Dignity, recognition, and reconciliation: forgiveness, ethnomathematics, and mathematics education

Ethnomathematics owes both its power and its limitations to its origins in the Western conceptual axioms of culture and mathematics. We explore potentially contradictory impulses inherent to ethnomathematics that prevent richer applications to mathematics education, as well as some ways through which these contradictions sometimes preserveforms of indignity and injustice. We then propose alternative foundations for the program of ethnomathematics grounded in post-colonial notions of dignity, recognition and reconciliation, connecting these ideas to forgiveness as both critical awareness of dispossession, and as refusal to allow dispossession and indignity to influence the present and future

Ethnomathematical research and drama in education techniques: developing a dialogue in a geometry class of 10th grade students

Ethnomathematical research, together with digital technologies (WebQuest) and Drama-in- Education (DiE) techniques, can create a fruitful learning environment in a mathematics classroom—a hybrid/third space—enabling increased student participation and higher levels of cognitive engagement. This article examines how ethnomathematical ideas processed within the experiential environment established by the Drama-in-Education techniques challenged students‘ conceptions of the nature of mathematics, the ways in which students engaged with mathematics learning using mind and body, and the ̳dialogue‘ that was developed between the Discourse situated in a particular practice and the classroom Discourse of mathematics teaching. The analysis focuses on an interdisciplinary project based on an ethnomathematical study of a designing tradition carried out by the researchers themselves, involving a search for informal mathematics and the connections with context and culture; 10th grade students in a public school in Athens were introduced to the mathematics content via an original WebQuest based on this previous ethnomathematical study; Geometry content was further introduced and mediated using the Drama-in-Education (DiE) techniques. Students contributed in an unfolding dialogue between formal and informal knowledge, renegotiating both mathematical concepts and their perception of mathematics as a discipline

Mathematics Education as Dystopia: A Future Beyond

We argue that scholars and practitioners of mathematics education need to find new directions through recognition of its dystopic characteristics, and embrace these characteristics as both the source of challenges and method of response. This contrasts with the generally utopic approach of most scholarship in the field. We offer critical ethnomathematics education as a model, since it has its own origins in lingering dystopic legacies. A perpetual hopelessness and disempowerment is one implicit curriculum of contemporary mathematics education, where the mathematics one learns might help to describe things, yet hardly assists in transforming the reification of power and agency in society. Embracing dystopia rather than trying to circumvent it generates new questions and pathways

Language and mathematics teaching/ learning in multicultural classrooms in Europe: Exploring problems and difficulties

In the framework of the Comenius action of the LLP programme of the European Commission, we are developing a project focusing on the role of the language in mathematics learning for non-mainstream students. We are in the first stage, exploring teachers’ needs in order to respond more effectively to teaching mathematics. Here we briefly present the project objectives and the first findings from the analysis of a questionnaire answered by lower secondary school teachers in the partners’ countries (Austria, Czech Republic, France, Greece, Italy and Norway). Questions were about teachers’ experience on teaching in multicultural classes, their pre-service and in-service training, material used or needed in order to facilitate their teaching

Multiculturalism, Migration, Mathematics Education and Language - Teachers' Needs and Teaching Materials

The multicultural nature of modern society constitutes one of the most significant changes to have influenced schools in many European countries, especially at primary and middle school level. The teacher’s job is all the more difficult because he/she is usually not sufficiently prepared to deal with the new classroom context with pupils having a migrant background, coming from countries with different cultures and different languages. The teacher is seldom aware of the need to rethink and if necessary modify his/her methodological and pedagogical approach. This attitude is even more evident in maths teachers who often consider their subject universal and culture-free. Little has been done in Europe as far as maths teaching in multicultural contexts is concerned. The different languages and cultures present in the classroom make the teaching/learning process even more arduous than it already is, especially for pupils from minority cultures and/or with a migrant background or for Roma pupils. This project envisages the design and piloting of materials for both the initial and in-service training of middle school maths teachers who constitute the project’s primary target group. The secondary target group is their pupils, in particular those from other cultures. The materials have been produced after careful analysis of the video recordings of teaching activities. Their focus was also on the role of language in the communication of mathematical concepts and their aim was to stimulate the maths teacher’s awareness of the need to find a satisfactory balance between mathematical language and classroom language, especially when dealing with pupils with a different culture and language. The project’s training proposals aimed at promoting maths teaching strategies which are relevant to activities and problems taken from everyday life including that of different cultures in order to highlight their positive aspects

Provocações Polissêmicas da Negociação Fronteiriça

Considerando a Etnomatemática "como um caminho para uma educação renovada" e em conjunto com outras ideias curriculares, discutimos e exploramos o conhecimento matemático em diferentes contextos e a comunicação/tradução entre eles. Fronteiras permeáveis da educação matemática forçam a tradução que raramente é visível para os envolvidos: jovens alunos que passam da escola para casa e para várias comunidades; professores que tentam traduzir o discurso matemático em culturas escolares para que possam acomodar as múltiplas linguagens de vida e de aprendizagem. Por um lado, podemos dizer que o currículo é a tradução cultural (MOON, 2012). Por outro lado, podemos provocar a tradução como uma oportunidade por meio da concepção de Hannah Arendt de que a tradução é uma ruptura que cria um momento de aprendizagem potencial (APPELBAUM, 2013). Para apoiar a nossa perspectiva, utilizamos exemplos provenientes da pesquisa etnomatemática: estudos etnográficos da prática tradicional de Xysta (Ilha de Quíos, Grécia) e de jovens Roma, aprendizes de matemática, na Grécia (STATHOPOOULOU, 2005). Através destes exemplos, exploramos as possibilidades de tornar explícitas as relações de poder, de autoridade e de conflitos culturais da vida e da matemática escolar para as crianças que são convidadas a realizar as traduções. Fazemos isso como uma provocação para a ação: Em vez de um currículo de matemática escolar que tenta facilitar os processos de tradução para os alunos, buscamos um currículo que reconheça os fundos de conhecimento que as crianças trazem para a compreensão da tradução cultural. A tradução é tanto a ruptura que torna o aprendizado possível como uma pedagogia da fronteira e como o lugar do carnaval em um vale estranho que ressoa com possibilidade

Diversity in european school populations: a study in Portugal and Greece with particular attention to romany cultures

The growing cultural diversity of school populations poses new challenges to schools and also to schooling equity. Schools (as well as minority and dominant group leaders) should avoid cultural closure and instead should involve recognition of different ways of knowing, in order to share cultural elements and to enable constructive interactions; these practices promote education for peace, respect for diversity and social justice. In this paper, we explore the contributions of Ethnomathematics to the understanding of school diversity in Portugal and Greece, focusing particularly on the Romany culture of these countries. We suggest ways to improve mathematics learning and enhancing the social role of mathematics education in general