Arquivo da Categoria: ICME 12 – Korea, 2012

The Freedom of Knowledge: Asphalt Academics and Asphalt Children

Authors: Mônica Mesquita and Sal Restivo

 

Henceforth, my dear philosophers, let us be on guard against the dangerous old conceptual fiction that posited a “pure, will-less, painless, timeless knowing subject”; let us guard against the snares of such contradictory concepts as “pure reason,” absolute spirituality,” “knowledge in itself”: these always demand that we should think of an eye that is completely unthinkable, an eye turned in no particular direction, in which the active and interpreting forces, through which alone seeing becomes seeing something, are supposed to be lacking; these always demand of the eye an absurdity and a nonsense. There is only a perspective seeing, only a perspective “knowing”; and the more affects we allow to speak about one thing, the more eyes, different eyes, we can use to observe one thing, the more complete will our “concept” of this thing, our “objectivity,” be. But to eliminate the will altogether, to suspend each and every affect, supposing we were capable of this — what would that mean but to castrate the intelect?

From Nietzsche’s The Genealogy of Morals, s III.12

 

Our objective here is to discuss the encounter that occurred on São Paulo’s asphalt between the asphalt children and the asphalt academics. Our perspective is grounded in the sociological worldview and in the ethnomathematics posture; the integration of this worldview and this posture was achieved during the process of a Phd research project. The bringing together of marginal and central positions and voices results in and is an activist social practice. The aim of looking at this encounter is to fuel the end of verbalism, purism, and essentialism and the beginning of a situated knowledge that is engaged with our everyday lives, with our very being as researchers who marry acts of science to concerns for social justice and equity in everyday and professional lives.

 

Introduction

During the Phd research project that is the basis for this paper[1], the freedom of knowledge was the main focus of our research and theory; the freedom of knowledge was exercised by giving voice to all the actors inserted in this script through a dialogical process.

“ … o diálogo é uma exigência existencial. E, se ele é o encontro em que se solidarizam o refletir e o agir de seus sujeitos endereçados ao mundo a ser transformado e humanizado, não pode reduzir-se a um ato de depositar idéias de um sujeito no outro.” (Freire, 1970: 79)

We recognize without fear of contradiction the presence of the innumerable academic works that could support many different ways to conduct this research, creating different scripts. The diversified context of the academic environment itself could propose directions, through any of its departments of knowledge, to work with our data or even with our own conduct during this project with the “children in street situation”, the children in locum (the asphalt children). In the end, this project was developed under the reality followed in its construction; it imbricates different contexts through different point of views (cf. Campbell’s [2005] “fish scale model of science/omniscience”). The way through the complexity of human relations, walking by different systems where those relations penetrate, was supported to re-search the freedom of knowledge.

Some necessary parameters to develop this script in the format of an academic research project were followed with the intention of maintaining a dialogical process with the academics in our audience. In this script we are, have, and exercise many languages, perspectives, everyday cultures, and professional cultures to claim and re-claim the freedom of knowledge

 

The Sociological Worldview

The sociological worldview adopted is present in the format of the script, promoting to the actors the possibility to exist within it and to the readers an encounter with sociology in action.  We searched the movement of the sociological worldview to provide the opportunity of placing lived experiences in asphalt conceptual places. We are obliged to express the complexities of social and cultural realities and to affirm the difficulties of a sociological understanding directly and with a view to recreating for our readers, our listeners, our interlocutors, our “subjects” the same sorts of challenges we face in the world as we go about trying to make sociological sense of our experience.

To make a sociological sense of lived mathematical experiences was the central goal during the “Children in street situation’s Culture and Concept of Space” Project; this movement had a deep influence during the whole development of this research. After the inclusion of mathematical knowledge in the jurisdiction of sociology, conquered by Durkheim and Spengler and recovered in recent times by David Bloor and Sal Restivo, the sociology of mathematics can argue the discontinuity of the human relations existent in the urban non-space in the ways our research and theory reveal.

The fact that the sociology of mathematics involves two academic environments (traditionally recognized as different and, before Durkheim, Spengler, Bloor, and Restivo as antagonists) itself, promotes a change in the position of an observer capable of exercising the observation with more sets of eyes. With this, it also promotes more freedom for the observed knowledges as well as for the involved knowledges in the action of observation.

 

An Ethnomathematics Posture

The ethnomathematics posture guaranteed the application of a study of the social life of mathematics founded in the cultural roots of urban cultural groups. What is the status of mathematics in the asphalt children’s world, and how does it compare to professional academic mathematics. If this posture was not accepted, the risk to have and to impose a predominant view over the mathematics knowledges in the urban cultural groups would prevail. In the case of mathematical knowledges, the actual predominance is in the academic knowledges and the children’ knowledges in question could be stifled and made invisible. This posture defines a claim about dignity:

It is widely recognized that all the issues affecting society nowadays are universal, and it is common to blame, not without cause, the technological, industrial, military, economic and political complexes      as responsible for the growing crises threatening humanity. Survival with dignity is the most universal problem facing mankind. (D’Ambrosio, 2007, p25)

One movement could put us on the path of dignity – relationships viewed in terms of ethics and power. The representations of ourselves out of us and our representation to and in others are understood as a cultural model, a political representation, or a social artefact. Both cases in which the children in street situation developed their spatial construction in this Phd research project were embedded by their social construction, imbricated in all the complexities of their environment as well as in the multiplicity of the systems by which they are directly or indirectly surrounded.

If we did not know about the children in street situation’s social construction some cases could sound very aggressive or insignificant. However, knowing their social construction, it was possible to make a sociological analysis of their mathematical knowledges; looking to the intrinsic models, representation, and artefacts in their social life.

 

The Freedom of Knowledge and the Responsibility of Sapience: an exercise of equity between to know and the practices of knowledge

The possibility to be with both cultural groups, the Children in Street Situation and the Academy, allowed bringing different points of view to the same urban images and actions. From the confrontations of these differences appears the necessity of searching for material and intellectual artefacts to develop a symbiotic movement between them, to promote a dialogical process between them.

To observe that the space concept of the children in street situation’s culture was different from the space paradigm of the urban population was the first step toward trying to find ways to understand their concept better. A paradigm controls the logic of the discourse; it is a way to control the logic and the semantics at the same time. It is a relationship that includes and excludes persons, ideas, artefacts, and values (cf. Morin, 2002).

In some academic presentations, it was normal to hear the criticism that “it is a social problem, not an academic problem”. Some of those outcries redirected observations to the Social Assistant Department, denying them, in a strong way, as an observation stuffed with mathematical knowledges, or any knowledge deserving the attention of the academic environment.

The actual position of the academic environment has been rethought by some voices; many of them are present in this Phd research project. Ubiratan D’Ambrosio (1999), one of those, is explicit when assuming an opposite direction to the etymological significant of academy; the word academy means “distant of people”.

“… queremos ir na direção em que o povo está, nas praças, nas ruas, campos, construções, nos espaços abertos para o confronto, para a busca compartilhada do conhecimento.” (D’Ambrosio, 1999: 70).

Sal Restivo insists, in his works, to affirm that the hegemonic system, in which Occidental societies are engaged these days, has supported the development of self-aware mathematicians working in an academic autonomous system to maintain the “bourgeois mathematics”. In that sense, his academic voice has discussed the necessity to act in the changing of the material bases and social structure of mathematics based in the changing of the social, economic, and political conditions of our lives.

A radical change in the nature of our social relationships will be reflected in radical changes in how we organize to do mathematics – and these changes will in turn affect how we think about and the content of our mathematics (Restivo, 1983: 266).

There have in our time voices in the academy that spoke to, through, and in the voices of the Other, of the disenfranchised. From C. Wright Mills to Dorothy Smith and Richard Falk, there have been academics who resisted the academy’s exclusion of the Other’s knowledge. And yet it is not an exaggeration to say that for the most part academics have excluded the reasoning, the findings, the lives of non-academics. Why is asphalt science “science”?

We do not claim a positivist perspective aimed at destroying the value of science, as we explain in our book, Asphalt Children (2011). What we affirm is that to deny the others, to deny their knowledges, is the height of the unilateral and univocal rationalism that defines the core of the academy. Through our academic practices we were able to expose the children in street situation’s mathematical knowledges. And then we observed how intolerable it is for some academics to listen, to interact, or even to know about some knowledges. What good are knowledges not recognized by them as directly important in, for example, developing chemical or nuclear weapons, strategies that funnel human beings into labor that serves capitalism (more realistically, the industrial-technological society). What good are methods and theories and findings that do not water their own academic environment and nourish the power that maintain the academy as a closed system.

The movement of intolerance is a post-modern condition for human beings; it is not only in academic institutions. The existence of the urban non-space is an example of this intolerance and constitutes in part this movement. However, in a dialectical way, Slavoj Žižek (2006) affirms that tolerance is the hegemonic ideology of global capitalism. In that sense, he argued that the academy, as a structured social body where each part occupies its place, to recognize, validate and make compatible a part of the “partless” – the invisible ones – put in a deep conflict the functional order of the relations inside of academic environments. The recognizing, validating, and making compatible of the children in street situation’s mathematical knowledges with the academic mathematical knowledges, as part of academic society is an elementary gesture of “politization”. In an opposite way, to recognize, validate, and make compatible only the traditional academic knowledges characterizes the process of “depolitization”, feeding the marginalized conditions, increasing the urban non-spaces, and leaving the mathematical knowledges in a closed system.

The act of the asphalt academics claiming to open the academic system was exercised through the work with the children in street situation’s mathematical knowledges, with their contexts, and with the mixture of different voices around the same subjects under a certain intolerance by Dr. Mesquita as the on-site ethnographer. The intolerance came in the sense that she had to claim her own condition as an academic person (inserted in the bourgeois position), and the absurd silence around the knowledges of these children. The practices of living with this intolerance taught her not to be tolerant to any closed system but to be “smart”, according to Capoeirinha (2000), with the attitude that treats each local culture in a colonization process.

Nunca ninguém quis sabe o que a gente sabe, como agente faz as coisas. Sempre vem gente pra sabe     como a gente está, porquê a gente faz. Ah! E porquê a gente está na rua!… Essa coisa de saber como a gente faz, de compreendê como a gente faz e aprendê como você faz deixou agente ser mais irmão e mais esperto. Até hoje temo vontade de sabê mais e mais como a gente faz (a gente quem?)… Nós tudo…(Quem?)… Eu, você, a Irmã Ana Célia, o cara da esquina, minha mãe.” (Antonio, 2001)

References

Antonio (2001). Vozes do Projecto Cultura da Criança em Situação de Rua e Conceito de Espaço. In Mesquita, M., Restivo, S. & D’Ambrosio, U. (2011). Asphalt children and city streets: A Life, a City, and a Case Study of History, Culture, and Ethnomathematics in São Paulo, Sense Publishers, Rotterdam / Netherlands.

Campbell, D. T. (2005). “Ethnocentrism of Disciplines and the Fish-Scale Model of Omniscience.” In S. J. Derry, C. D. Schunn, & M. A. Gernsbacher (Eds.), Interdisciplinary Collaboration — an Emerging Cognitive Science, pp. 3-21. Lawrence Erlbaum, Mahwah / USA.

Capoeirinha (2000). Vozes do Projecto Cultura da Criança em Situação de Rua e Conceito de Espaço. In Mesquita, M., Restivo, S. & D’Ambrosio, U. (2011). Asphalt children and city streets: A Life, a City, and a Case Study of History, Culture, and Ethnomathematics in São Paulo, Sense Publishers, Rotterdam / Netherlands.

D’Ambrosio, U. (1999). Educação para uma Sociedade em Transição, Editora Papirus, São Paulo / Brazil.

Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogia do Oprimido, 17º Edição, Paz e Terra, Rio de Janeiro / Brazil.

Mesquita, M., Restivo, S. & D’Ambrosio, U. (2011). Asphalt children and city streets: A Life, a City, and a Case Study of History, Culture, and Ethnomathematics in São Paulo, Sense Publishers, Rotterdam / Netherlands.

Morin, E. (2002). Pour une politique de civilization, in Arléa Poche nombre 76, Éditions Arléa, Paris / France.

Restivo, S. (1983). The social relations of physics, mysticism, and mathematics, Episteme (D. Reidel), vol.10, Pallas Paperback, Dordrecht / Netherlands.

_ (1991), The sociological worldview, Blackwell, Boston / USA.

Žižek, S. (2006). The parallax view, The Short Circuits Series, The MIT Press, Massachusetts / USA.

 

[1]http://run.unl.pt/handle/10362/2301

 

Poster_acceptance

Ethnomathematics in non-formal educational settings: The Urban Boundaries Project

Authors: Alexandre Pais and Mônica Mesquita

 

The push to marry off local and school knowledge has been a growing concern within educational sciences, particularly in mathematics education where a field of studies by the name of ethnomathematics has been producing research around the uses people do of mathematics outside school’s walls. Notwithstanding the good will of educational agents in bringing to schools local knowledges, criticisms have been made on the sometimes naive way in which such a bridge is theorized and implemented. After a brief description of these criticisms, we present the Urban Boundaries Project as an attempt to avoid the inconsistencies of schooling, and the promotion of a non-scholarized ethnomathematics.

Introduction

A significant part of ethnomathematics research has educational aims (Borba, 1990; Gerdes, 1995; Barton, 1996; Powell & Frankenstein, 1997; Knijnik, 2004), seeking to bring to the schools or other formal educational environments (like indigenous schools) the knowledge and the mathematical practices of cultural groups of people. This makes ethnomathematics research part of a multicultural approach in education that during the last 30 years has aimed to open schools to the cultural diversity that characterizes our current societies. However, notwithstanding the good will of well intentioned agents, the ways in which the “bridge” between local knowledge and school knowledge is made has been the target of a strong criticism (e.g., Skovsmose & Renuka, 1997; Rowlands & Carson, 2002; Pais, 2011), and some authors have called attention for the problems involved in bringing local knowledge into school settings (e.g., Dowling, 1998; Duarte, 2004; Pais, 2011). At stake in these criticisms is the ethnomathematical assumption that by bringing local knowledge into schools a multicultural education can be achieved. In this article we start by exploring these criticisms. They call our attention to the specific character of schooling, and how the ethnomathematical push to marry off local knowledge and schooling can very well ending up conveying and idea of culture where the Other is squeezed from its otherness (Pais, 2011). Afterwards, we introduce the Urban Boundaries Project—a project based in Portugal and funded by the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia—as an example of an ethnomathematical project that is not concerned with bringing local knowledge into schools, but rather to problematise within the local communities the knowledge and the competences they need it in situ. It is the wager of this article that our society needs to create alternative educational settings as a response for the increasing problem of exclusion faced by so-called minority populations. As long as schools are structured as credit systems (Vinner, 1997), only within non-scholarized settings can a genuine ethnomathematical approach be reached.

Ethnomathematics and schools

By reading the six guiding questions of the Topic Study Group for which we are submitting this paper[1], we easily notice how ethnomathematics is conceived in a strict relation with school. The spirit behind these questions in one that seeks to use research regarding mathematical thinking developed outside school to improve the understanding of mathematics and mathematics teaching and learning in school. This seems to be the most common approach to ethnomathematics within mathematics education research (Adam, Alangui & Barton, 2003): the use of students’ ethnomathematical knowledge to construct a bridge for the learning of school mathematics. However, researchers such as Knijnik (2004) clearly state that “it is not a matter of establishing connections between school mathematics and mathematics as it is used by social groups, with the purpose of achieving a better learning of school mathematics” (p. 228). Where some see as unproblematic the “making of the bridge” between local and school knowledge, others criticize this learning strategy, claiming a place for a more serious understanding of the role of school and how local knowledge is inserted into it. As explored by Pais (2011), the problem with the “bridge metaphor” is the reinforcement of the hegemony of school mathematics because the Other is valorised only as a way to achieve the true knowledge. Thus, it contradicts the critique that ethnomathematics makes to the hegemony of academic mathematics.

At stake here is what ethnomathematicians such as Knijnik (2004), Monteiro (2004), and Duarte (2004) have been referring to as the folkloric way in which ethnomathematical ideas appear in the curriculum. According to them, the use of local knowledge as a curiosity to start the learning of school mathematics could be the cause of social inequalities. However, to truly include ethnomathematical ideas in the curriculum is no less problematic. If we focus on a regular school and take into account its role in preparing students for a globalized market-orientated society, with all the pressure to learn the mathematics of the standard curriculum that will be essential to students’ approval in the high stakes tests, we can ask ourselves if there is a place for ethnomathematical knowledge (or other local, nonscholarly knowledge)? As explored in Pais (2011), after a review of the current research being done in ethnomathematics, the educational implications of ethnomathematics (in a regular school) end up being co-opted by a school that is worried with the uniformization/globalization of knowledge—and not so much with issues of diversity. Monteiro (2004), a Brazilian ethnomathematician, poses the crucial question: “Is it possible to develop ethnomathematical work in the current school model?” (p. 437, our translation from Portuguese).

What is at stake here is the very often disavowed role of schools as places of economical production and ideological reproduction (Pais, in press). One of the main features of ethnomathematics research consists in developing a critique of what is accepted as being mathematical knowledge, by the confrontation of knowledge from different cultures. The existence of different ways of dealing with quantity, space, and patterns are now well documented, and it is not possible to deny them. But, to pass from this acknowledgement to the aim of inserting it in a school setting in order to be disseminated through school education is problematic because schools are not open spaces of shared knowledge. On the contrary, curricular changes, especially when the subject is mathematics, are very strict. Whether we choose to use this different knowledge as a curiosity, an illustration or a “starter” to the formal mathematics of the curriculum, or to develop a curriculum where one of the topics is local knowledge per se, the result may not be students’ emancipation or the valorisation of different cultures. On the contrary, the process of bringing diversity and ethnomathematical ideas into the classroom may end up conveying practices opposed to the benevolent multicultural ideas these researchers want to enforce, by promoting a desubstantialized view of Other’s culture (Pais, 2011).

Urban Boundaries Project

This problem is connected with the educational aims of today’s world. Together with globalization, the concern with diversity is currently considered to be one of the two main educational functions (Izquierdo & Mínguez, 2003). While globalization refers to the social need to respond to market globalization, which imposes a convergent education by training individuals to perform a role in the global society, diversity demands an integration of different cultures in a model of divergent education, able to educate citizens in what has been called equity within diversity.  To conciliate these two educational tasks could be a source of problems, as documented by recent research on the cultural dimension of education (e. g. Kincheloe & Steinberg, 2008); and as we previously addressed regarding the educational implications of ethnomathematics. This is especially the case in so-called developed countries where national cultural minorities and newer immigrant populations have been posing new challenges for education. In many cases, these populations rely more on non-formal educational sites, based in their everyday lives, than in the formal setting of school education, where they often experience problems of exclusion.

As a way to avoid the inconsistencies of school, a group of people from different backgrounds (among others, architects, biologists, physicists, teachers, and mathematics education researchers) decided to join efforts and built a project together with two communities, one based in a agricultural land and another dedicated to piscatoy activities, based in the outskirts of Lisbon. These communities are constituted by immigrant populations from other Portuguese-speaking countries, Gipsies, and Portuguese migrants. They have been experiencing throughout half a century diverse problems of inclusion—from the inexistence of piped water to the silencing of their voices in the political arena—, particularly concerning schooling. Through the development of a critical alphabetization, a multiple cartography and life-history portfolios we seek to address the educational needs of these populations in situ, that is, in the midst of their everyday lives where survival with dignity is often the first and foremost important daily struggle. Therefore, it is the everyday problems felted by these two communities that guide the organization of parameters that support a multicultural education curriculum based on the socio-cultural and economic reality of these communities. This way, we seek to address the tension between globalization and diversity by means of submitting these two educational aims to the needs of the communities, which have been systematically excluded both from globalization and from the social recognition of their differences.

It is our contention that this approach reduces the risk of desubstancialization, since we are working in the basis of communities’ local knowledge, and focusing on their communicative, analytic and material resources; and from the real problems they felt in their daily struggles in the midst of a society that doesn’t recognize them as citizen on their own right. In such an environment, ethnomathematics (as defined by D’Ambrosio (2002), who partly substantiates our approach to mathematics and education) acquires its full meaning: not some kind of pre-school mathematics ready to be used in the teaching and learning of school mathematics, but an all-encompassing societal program based on the idea that there are several ways, techniques, skills (tics) to explain, understand, deal with and live with (mathema) distinct natural and socioeconomic realities (ethnos). Against this background, ethnomathematics appears not so much as the study of “different mathematics”, but as a way to deal with different forms of “knowing” (Mesquita, Restivo & D’Ambrosio, 2011). In the Urban Boundaries Project ethnomathematics is not to be confused with a subfield of mathematics education, designed to improve school mathematics, but as a political space where new forms of emancipation can be thought and practiced.

References

Adam, S., Alangui, W., & Barton, B. (2003). A comment on: Rowlands and Carson “Where would formal, academic mathematics stand in a curriculum informed by Ethnomathematics? A critical review”. Educational Studies in Mathematics, 52, 327–335.

Barton, B. (1996). Making sense of ethnomathematics: Ethnomathematics is making sense. Educational Studies in Mathematics, 31, 201–233.

Borba, M. (1990). Ethnomathematics in education. For the Learning of Mathematics, 10(1), 39–43.

Dowling, P. (1998). The sociology of mathematics education: Mathematical myths, pedagogic texts. Washington: Falmer Press.

D’Ambrosio, U. (2002). Etnomatemática: Elo entre as tradições e a modernidade [Ethnomathematics: Linking tradition with modernity]. Belo Horizonte: Autêntica.

Duarte, C. (2004). Implicações curriculares a partir de um olhar sobre o “mundo da construção civil” [Curricular implications from a look into the “world of construction”]. In G. Knijnik, F. Wanderer, & C. Oliveira (Eds.), Etnomatemática: Currículo e formação de professores [Ethnomathematics: Curricula and teacher education]. Santa Cruz do Sul: Edunisc.

Gerdes, P. (1995). Ethnomathematics and education in Africa. Stockholm: Institute of International Education, University of Stockholm.

Izquierdo, H., & Mínguez, A. (2003). Sociological theory of education in the dialectical perspective. In C. Torres & A. Antikainen (Eds.), The international handbook of the sociology of education: An international assessment of new research and theory. Rowman: Littlefield Publishers.

Kincheloe, J., & Steinberg, S. (2008). Indigenous knowledges in education. In N. Denzin, L. Smith, & Y. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of critical and indigenous methodologies. Thousand Oaks: Sage.

Knijnik, G. (2004). Etnomatemática e educação no movimento sem terra [Ethnomathematics and education in the landless movement]. In G. Knijnik, F. Wanderer, & C. Oliveira (Eds.), Etnomatemática: Currículo e formação de professores [Ethnomathematics: Curricula and teacher education]. Santa Cruz do Sul: Edunisc.

Mesquita, M., Restivo, S. & D’Ambrosio, U. (2011). Asphalt children and city streets: A life, a city, and a case study of history, culture, and ethnomathematics in São Paulo. Sense Publishers.

Monteiro, A. (2004). A etnomatemática em cenários de escolarização: Alguns elementos de reflexão [Ethnomathematics in schooling scenarios: Some elements for reflection]. In G. Knijnik, F. Wanderer, & C. Oliveira (Eds.), Etnomatemática: Currículo e formação de professores [Ethnomathematics: Curricula and teacher education]. Santa Cruz do Sul: Edunisc.

Pais, A. (2011). Criticisms and contradictions of ethnomathematics. Educational Studies inMathematics 76(2), 209-230.

Pais, A. (in press). A critical approach to equity in mathematics education. In B. Greer and O. Skovsmose (Eds.), Critique and politics of mathematics education. Sense Publishers.

Powell, A., & Frankenstein, M. (1997). Ethnomathematics: Challenging Eurocentrism in mathematics education. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Rowlands, S., & Carson, R. (2002). Where would formal, academic mathematics stand in a curriculum informed by ethnomathematics? A critical review of ethnomathematics. Educational Studies in Mathematics, 50, 79–102.

Skovsmose, O., & Vithal, R. (1997). The end of innocence: A critique of ‘ethnomathematics’. Educational Studies in Mathematics, 34, 131–158.

Vinner, S. (1997). From intuition to inhibition—mathematics education and other endangered species. In E. Pehkonen (Ed.) Proceedings of the 21th Conference of the International Group for Psychology of Mathematics Education (PME21) (Vol. 1, pp.63–78). Lahti, Finland.

 

[1] Information about the group can be found in http://www.icme12.org/sub/tsg/tsgload.asp?tsgNo=36.

 

Paper_acceptance

Workshop & Sharing Group Discussion of ICME-12

Authors: Mônica Mesquita e Alexandre Pais Submitted by November 30, 2011  

□ Workshop   X Sharing Group
Workshop or Sharing Group Name Urban Boundaries Project: Mathematics and the struggle for survival  
Organizing Team Position First Name LastName Country / Region Institute E-mail
Chair or Presenter Mônica Mesquita Portugal Lisbon University mbmesquita@ie.ul.pt
Alexandre Pais Denmark Aalborg University xande@learning.aau.dk
Members Karen François Belgium Free University Brussels, karen.francois@vub.ac.be
Sal Restivo USA Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute salrestivo@hotmail.com
Fiona Walls New Zeland No affiliation feijoawalls@gmail.com
D’Ambrosio Ubiratan Brazil University of São Paulo ubi@usp.br
Description of the background & theme Participatory Description and Critical Thinking about the Urban Boundaries ProjectThe sharing movement on this group is to be developed in two moments. Firstly, we describe the process behind the creation of an academic project named Urban Boundaries. We shallexpose how, for whom, and for what this project was developed—geographical/historical/social/political contexts— and discuss the importance of the voices—desires/needs/possibilities—of the actors enrolled in the project. As part of this first moment, we also explain our choice regarding the theoretical framework adopted in the project, which is based in the “Curriculum Trivium” proposed by Ubiratan D’Ambrosio, in combination with the recent critique on multiculturalism developed by the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek. We also address our methodological approach, informed by Critical Ethnography.The Urban Boundaries is an academic project supported by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia and Lisbon University, constituted by a group of researchers from different backgrounds (among others, architects, biologists, physicists, teachers, and mathematics educators) that decided to join efforts and built a project together with two communities, one situated in an agricultural land and another in a fishing community, both placed in the outskirts of Lisbon—a place called Costa de Caparica. These communities are constituted by immigrant populations from other Portuguese-speaking countries, Gipsies, and Portuguese migrants. They have been experiencing throughout half a century diverse problems of inclusion, particularly concerning schooling and the need to have their voices heard. Through the development of a critical alphabetization, a multiple cartography and life-history portfolios we seek to address the educational needs of these populations in situ, that is, in the midst of their everyday lives where survival with dignity is often the first and foremost important daily struggle. Therefore, it is the everyday problems felted by these two communities that guide the organization of parameters that support an intercultural education curriculum based on the socio-cultural and economic reality of these communities. In what concerns the second moment, we wish to engage the participants in a discussion about the importance of mathematics outside a frame of schooling, namely the role this science can have in the struggle for survival that both communities experience in a daily basis. We introduce D’Ambrosio’s ethnomathematical program as an all-encompassing societal program based on the idea that there are several ways, techniques, skills (tics) to explain, understand, deal with and live with (mathema) distinct natural and socioeconomic realities (ethnos). Against this background, ethnomathematics appears not so much as the study of “different mathematics”, but as a way to deal with different forms of “knowing”. In the Urban Boundaries Project ethnomathematics is not to be confused with a subfield of mathematics education, designed to improve school mathematics, but as a political space where new forms of emancipation can be thought and practiced. On the other hand, the philosophy of Slavoj Zizek offers us tools to understand the contradictions of current society where, despite the increasing abundance and sophistication of resources available, communities such as the ones we work with continue to lack the basic conditions for a live with dignity.  
Target Audience and ideal number of participants Target AudienceTeachers and researchers involved in the development of academicals projects.  Everyone who has interest in discussing the political role of mathematics, and the development of projects where mathematics is investigated in a non-scholarized fashion.     Ideal number of Participant: 20 participants.  
Session X one slot(90 min.)□ one slot(60 min.)□ two slots(90 min. / 60 min.)
Request for any equipment or room space -The meeting rooms will be reserved on a first-come, first-served basis.-A beam projector, a microphone, a podium, a screen will be provided by the local secretariat.

 

Sharing_group_acceptance