This project is the result of a collaboration between Cris Edmonds-Wathen, a PhD student at RMIT University and members of the Iwaidja Inyman team on Croker Island. Cris first got to know about Iwaidja and its speakers through her work as a teacher at the Mamaruni School in Minjilang.

Her PhD project was inspired by her observations of the difficulties some students were experiencing learning Mathematics. She wondered if some of the problems resulted from a conflict between the conceptual framework which their own languages, including Iwaidja, provided, and the conceptual framework employed by their teachers.

Spatial language and thinking was chosen as an important mathematical area which was a perceived strength of the students. The project has been using tools and techniques developed by the Language and Cognition Group at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen and the Human Communication Research Centre at the University of Edinburgh.

As well as describing a previously undescribed aspect of Iwaidja, the project is producing insights and recommendations for teaching mathematics at Minjilang. The project is supported by a grant from AIATSIS.