Connecting culture to geometry - problem based learning across subjects

Symbols are used to visualise and understand abstract mathematical concepts. According to Duval (1999), visualisations are the core of understanding mathematics and creating a visualisation involves reasoning and construction. This is also common in culture, for example, in religions where internalisation and externalisation are used for reflection (Vicini, 2017) that might be a visualisation such as geometric art. We want to create learning situations for problem based learning useful for various subjects (i.e., mathematics, history, culture, arts) in primary school based on geometrical shapes. Geometrical shapes are among symbols used in human beliefs (e.g., the cross in Christianity, the star of David in Judaism or the wheel of law in Buddhism) and can be found on buildings and several school books. Visualisations, e.g. in Islam, can be based on polygons, stars or rosettas (Abdullahi & Embi, 2013). Lesson plans combining cultural subjects such as history or art with mathematics are not common, but we believe there is a visible connection with geometric art. Therefore, we aim to find out whether teachers from subjects with a cultural background are interested in such lesson plans and which attributes they should have to combine the subject, geometry and technology in a maker-centred learning experience (Michael & Jones, 2020). We plan on a qualitative approach, first introducing an activity and then interviewing primary school children and their teachers for their perceptions and learnings. For a first orientation of attributes and teacher needs, we created an activity to develop bookmarks in 2D and 3D using chequered paper and the 3D modelling software TinkerCAD for over 50 primary school students. The lesson plan and comments of the student's teachers hinting towards attributes will be presented, and future steps will be discussed