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17. Bringing ethnomathematical perspectives into classrooms

  • Swapna Mukhopadhyay(author)
  • Brian Greer(author)
Chapter of: Breaking Images: Iconoclastic Analyses of Mathematics and its Education(pp. 435–460)
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Title17. Bringing ethnomathematical perspectives into classrooms
ContributorSwapna Mukhopadhyay(author)
Brian Greer(author)
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.11647/obp.0407.17
Landing pagehttps://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0407/chapters/10.11647/obp.0407.17
Licensehttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
CopyrightSwapna Mukhopadhyay; Brian Greer;
PublisherOpen Book Publishers
Published on2024-12-11
Long abstract

In this chapter, we offer some suggestions, informed by our personal histories and experiences, as to how ethnomathematical perspectives might enrich school mathematics classrooms. We regard this as inherently political work, in terms of combatting the intellectual White supremacy that pervades the Eurocentric narrative of the history of academic mathematics and that is explicitly or subliminally everpresent in so many mathematics classrooms. Likewise, we argue that the ongoing worldwide homogenisation of school mathematics is unhealthy. Above all, we argue that school mathematics is culpably deficient in terms of its relations with other forms of mathematical activities and insofar as it does characterise such relationships, often harmfully misleading.

Page rangepp. 435–460
Print length26 pages
LanguageEnglish (Original)
Locations
Landing PageFull text URLPlatform
PDFhttps://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0407/chapters/10.11647/obp.0407.17Landing pagehttps://books.openbookpublishers.com/10.11647/obp.0407.17.pdfFull text URL
HTMLhttps://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0407/chapters/10.11647/obp.0407.17Landing pagehttps://books.openbookpublishers.com/10.11647/obp.0407/ch17.xhtmlFull text URLPublisher Website
Contributors

Swapna Mukhopadhyay

(author)
Professor Emerita at Portland State University
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4587-2462

Swapna Mukhopadhyay, Professor Emerita at Portland State University, focused throughout her career on issues of critical mathematics education and cultural diversity. Using the framework of Ethnomathematics, she worked towards integrating research and curriculum design, an activist position.

Brian Greer

(author)
https://orcid.org/0009-0007-5230-1904

Brian Greer began his research on mathematical cognition, before shifting his interest to school mathematics. That evolved to reflect a characterization of mathematics as a human activity embedded in historical, cultural, social and political – in short, human – contexts.

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