Designing a local instructional theory to support elementary students’ numeracy through the cultural context of Melemang in Muara Enim

Abstrak

Despite the growing recognition of numeracy as a fundamental goal of mathematics education, elementary classroom instruction often remains insufficiently connected to students’ cultural experiences, thereby limiting opportunities for meaningful mathematization and the development of robust numerical reasoning. Although previous ethnomathematics studies have highlighted the educational value of cultural practices, limited research has explained how such practices can be systematically transformed into theoretically grounded learning trajectories that support the progressive development of numeracy across grade levels. Addressing this gap, this study aimed to develop a Local Instructional Theory (LIT) grounded in the Melemang tradition of Muara Enim to support elementary students’ numeracy learning through culturally meaningful mathematical activities. Employing design research, the study was conducted at SD Negeri 1 Lawang Kidul, South Sumatra, Indonesia, through three iterative phases: preliminary design, teaching experiment, and retrospective analysis. Numeracy was conceptualized as the development of number sense, fractions, and percentages, with Grade 1 activities focusing on the emergence of number sense as a foundational component of numeracy and Grade 5 activities extending students’ reasoning toward fractions and percentages. Data were collected through classroom observations, interviews, students’ written work, video recordings, and field notes. The findings indicate that the Melemang tradition provided a meaningful mathematical context through which students constructed mathematical meaning by engaging in counting, grouping, equal sharing, partitioning, measuring, and relative comparison. Students’ reasoning developed progressively from composite-unit thinking to part–whole reasoning, fraction equivalence, and percentage interpretation. The resulting LIT explains how Indonesian Realistic Mathematics Education known as PMRI-based progressive mathematization supported students’ transition from informal contextual strategies toward increasingly formal mathematical understanding, contributing a culturally grounded theoretical and instructional framework for designing meaningful numeracy learning in elementary schools.