Jessica Benally is a PhD student in the Learning Sciences & Human Development program. Her research interest is the designing of materials to create a dialogic negotiation between Diné/Navajo and Western epistemology in mathematics curriculum. Looking toward rematriating mathematics education by using ethnomathematics to restructurate learning practices to include Indigenous relationality, including land-based spatial perspectives through the Diné language. Benally’s current project leverages the egocentric and allocentric perspectives in geometry education with angles. In the STARR (students tracking angular rotation) activity, participants collaborate between their perspectives to connect stars of the Náhookos Bika’/Ursa Major constellation in a constructed planetarium. Benally is from Tohatchi, New Mexico on the Navajo Nation Reservation, and she graduated with a B.S. in Applied Mathematics from the University of New Mexico.
