Ethnomusicology, Ethnomathematics, and Integrating Curriculum

Abstract

Integrating curriculum provides rich opportunities for students to focus on relevant applications to the real world and make meaningful connections across different disciplines. This article attempts to go beyond common discourse and platitudes by offering specific examples, showing we—an ethnomusicologist and a mathematics educator—attempted to integrate music and mathematics education curriculum in a graduate mathematics education classroom, with nonmusician graduate students. In our project, we designed and taught a group of graduate mathematics education students a lesson focused on mathematics and world music percussion to explore the ways that nonmusician preservice teachers might experience and use the specific connections between mathematics and music.