Mathematics Education: For Whom?

To rethink about our role as researchers of the mathematics education pro- cess could be a way to think about the relation between for what and why mathematics education exists. Some thoughts, that grew from my inner dia- logues as a researcher, teacher, student, and mother that I am, were devel- oped within practices inside multiple systems in which I was engaged, bring- ing some questions that became a paper from the necessity for sharing them in the Discussion Group 3 of the ICME environmen

The ethnomathematics posture as a political blow: unveiling the mysticism of five rhythms present in communitarian mathematics education

In a dialectical movement, the very mysticism that operates the existing educational processes has been treated with deep mysticism in the academy. The paths that unravel this mysticism have been avoided, or even denied, both as an alibi that questions the scientific credibility of the study and as a discourse that rescues knowledge unworthy to human progress and success. To demystify, this essay presents an analysis on some research processes developed with multi-marginalized communities. The analysis begins with an overview of the bottom-up processes of human development in Europe, and opens up to research experiences both in Portugal and in Brazil, by supporting the establishment of a methodological theoretical structure that is transversal to these research experiences. An ethnomathematics posture rooted in critical ethnographic movements, and developed with a bottom-up research, promotes not only the possibility of breaking with the mysticism surrounding inter and intra-communitarian processes but also of witnessing the dance of communitarian bodies to the beat of five rhythms: cultural identity, self-governing, corporification, identification, and multicultural racism. These rhythms have revealed themselves as pivotal concepts in the development of communitarian mathematics education, and are here discussed in terms of transformation, emancipation, and civility that are objectified and conquered by means of this research, going beyond the hyper-valuation of the identity of microcommunitarism

Children, space, and the urban street: an ethnomathematics posture

Dissertation presented for the PhD Degree in Education Science – Curricular Theory and Science Teaching, by Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Faculdade de Ciências e TecnologiaThis work explores the urban experiences of marginal social lives through the mathematical epistemic regimes at the core of their survival strategies. It focuses in particular on the mathematical epistemic regimes of children in a street situation and seeks to recognize, understand, and validate forms of mathematics constructed and used outside of the established institutions of mathematical production. This work rests on the foundation of "The Mathematical Imagination",which draws together social constructionism (as it is developed in Sal Restivo's sociology of mathematics) and Ubiratan D'Ambrosio's conception of ethnomathematics. These two central ideas contribute to the objective here of connecting the production of formal mathematics and the praxis of informal mathematics, the mathematics produced at the margins where survival is more important than reflecting and reproducing professional cultures. The fact is that professional institutionalized mathematics within the contemporary mode of production has domesticated mathematical objects. Informal mathematics arises and is broadcast in the positions and voices at the margins of society and mathematics. The bringing together of marginal and non-marginal positions and voices results in and is an activist social practice. This practice represents the end of verbalism and the beginning of a situated knowledge that is engaged with our everyday lives, with our very being. Only through this form of practice, a practice that links the formal and the informal, can we realize the full power of mathematical knowledge as a social thing (in Durkheim's sense), a product of the collective consciousness that expresses collective realities and a category of knowledge present in every culture. This is as true for mathematics at the margins as it is for professional mathematics. The point of this work is to contribute to an emerging political manifesto of the marginal that demonstrates the social realities and social power of their mathematics. This is made possible through the application of social theory, and the practices of ethnography (especially in the traditions of action anthropology and the new ethnography) and history. These tools, melding science and action, help to reveal otherwise invisible and ignored cultural connections and social coherences, and in the end all is clarified and linked through a social construction guided by a concern for love and community.III Quadro Comunitário de Apoio, existing between European Social Fund and the national fund of MCTES, in the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologi

Sea-ing into humanscapes and equal liberty. The sociocultural-ecological relations into mathematics education

There are bottom-up movements imbued with different praxis into mathematics education, which promotes the combination of heterogeneous values – inserted in social participation, cultural diversity, and reconnection with the Pachamama. Such movements have been developed by collectives of thinkers constituted by members with the most diverse knowledge. Embedded in a counter-colonization resistance by a persistence of the horizontality into the educational process, this paper aims to dialogue around sociocultural-ecological connections experienced in processes of critical ethnography developed in community mathematics education of ascending movements in Brazil and Portugal. The aim is to promote a path in which an old necessity to share the human topological ontology constructed and reconstructed in five different ethnographic fields, in which both the humanscapes and the equal liberty, sea-ing in indissociable lines, evidenced the oppression of schooling mathematics knowledge over the sociocultural-ecological human relations. Such sea-ing motion is proposed as an alternative path to demystify, re-signify, or only complement, the how human being perceives itself in its surroundings and brings for the most diverse mathematics education processes – formal_informal_non-formal, the importance of the situationality of the apprentice as well as the relevance of the intellectual justice towards equitable societies

Communitarian mathematics education: walking into boundaries

In this article, we outline some of the challenges involved in the construction of a communitarian mathematics education within the realms of the Urban Boundaries Project. The Urban Boundaries Project has been innovative in the way it congregates the critical development of basic needs of three distinct communities with an Ethnomathematics Posture (MESQUITA; RESTIVO; D’AMBROSIO, 2011), where concepts such as critical participation, ethnomathematics, violence, and urban boundaries, are discussed through political philosophy. This posture allows us to share the local history of the empowerment, autonomy, and wisdom of the three communities’ situationality involved in the project, i.e., their knowledge of their political space. The local history is shared through the systematization of some content collected with critical ethnographical registration. To put it in Lacanian terms, we seek to symbolize a set of life-world experiences that have been historically neglected in mathematics education research, as well as in educational sciences more generally. As a result, this paper instigates the exploration of “disturbing” choices in the mathematical education culture

Learning mathematics and competences: Bringing together three theoretical perspectives

The symposium aims to bring into analysis and discussion a possibility of articulating and integrating theoretical concepts from Activity Theory, Situated Learning and Critical Mathematics Education in order to contribute to understanding learning in practices where mathematics and technology seem to be relevant

Observatório de Literacia Oceânica: uma postura etnomatemática na ecologia local

O Observatório de Literacia Oceânica surge enquanto laboratório de pesquisa de carácter metodológico bottom-up, em zonas costeiras da região centro de Portugal. A proposta trazida para a pesquisa assenta na práxis de ser e estar de cada ser humano – da sua situacionalidade na ecologia local. Tal proposta fundamenta-se na postura etnomatemática, em busca do comprometimento individual e coletivo com o ambiente. Neste sentido, reflete-se neste artigo sobre o papel da ciência, a sua relação com a sociedade e a relevância de encontros dialógicos entre diferentes formas de conhecimento – tradicional, local, técnico e científico, para potenciar uma jornada sustentável na ecologia local

(Des)enredando as práticas matemáticas e a geometria social da e com a comunidade piscatória

The aim of this article the mathematical practices and the social geometry of the distribution of the profit in the fishermen's community of the Arte-Xávega in Portugal. The research is carried out by combining critical ethnography with communitarian education, in two learning spaces, one belonging to the fishing community and the other to the academic community. Special emphasis will be placed on the participatory nature of the data collection processes and especially on the analysis of information. The discussion will show how mathematical practices affect and are determined by social relations within the fishing community in a process that is constantly evolving, as well as the leading role of mathematical (education) in the search for a more just and equitable society. The research contributes a grain of sand to the reflection on the implications of Ethnomathematics for mathematics (education) as an instrument of transformation of the socioeconomic reality.El propósito de este artículo es analizar las prácticas matemáticas y la geometría social de la repartición de la ganancia en una comunidad de pescadores del Arte-Xávega de Portugal. La investigación se realiza combinando la etnografía crítica con la educación comunitaria, en dos espacios de aprendizaje, uno de la comunidad pescadora y otro de la comunidad académica. Se pondrá especial énfasis en el carácter participativo de los procesos de recolección y del análisis de la información. La discusión permitirá evidenciar cómo las prácticas matemáticas inciden y, a su vez, son determinadas por las relaciones sociales dentro de la comunidad de pescadores en un proceso en continua evolución. Asimismo, se vislumbrará el rol protagónico de la (educación) matemática en la búsqueda de una sociedad más justa. La investigación aporta su granito de arena a la reflexión sobre las implicaciones de la etnomatemática para la educación matemática como instrumento de trasformación de la realidad socioeconómica.A nossa intenção é analisar as práticas matemáticas e a geometria social da distribuição nos lucros de uma comunidade piscatória da Arte-Xávega em Portugal. A investigação realiza-se combinando a etnografia crítica com a educação da comunidade, em dois espaços de aprendizagem, um pertencente à comunidade pesqueira e outro à comunidade académica. Será dada especial ênfase à natureza participativa dos processos de recolha e, em especial, de análise da informação. O debate evidenciará como as práticas matemáticas afectam e são determinadas pelas relações sociais no seio da comunidade piscatória, num processo em constante evolução, bem como o papel protagonista da matemática (educação) em busca de uma sociedade mais justa. A investigação contribui como um grão de areia para a reflexão sobre as implicações da Etnomatemática na educação matemática como instrumento de transformação da realidade sócioeconômica