act or be without place, land, earth. While distinct, any and all forms of knowing, doing, and being arise and are inseparable from the land, of place, and of earth. Such understanding and enaction involves more than simply focusing on component parts but instead calls for complex ways of inquiring into how such patterns of life cohere knowing, doing, and being fluidly as integrated and interacting wholes with land, place, and earth (e.g., Basso, 1996; Borrows, 2018; Maturana & Varela, 1992; Varela et al., 1991). The same then goes for knowing, doing, and being within mathematics, education, and STEM.

Immediately questions arise concerning how we all might live with, rather than on (Ghostkeeper, 2007), place/land/earth. These questions enable understanding mathematics, education, and STEM in ways that are more than and different from what we have today. Rather than a static collection of resources waiting to be had by humans, what emergent possibilities for place and nature come from knowing that the world in which we live, including our urban sidewalks and storm drains, is a world shared in common with all else––the air, animals, plants, ground, and water?

In this paper we explore core ideas inherent to Indigenous and ecological perspectives and describe how they allow for conceptualization of STEM as place. Using examples of place and land, we illustrate for readers how such a conception contrasts with current calls and goals for STEM education. Revealed throughout the discussion is the importance of earth as place and how this focus is vital to understanding STEM as place. We contend that comprehending STEM as place renews potential for success to be defined “as the continuity of life” (Benyus, 2016); that is, all that concerns the natural world, including human wellbeing in general, and in particular, mathematics and mathematics education. To conclude, we offer research directions to study mathematics and mathematics education for STEM as place, including possible implications and pathways for such work.

We now narrow our focus to the lands most familiar to us and eventually narrow briefly to ourselves, which is what we know best, and serves as another starting point in Indigenous ways of knowing. We then gradually extend our discourse, in the end attempting to find a thread connecting ourselves with the world around us, and hence to all of creation. Together, we authors acknowledge our humility in relation to earth, land, and place. Our Indigenous and non Indigenous ancestors were taught by earth as they learned to live with earth. As is tradition we acknowledge the lands on which we write and nourish our collaborations across what is now Canada. These include the lands of the Indigenous peoples of the Six Nations/Yayak Nikahwentsyake (Doolittle, Ontario), Buffalo Lake Métis Settlement (Elder Ghostkeeper, Alberta), Cree, Blackfoot, Dene, Métis, Nakota Sioux, Iroquois, and Saulteaux/Ojibway/Anishinaabe Nations (Glanfield, Edmonton), Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations (Nicol, Vancouver), and the Songhees, Esquimalt and WSÁNEC Nations (Thom, Victoria) (see Native Land 2018). We each have been formally educated within systems that focused on human intelligence and through our conversations we are learning to respect lessons from place, land, and earth, humbly recognizing more-than-human intelligences and learning to live good lives.

Here we explore research that roots our conceptualization of STEM as place. We examine the goals and purposes of STEM and integrated STEM education, noting that for the most part these, as framed in economic terms, emphasize the need for countries to establish and sustain a competitive edge in a global economy. From that perspective, success of mathematics in STEM education is measured more in terms of monetary prosperity, accumulated wealth, and abundance of material resources. To contrast that view of mathematics in STEM education we present critiques of STEM education from critical, ethnomathematical, ecological, and Indigenous perspectives. Here we discuss various frameworks, explicating importance of place, land, and human and other-than-human intelligences inherent in them and thus, a way of unfolding our conceptualization of mathematics education for STEM as place.

3.1 STEM and integrated STEM education

Around the globe, international interest in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) fields and STEM education continues to rise. Many countries worldwide have developed educational policies to create STEM-literate workforces and grow talent to support economic agendas, international competitiveness, and innovation (Johnson et al., 2020; Li et al., 2020; Sharma & Yarlagadda, 2018; UK HM Government, 2017). At the same time there is increased interest in preparing students for a technologically driven future. Skills that include problem solving, innovation, collaboration, and critical reasoning are being viewed as twenty-first century skills necessary for future knowledge economies (Hobbs et al., 2019; Honey et al., 2014). Internationally, STEM and twenty-first century skills are positioned “as the salvation for problems facing society and governments” (Gough, 2015, p. 445). However, for what other purposes and in what ways might STEM education be conceptualized and valued? What alternatives are there to only solving problems for the sake of efficacy and employability?

The integration of STEM disciplines within real-world contexts provides one possibility for STEM education (Vasquez et al., 2017). Most applications of STEM to real-world problems are interdisciplinary in nature and require twenty-first century skills. It is not surprising then that educational approaches to integrated STEM afford opportunities for students to develop disciplinary knowledge through contexts that engage critical problem solving, technological innovation, and team collaboration (Hobbs et al., 2019; Maass et al., 2019). Although an emerging field, researchers are gaining greater understanding of the content and competencies students learn through interdisciplinary STEM contexts including students’ experiences of constructing model bridges (English, 2017), wire circuits (Wendell et al., 2017), and gear systems (Deis & Julius, 2017).

Critiques of STEM education, including the mathematics in STEM, draw attention to issues of equity, power, access, social justice, decolonization, and Indigenization (Barwell, 2018; Bowers, 2016; Cole & O’Riley, 2020; Kawagley, 2006; Skovsmose, 2021; Wolfmeyer et al., 2017). For instance, critical mathematics education researchers have examined the power of mathematics to format our actions (Skovsmose, 2021) and the potential of mathematics for preparing students to respond to challenging issues in STEM contexts such as global climate change (Barwell, 2018). To address inequities and increase access to STEM fields for historically underrepresented students, ethnomathematics educators are looking to integrated STEM education as an approach to develop mathematical competencies in students’ own communities. Included in this are researchers exploring how STEM and ethnomathematics education together provide opportunities for curriculum that builds upon students’ personal, cultural, and community knowledge (Rosa & Orey, 2018), use ancestral engineering to develop innovative technological resources relevant to local community (Furuto, 2014), or draw upon ethnomodelling to reveal mathematical practices of particular social and cultural groups (Orey et al., 2020). Others such as Eglash et al. (2020) research with Indigenous communities to create generative STEM opportunities. Rather than reifying traditional practices, Eglash proposes generative STEM designed to enable youth to move between community practices and computer modeling in ways that generate new community STEM innovations.

Differently, from ecological and Indigenous perspectives, mathematics educators are researching approaches to STEM education that extend beyond human capital to include relationships that involve the more-than-human (Abram, 1996) and natural world (Wolfmeyer et al., 2018). Indigenous scholars such as Tewa Gregory Cajete (1999, 2004) and Métis Elder Elmer Ghostkeeper (2007) emphasize relationships with land as an alternative to living in ways that support extractive economies, destroy ecosystems, and disrupt relationships with land. Other researchers advocate for how mathematics and STEM education can reconnect humans ecologically through place and multispecies freedom as opposed to reproducing logics of oppression, economics, and colonialism (Bang & Marin, 2015; Cajete, 2004; Khan, 2020; Wolfmeyer et al., 2018). Across all these works is mathematician Francis Su’s question: “How can the deeply human themes that drive us to do mathematics be channeled to build a more beautiful and just world in which all [human and more-than-human] can truly flourish?” (2017, p. 489).

Creation from “the natural world, therefore, is not … of wonder, but of familiarity … [where] plants, animals, humans, stones, the land, all share the same breath” (Salmón, 2000, p. 1328).

Rarámuri Indigenous anthropologist Enrique Salmón writes of how Indigenous people worldwide share the view that they could not have ‘emerged’ in the world without the aid of relatives, the kin of an extended ecological family of animals, plants, and land. The Rarámuri of Chihuahua Mexico owe their emergence to ears of corn following a great flood (Salmón, 2000). The Haida of the Pacific Northwest speak of humans coming out of the ocean, some emerging from a giant clamshell (Gwaaganad Brown, 2009, cited in Haida Marine Traditional Knowledge Study, 2011, p. 23).

Our review of the literature identifies and examines potentialities as well as problematic issues of mathematics in STEM education for local and global economies, human needs, and the importance of place and land. Although critical, social justice, and ethnomathematical research offer possible contexts for mathematics education within STEM, our research draws upon, and is situated within, ecological and Indigenous perspectives to conceptualize mathematics education for STEM as place. To be clear, our work does not seek to reveal mathematics in particular cultural practices (Eglash et al., 2011) or create computational modeling of Indigenous knowledge traditions (Eglash et al., 2020); nor does it explore pedagogical strategies for teaching mathematics in STEM through social or community issues (Gutstein, 2016) or privilege colonial over Indigenous logics in understanding historical and current events (Diamond, 2005). Instead, we begin with place/land/earth to imagine or (re)member mathematical ways of being with STEM that arise in nature. Given the global challenges that hinge upon human involvement with the natural world, we offer a conceptualization and framework of STEM as place which could support the (re)membering of alternative ways to live—remembering that we are of place/land/earth.

To introduce our conceptualization of STEM as place we draw upon Indigenous and ecological philosophies to explore how place, land and earth can facilitate a more wholistic inquiry. Specifically, the potential that metanarratives from Indigenous and ecological philosophies hold for considering current global challenges such as human rights, climate change and forced displacement, colonial logics, and reconciliation.

3.2 Place and land

In creation we find the origins of mathematics and STEM in general. We also find the origin of the earth, the land, all the places that form our world. One way to understand the connections between science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and place, land, and earth is to go back to their common origin, the earliest moments of creation, and follow the thread from there.^{Footnote 1} However, we must understand that finding a common origin does not require us to go back in time, which can implicitly bring the suspect notion of “progress” into our thinking; we can also think about bringing peoples and customs, which have been long separated, together.

Place matters to people. We often talk about being from a particular place, or even of a particular place. We story places and produce knowledge in places. Place can be local or global, and more than a physical location or context or container, and more than the surface upon which events happen. All experience is placed, and as philosopher Edward Casey notes, “we are surrounded by places … We live in places, relate to others in them, die in them. Nothing we do is unplaced. How could it be otherwise?” (Casey, 1997, p. ix). Place can be understood as a foundational social and geographical construct.

Further still, place as understood and enacted within Indigenous and ecological perspectives constitutes identity and relationship, and is fundamental to the very nature of Indigeneity. For Indigenous people it is their association with a particular place that makes them Indigenous. Glen Coulthard of the Yellowknives Dene Nation emphasizes this through referencing the ontological importance of place for Indigenous peoples as more than a material resource. In this way Coulthard (2010) refers to “place [as] a way of knowing, experiencing and relating with the world” (p. 79). This view involves understanding place in relation with other places where nature and culture are neither separate nor distinct realms (e.g., Basso, 1996; Bowers, 2001; Cajete, 2004; Kawagley, 2006,; Styres, 2017). Cajete (2004) expressed this noting that all knowledge, especially Indigenous knowledge, is intimately connected to place. Every culture, posits Cajete (2020), has a deep understanding of a science (and mathematics) of place, where all knowledge is related to the creation and perpetuation of the natural world. For humans “as co-creators with nature, everything we do and experience has importance to the rest of the world” (Cajete, 2004, p. 52).

Many Indigenous scholars and educators use place and land interchangeably (Cajete, 1999, 2020; Coulthard, 2010; Tuck & McKenzie, 2015) to articulate and emphasize the power of place for intimate located knowing that is interrelated and interdependent. Writing about power and place, Indigenous scholars Deloria Jr. and Wildcat (2001), emphasize how embodied knowledges are spiritually and culturally connected to the places or lands experienced. In contrast, Kanien’kehá:ka Indigenous scholar Sandra Styres (2017) uses the concept land to refer to the physical geographic place that includes the landscape, environment, and ecology. However, Styres also differentiates between land (lower case l), and the concept Land (capital L) which extends the physical understanding to include how Land “is also conceptual, experiential, relational, and embodied” and sentient (p. 48–49). For other Indigenous scholars and ecological educators referencing land rather than place emphasizes the needed challenge to colonial logics which posit humans and the natural world as mutually exclusive and privilege human control over all else (Burkhart, 2019; Simpson, 2017).

3.3 Land and earth

In stark contrast to conceptualizing place as a fixed geographic setting, Indigenous and ecological scholars as well as educators have also viewed the world as land and earth, as being animate and alive with agency (Abram, 1996, 2010; Cajete, 2004; Kimmerer, 2017). As such, land and earth is recognized as first teacher (Benyus, 1997; Cajete, 1999; Ghostkeeper, 2007; Kimmerer, 2013; Simpson, 2017). Land as pedagogy, for Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg scholar Leanne Betasamosake Simpson (2017), means land is both context and process—that is, learning involves learning from land and with land. Land as pedagogy also highlights Indigenous languages, economies, and philosophies as rooted and storied in land. In these manners, “resources for better relating to our environment are all around us, in our language and ecologies” (Borrows, 2018, p. 51). And, in the words of Winona LaDuke (1999), with land as first teacher “leadership and direction emerge from the land up” (p. 4), while Indigenous laws are written on the land (Borrows, 2018; Collison, 2018).

Viewing Land as first teacher assumes listening to earth’s wisdom, knowledge, and subtleties (Cajete, 2004). Ghostkeeper (2007) explores these ideas further in his book Spirit Gifting where he shares his story of reclaiming and revitalizing relationships with Mother Earth. Through a process of self-actualization Ghostkeeper transforms his way of living off land; that is, living in ways that support extractive economies, damage ecosystems, destroy relationships with Mother Earth, and undermine the continuity of life, to living with land for rebuilding reciprocal relationships with Mother Earth as mutual reciprocity. Ghostkeeper (2007) writes that he “was taught to respect land, plants, and animals because we were created with all the same aspects, adapted to live in the same environment, and were equal as gifts to one another” (p. 53). This kind of extended relationship with land and Mother Earth is what Salmón calls kincentric ecology, in which life with earth is only possible “when humans view the life surrounding them as kin” (2000, p. 1332).

Here we take up the call: “What does it mean to think of land as a source of knowledge and understanding?” (Wildcat & Irlbacher-Fox, 2014, p.2).

3.4 Intelligence as more-than-human

Intelligence is generally defined as the ability to think, learn from experience, solve problems, and adapt when faced with new circumstances, as well, more often than not, intelligence is also assumed to be exclusively a human trait. Yet ecological and Indigenous perspectives (e.g., Abram, 1996, 2010, 2011; Armstrong, 1998; Ishizawa & Rengifo, 2011; Thom, 2019) consider intelligence not only as what it means to be human but as inherently characteristic of earth.

Core to this discussion is the work of Chet Bowers and his questioning of and exposing limitations regarding taken for granted and enacted euro- and anthropocentric assumptions about intelligence in education (e.g., Bowers, 2001, 2009, 2016). Viewing the world as interrelated and interacting wholes, Bowers (2010) draws on the conceptual ideas of Bateson (1972), Berger and Luckman (1966), as well as many Indigenous scholars (e.g., Lawlor, 1991; Shiva, 1996; Vasquez, 1998). Bowers asserts that in the same way that mind cannot be located in one part of an ecology but is immanent throughout, intelligence cannot be attributable to any one individual or considered unique to the human species. This conception aligns with that of biologist Richard Lewontin (2000), whose research focused on the continuous co-transformation of organisms with their environments. Lewontin elucidates: “Just as there can be no organism without an environment, so there can be no environment without an organism” (p. 48). Moreover, Bowers (2011) argues that nature “process[es] information in ways that are often beyond what humans can understand or replicate. [And, w]hat the dominant Western epistemology fails to understand is that the natural environment is not reducible to matter and blind forces” (p. 315).

Intelligence understood as an offshoot of cognition writ large arises and results from the very processes of life and living itself (Maturana & Varela, 1992).

3.5 More-than-human intelligences

Increasingly researchers observe capabilities associated with intelligence, such as problem solving, innovation, design, and collaboration, as not solely human attributes or breakthroughs. Rather, they are what earth has been doing for the past 3.8 billion years.

These intelligences are everywhere. Below the ground in the mycelial network which all trees form to facilitate nutrient, carbon, water exchange, and for defense signaling (Bingham & Simard, 2012; Kimmerer, 2013; Simard, 2021). On lakes and ponds the lotus leaves with their rough texture trap air, creating a waterproof cushion that causes water droplets to form spheres which bounce and roll off, taking surface debris with them (Benyus, 2016). Marvelously, this is even true for the feathers of the peacock. The stunning iridescent hues of blue, green, and gold we see are not produced with pigment but simply with how white light plays brilliantly upon the layered surface of the bird’s brown feathers, bending, refracting, and amplifying (Benyus, 2016).

And under the ocean are the corals. Carrying forth 25 million years’ worth of evolution and 6000 species large, they are among earth’s greatest architects and architectures. Simultaneously creators and massive land structures, corals shape and protect the shorelines of continents around the globe (National Geographic, 2019; United States Environmental Protection Agency, 2018). Not only do they produce beautiful patterns and incredibly strong structures, corals, whether alive or dead, are constantly creating environments conducive to life; not only for themselves, but for thousands of plant and animal species including humans. And they accomplish these tremendous feats while occupying less than one percent of earth’s total surface and less than two percent of the ocean floor.

What is striking about each one of those designs and innovations is that none of them require destructive means such as extreme heat, extraction, or toxic chemicals to achieve their ends. Instead, these earth-centric-more-than-human intelligences demonstrate local expertise; understanding the constraints and opportunities where they live; reliance on diversity; benefits or rewards of cooperation; and an integrity that comes with upcycling everything, wasting nothing, and never doing harm to themselves or their home in the process (Benyus, 2016).

Thus, turning to earth as mentor and teacher leads to a conceptualization of STEM as place in which the problem solving, innovation, design and collaboration associated with integrated STEM education arise as more-than-human forms of intelligence. In contrast to current calls and goals for STEM, these more-than-human forms of intelligence reflect practices conducive to life as place. “STEM as place inspires collaboration beyond human worlds, moving us towards being in the world in new ways, a kind of mutual flourishing and recognition of interdependence” (Nicol et al., 2023).

Currently, there is growing interest and efforts to identify and examine problematic issues as well as potentialities for integrated approaches to STEM education, including how mathematics contributes to integrated STEM (Honey et al., 2014; Hobbs et al., 2019; Vasquez et al., 2017). And more than ever, the events we face today, locally and worldwide—from COVID-19, to human rights movements, to increasing climate change—demand new perspectives and research. These signal a recalibration of STEM education to not only meet ongoing needs, purposes, and innovations in science and technology focused on STEM but also to meet the needs of our ever-changing society. So, while education as both process and institution of society “appear[s] to be under great strain— possibly approaching [a] breaking [point]” (Policy Horizons Canada, 2019, p. 10), the ever-mounting tension could also be recognized as a tremendous opportunity for mathematics education research.

What if we took seriously biologist, educator and cofounder of the Biomimicry Institute Janine Benyus’ assertion that:

The answers we [humans] seek… are literally all around us.... In the natural world, the definition of success is the continuity of life. The best ideas might not be ours [humans’]. They might have already been invented [by the natural world]” (Benyus, 2016, rearranged).

Benyus’ assertion clearly coheres with the Indigenous and ecological perspectives that have been examined and discussed in this paper. At the same time, it locates STEM as place for the innovation of ideas, meanings, and purposes, including possibilities for mathematics education. Worth noting is that doing so does not entail simply looking to nature but inherently committing to and engaging with earth. Emphasizing STEM as place and earth as teacher prompts further questions such as: In what ways can (re)visioning and (re)generating mathematics education as educating mathematics for STEM as place contribute to humans learning to live with earth in ways that are more and different? How can these ways give rise to broader and deeper understandings of integrated STEM education? Such questions open opportunities to (re)consider the very manners in which we as mathematics educators know, act, and are within the world. In relation to these opportunities the questions also prompt further exploration of important ethical, methodological, pedagogical, and mathematical implications.

4.1 Ethical relations

What are practices that enable relationships with land and ways of being mathematical that can advance research directions to facilitate mathematics education for STEM as place? Given that conceptualizing STEM as place can foster living with earth for the long haul, any and all understanding necessitates awareness and abiding care for all relations between humans and earth as animate being. Also inherent is a deep sense of humility and gratitude to earth (Abram, 2011; Borrows, 2018). Thus, enacting mathematics in ways that are conducive to life entails continuously (re)membering “how it feels to have equal standing in the world,” to be, as Benyus (1997) stated quoting environmental activist Iroquois Chief Oren Lyons, “between the mountain and the ant … part and parcel of creation” (p. 288). Perhaps these kinds of knowing, acting, and being mathematical can engender a valuing of equal standing and reverence for the more-than-human world as intelligent being.

With a focus on ethical relations, research involving mathematics education for STEM as place and with earth as teacher highlight the importance of how we humans interact with earth, as well as double binds that can manifest when intentions conflict with one another such as the enclosure of the commons and eco-democracy (Bowers, 2009). These queries take on greater and different meanings when the ‘who’ is not only humans but also nature. Importantly, it increases the circle of “all” in Bashan and co-authors’ (2010) STEM for All and extends Su’s (2017) call of mathematics for human flourishing to include human as well as more-than-human species. Consider, for example, the movements by Indigenous peoples to have colonial governments recognize Indigenous law and rights of nature. In Canada, the Muteshekau Shipu (Magpie River), running 300 km in Quebec, with threats of hydroelectric dam development, has new legal rights of personhood (Townsend et al., 2021). The river as relative, its banks, and life within, now has the right to be a river, to flow, and to be healthy rather than be exploited for human benefit and profit.

Further, the damming of rivers worldwide and consequent habitat degradation, overfishing, water pollution, and changes in flow and temperature, compels asking “how [we humans might begin to] hear those many voices that do not speak in words” (Abram, 2011, p. 16). Consider the practice of Indigenous Heiltsuk peoples who have used the lessons of earth for generations to build and operate fishing weirs on the central west coast of Canada. Here weighted cedar fences span the river and gently guide salmon to holding areas for observation. Counts reflect the general health of the fish as well as how many can be taken without harming future progeny. Making sure there are enough salmon for the grizzly bears to remain well-nourished also helps to prevent human-bear encounters. As well, salmon carcasses which are spread throughout the forest by resident bears distribute nutrients and in doing so, contribute to the continued health of the trees, river, and banks (Henson et al., 2021). The geometry of the fish weirs guiding the salmon, and the counting and proportioning, are examples of ways of being mathematical while maintaining ethical relations with our companions in creation.

4.2 Methodological

One creation metanarrative we shall discuss is the structure of the stories themselves. Discourse in oral tradition is often structured as a memory aid to the storyteller. For example, the Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address is structured from the earth upward in sequence to the heavens, to help remember and give thanks to all of creation (with the notable exception of the people, who are mentioned first in the Thanksgiving Address). The Haudenosaunee Creation Story is structured around numbers:

Porter [2008] explained that the act of counting from 1 to 10 is the same as recounting the Creation Story. One is attributed to Skywoman, two for the twins, three for the middle of the turtle’s back, four for the human beings, five for the mischievous brother, six for when the original woman crossed over to the Earth, seven for the power of the sacredness of the human body, eight for the balance between two sides, nine for the way it was, and ten for the proper and the correct way. Parts of the story are encoded in the language itself. (Borgia-Askey, 2020, p. 31)

Inspirited (Aoki, 1991) by the creation story, what kinds of research approaches promote kincentric relationship building through learning from earth with STEM as place?

Stó:lō scholar Jo-ann Archibald Q’um Q’um Xiiem’s principles of Indigenous storywork—Respect, Reciprocity, Responsibility, and Reverence are essential to becoming “storywork ready” and in developing respectful and responsive research (Archibald et al., 2019). The principles open opportunities to deepen and broaden research approaches to integrated STEM education. For example, learning how to listen as well as learn from STEM knowledge/wisdom keepers could teach researchers more respectful and reciprocal ways to attend to each other’s stories and their local contexts. Research guided by such principles could strengthen relations between humans, mathematics, STEM, and place generatively in ways that provide benefits for all.

A second alternative to guide research draws on the work of Kanien'kehá:ka Mohawk scholar Sandra Styres. Styres’ fluid land-centric framework features elements of Vision (re)centring, Relationships (re)membering, Knowledge (re)cognizing, and Action (re)generating. Vision-(re)centring involves imagining possibilities and “opportunities for deep and profound insight and introspection as we explore and examine the ways we engage with the natural, spiritual, and built worlds” (Styres, 2017, p. 5). Through Relationships-(re)membering opens the possibility of decentring humans’ asymmetrical use of place as this relates to integrated STEM education. Land is alive with stories (Armstrong, 1998; Simpson, 2017) and thus, contrasts with settler-colonial understandings of place as objects for human ownership, commodity, and exploitation. Styres’ third element, Knowledge-(re)cognizing, emphasizes opportunities to explore knowledge sources and perspectives within geographical, linguistic and culturally diverse settings. This element allows for awareness that knowledge can be storied, contextualized, and developed through live(d) experiences. And it is with the places we inhabit that language and land come together (Basso, 1996; Borrows, 2018; Glanfield et al., 2020; Kimmerer, 2017). While the fourth element of Styres’ framework, Action-(re)generating could facilitate actualizing the Vision—(re)visioning mathematics education for STEM as place. Thus, Vision, Relationship, Knowledge, and Action have potential to enable (re)centering engagement with land; (re)membering community and inter-species relationships; and (re)cognizing land and language as connected through (re)generating mathematics education in ways that are more and different.

Potential research directions for integrated STEM education through theorizing mathematics education for STEM as place include exploring ways that STEM knowledge/wisdom keepers re(member) humans as an interdependent part of the natural world; examining principles needed to develop meanings, purposes, and approaches to mathematics education for STEM as place; designing approaches that provide opportunities for understanding the earth as teacher and the interdependence between humans and the natural world; and exploring new ideas, meanings, and purposes emerging for humans learning to live with earth in ways that are more and different if mathematics education is (re)visioned and (re)generated as mathematics education for STEM as place. We anticipate such directions to generate radically different perspectives concerning how mathematics education and STEM education can contribute to humans learning to live with earth in ways that enable mutual creativity and flourishing, towards a different future (Gutiérrez, 2022).

4.3 Pedagogical

One way we teach and learn about creation is through creation stories, such as the Haudenosaunee creation story recounted in part by Robin Wall Kimmerer.

The numbers we use to count plants in the sweetgrass meadow also recall the Creation Story. Én:ska—one. This word invokes the fall of Skywoman from the world above. All alone, én:ska, she fell toward the earth. But she was not alone, for in her womb a second life was growing. Tékeni—there were two. Skywoman gave birth to a daughter, who bore twin sons and so then there were three— áhsen. Every time the Haudenosaunee count to three in their own language, they reaffirm their bond to Creation (Kimmerer, 2013, pp. 258–259).

In the story, mathematics, as with all else, originated with creation. The abstract mathematical notion of “being one” is a part of creation from its earliest moments. Later in the creation story, the creation of the earth is accompanied by further mathematical notions: the periodic beat of the waves on the shore; the arrangement of events in a particular order in time; the crystalline structures of minerals; and then, after the creation of humans, the structures and rules by which we live.

The educational value of creation stories is another metanarrative. The stories can be used to teach about the many birds, animals, plants, and sea creatures in our world. The stories can be used to teach mathematical concepts such as number words and sequence. The Haudenosaunee creation story teaches about games such as lacrosse and the Peach Stone Bowl Game and their rules (Doolittle, 2006).

Earth as teacher is not a typical teacher for most humans. As humans we tend to listen more to ourselves and each other than to the animals and plants who are breathing the same air as us, drinking the same rainwater, and sometimes sharing the same meals. Thus, a research direction that could (re)vision and (re)generate mathematics and integrated STEM education requires pedagogical consideration in order to value rethinking our current, often destructive and unsustainable ways of living. Turning to earth as teacher and extending the concept of family, of kinship, to the more-than-human and to place will be necessary for an education that can meet the ongoing needs, purposes and innovations in STEM (e.g., biomedical advances, hidden algorithms, smart buildings, the digital economy) and our ever-changing society (e.g., Truth and Reconciliation in countries such as Canada and South Africa, labour markets, physical and mental wellbeing). Opening ourselves up to earth as mentor leads us to reconnect with place, to learn with land, and to recognize the genius of nature (Benyus, 1997).

Kimmerer (2013) eloquently tells of learning from mosses, ancient species that have lived on land for 450 million years. Mosses, contends Kimmerer, have the potential to show humans another way to live. Rather than defining success as relentless growth using the economic principle of scarcity and competition, mosses suggest a different economic output, that of cooperation and shared wealth (Kimmerer, 2013). Instead of competing for water, mosses are designed for equitable sharing where, as a community, they are more successful in collecting and trapping moisture, with their curved shapes working together rather than as individual shoots. Mosses teach us, even remind us, about the mutual benefits of cooperation that extend beyond the individual and of self-restraint by learning to live within natural limits.

Turning to the mathematics classroom we consider pedagogical possibilities arising while embracing earth as teacher, STEM as place. Although we are conceptually and theoretically developing STEM as place as a methodology and pedagogy for making sense of human and more-than-human relations in the natural world, we can offer and even imagine possibilities for mathematics education. Consider the mosses Kimmerer (2013) writes of or the Crochet Coral Reef project started by Margaret and Christine Wertheim (https://crochetcoralreef.org/). Each provides opportunities for students to move beyond a world of Euclidean principles of grids and straight lines to a different geometry (Doolittle, 2018) ––one of fractals and hyperbolic space to describe shapes with fluted edges like mosses and lettuce, and the frills and curves of coral in the natural world. Studying mosses and coral with students could teach about the limitations of contemporary school mathematics and provide openings of other ways of being and doing mathematics.

Further studies could involve corals, their various structures, and how they can build reefs that weigh up to several tons. Doing so occasions opportunity for students to explore the inherent beauty of their forms while at the same time, develop a deeper understanding for how corals contribute to the continuity of earth’s ecosystems.

Learning could also focus on how corals’ reef-building process differs greatly in comparison to humans’ manufacturing of concrete which entails extracting calcium carbonate from open-pit mines, heating it to 1400 °C, and creating massive amounts of carbon dioxide as a by-product which is then released into the atmosphere. In stark contrast and without extreme heat or force, tiny corals use seawater and carbon dioxide as they secrete their skeletons of calcium carbonate (a main ingredient of cement). Other examples of student inquiries might be how scientists and manufacturers are learning from nature to make cement by sequestering carbon dioxide rather than producing it (National Geographic, 2022). While the processes are different from those of corals, such lessons could provoke students to wonder how building materials such as cement or concrete could ‘grow’ naturally as coral, shells, and bones. These kincentric manners of understanding STEM radically as rooted in place, would enable “our eyes… to [see] the sustainable world that already exists, embodied in plants, animals, and other organisms all around us” (Biomimicry Institute, 2017, p. 3).

We see potential for pedagogies of mathematics education for STEM as place that expand STEM education to learn with nature, where land is teacher and classroom. More holistic curricular activities beyond human-centric conceptualizations of STEM can be found in works grounded in Indigenous and ecological perspectives (Cajete, 1999; Kawagley, 2006; Kimmerer, 2013; Marin & Bang, 2018). Not only do these examples of STEM classroom activities embrace STEM as part of the natural world, but they also provide opportunities for students to appreciate the complexity of place, humans’ interconnection within it, and ways of being in relation with the more-than-human world.

4.4 Mathematical

Moving from pedagogical to mathematical considerations: What kinds of mathematics and mathematical ways of being are necessary for reconceptualizing integrated STEM and of mathematics education in ways that support life that is conducive to life? Which mathematics could shift our attention from learning about nature to learning from nature, or as Ghostkeeper (2007) says learning with land? More specifically, what mathematical knowledges, skills, and capabilities for STEM can we learn from understanding the mycorrhizal fungi that branch through soil like “blood vessels through flesh” and absorb over 5 billion tons of carbon from plants each year (Sengupta, 2022; Sheldrake, 2021). Fungi need carbon to grow, and in a symbiotic relationship with plants, they reciprocate by in turn providing trees with nutrients from the soil. They are live networks. An estimate of their total length in the top 10 cm of soil is more than 450 quadrillion km (Kiers & Sheldrake, 2021). As less a collection of individuals and more a web of interconnecting relationships, what mathematical ways of being might we learn from this entanglement of fungi and their connectivity to the forest community? What might a more fungal point of view teach us mathematically? As fungi are novel problem solvers, could there be other logics to learn as place?

Another metanarrative emerging from creation stories is that there is no canonical creation story; everyone who tells the story tells it differently. The many nations of the world have many different creation stories. None of them is wrong, even though the different stories may contradict one another, indicating that Indigenous logic differs from the classical logic (in which a proposition is either true or false, but not both) more familiar to the reader. Telling our own personal creation stories asserts our freedom and our own personal creative power; admitting that no story is wrong (and consequently that no story is right) asserts our equality and our fallibility.

Indigenous logics reflect rootedness in place, the complexity of ecology and other natural phenomena, in contrast to the stark simplicity of classical logic where each proposition is either true or false, but not both.

American Indian logics are paraconsistent logics, that is, they support the possibility of true contradictions. For many American Indian communities, true contradictions are a crucial manifestation of the belief in a nondiscrete, nonbinary world (Waters, 2004). In short, Indigenous logics are characterized by the acceptance of a principle that classical logic fundamentally rejects, making it difficult for Native Americans to make legible important ecological and political realities that classical logic fails to see. (Sinclair, 2020, p. 59)

In this paper we broadly explored a worldview that recognizes human and more-than-human intelligences from Indigenous and ecological perspectives. Our work engages with the question of how teaching and learning mathematics for STEM can arise genuinely and practically with earth as teacher. As human researchers we are committed to working in ways that respect place, land, and earth as essential to living a good life. We proposed research directions that depend upon a more-than-human world as well as a worldview that seriously considers humans’ place in creation and earth as teacher. In this way mathematics, science, technology, and engineering need not materialize as separate disciplines, but wholly integrated and arising as a result of creation; in other words, worldviews that recognize STEM as place. These research directions and worldviews align with Speth’s call for a cultural and spiritual transformation:

I used to think that top environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and climate change. I thought that thirty years of good science could address these problems. I was wrong. The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed and apathy, and to deal with these we need a cultural and spiritual transformation. And we scientists don't know how to do that (Speth as quoted in Crockett, 2014, paragraph 11).

With Speth's call we return to the creation stories shared throughout to conclude. The story of creation is largely the story of creation kindly making room for humans. Along the way we have invited readers to consider how STEM education, the research of it, and mathematics education can realize humans’ complicity in how creation ‘makes room.’ Therefore, as humans we are “co-creators with nature, everything we do and experience has importance to the rest of the world” (Cajete, 2004, p. 52).

In trying to make space for ourselves in the world as gracefully as possible, the challenge is to come to know the proper and the correct way, the good life, despite our fallibility and our freedom to err. The good life is that which integrates us with the rest of creation, including the plants and animals, the waters and the heavens, and including science and mathematics. We learn about the good life through the lessons of creation passed on to us by our stories and by earth as teacher.