Skip to main content
Open Book Publishers

17. Bringing ethnomathematical perspectives into classrooms

Chapter of: Breaking Images: Iconoclastic Analyses of Mathematics and its Education(pp. 435–460)

Export Metadata

  • ONIX 3.1
  • ONIX 3.0
    • Thoth
    • Project MUSE
      Cannot generate record: No BIC or BISAC subject code
    • OAPEN
    • JSTOR
      Cannot generate record: No BISAC subject code
    • Google Books
      Cannot generate record: No BIC, BISAC or LCC subject code
    • OverDrive
      Cannot generate record: No priced EPUB or PDF URL
  • ONIX 2.1
  • CSV
  • JSON
  • OCLC KBART
  • BibTeX
  • CrossRef DOI deposit
    Cannot generate record: This work does not have any ISBNs
  • MARC 21 Record
    Cannot generate record: MARC records are not available for chapters
  • MARC 21 Markup
    Cannot generate record: MARC records are not available for chapters
  • MARC 21 XML
    Cannot generate record: MARC records are not available for chapters
Metadata
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 abstractIn 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)
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.

References
  1. Al-Khalini, J. (2010). Pathfinders: The golden age of Arabic science. Penguin.
  2. Asper, M. (2009). The two cultures of mathematics in Ancient Greece. In E. Robson & J. Stedall (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of the history of mathematics (pp. 107–132). Oxford University Press.
  3. Boaler, J. (2022, November 3). Educators, you’re the real experts. Here’s how to defend your profession. Education Week. https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/opinion-educators-youre-the-real-experts-heres-how-to-defend-your-profession/2022/11
  4. Burkert, W. (1972). Lore and science in ancient Pythagoreanism. Harvard University Press. (Original work published 1962)
  5. Civil, M., & Quinteros, B. (2012). Latina mothers’ perceptions about the teaching and learning of mathematics: Iplications for parental participation. In B. Greer, S. Mukhopadhyay, A. B. Powell, & S. Nelson-Barber, S. (Eds.), Culturally responsive mathematics education (pp. 321–343). Routledge.
  6. D’Ambrosio, U. (2002). Ethnomathematics. Sense.
  7. Dayton, A., & Rogoff, B. (2016). Paradigms in arranging for children’s learning. In D. S. Guimarães (Ed.), Amerindian paths: Guiding dialogues with psychology. Information Age.
  8. Fasheh, M. (1982). Mathematics, culture, and authority. For the Learning of Mathematics, 3(2), 2–8.
  9. Ferreira, M. K. L. (2012). Map-making in São Paolo, Southern Brazil: Colonial history, social diversity, and indigenous people’s rights. In S. Mukhopadhyay & W-M. Roth (Eds.), Alternative forms of knowing (in) mathematics (pp. 115–158). Sense.
  10. Ferreira, M. K. L. (2015). Mapping time, space and the body: Indigenous knowledge and mathematical thinking in Brazil. Sense.
  11. Ford, E., Greer, B., Koopman, M., Makadia, B., Mukhopadhyay, S., Wilson, M., & Wolfe, M. (2018). Stories from the trenches: Urban schools in Portland. In S. Crespo, S. Celadó-Pattichis, & M. Civil (Eds.), Access and equity: Promoting high-quality mathematics, Grades 3–5 (pp. 169–192). National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.
  12. Gay, G. (2009). Preparing culturally responsive mathematics teachers. In B. Greer, S. Mukhopadhyay, A. B. Powell, & S. Nelson-Barber, S. (Eds.), Culturally responsive mathematics education (pp. 189–205). Routledge.
  13. Gonzalez, N., Moll, L. C., & Amanti, C. (Eds.). (2005). Funds of knowledge: Theorizing practices in households, communities, and classrooms. Erlbaum.
  14. Greer, B. (2021). Learning from history: Jens Høyrup on mathematics, education, and society. In D. Kollosche (Ed.), Exploring new ways to connect: Proceedings of the Eleventh International Mathematics Education and Society Conference (Vol. 2, pp. 487–496). Tredition. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5414119
  15. Greer, B., Mukhopadhyay, S., Powell, A. B., & Nelson-Barber, S. (Eds.). (2009). Culturally responsive mathematics education. Routledge.
  16. Gutstein, E. (2006). Reading and writing the world with mathematics: Toward a pedagogy for social justice. Routledge.
  17. Gutstein, E. (2012). Mathematics as a weapon in the struggle. In O. Skovsmose & B. Greer (Eds.), Opening the cage: Critique and politics of mathematics education (pp. 23–48). Sense.
  18. Hacking, I. (1999). The social construction of what? Harvard University Press.
  19. Hersh, R. (Ed.). (2006). 18 unconventional essays on the nature of mathematics. Springer.
  20. Høyrup, J. (1992). The formation of a myth: Greek mathematics – our mathematics. Roskilde Universitetscenter.
  21. Huffman, C. (2018). Pythagoras. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2018 Edition). https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2018/entries/pythagoras
  22. Hutchins, E. (2000). Cognition in the wild. MIT Press.
  23. Joseph, G. G. (1991). The crest of the peacock: The non-European roots of mathematics. Penguin.
  24. Kline, M. (1953). Mathematics in Western culture. Oxford University Press.
  25. Koopman, M. (2017). Elementary student t-shirt workers go on strike. Rethinking Schools, 32(2).
  26. Lakoff, G. (1996). Moral politics: What conservatives know that liberals don’t. Chicago University Press.
  27. Lipka, J. (2020). Indigenous knowledge and navigating the rising tides of climate change and other existential threats. Revista Latinoamericanan de Ethnomathemática, 13(3), 29–61.
  28. Lipka, J., Yanez, E., Andrew-Ihrke, D., & Adam, S. (2009). A two-way process for developing effective culturally based math: Examples from Math in a Cultural Context. In B. Greer, S. Mukhopadhyay, A. B. Powell, & S. Nelson-Barber (Eds.), Culturally responsive mathematics education (pp. 257–280). Routledge.
  29. Lipka, J., Wong, M., Andrew-Ihrke, D., & Yanez, E. (2012). Developing an alternative learning trajectory for rational number reasoning, geometry, and measuring based on Indigenous knowledge. In S. Mukhopadhyay & W-M. Roth (Eds.), Alternative forms of knowing (in) mathematics (pp. 159–182). Sense.
  30. McDermott, R. (2012). When is mathematics, and who says so? In B. Bevan, P. Bell, R. Stevens, & A. Razfar (Eds.), LOST opportunities: Learning in out-of-school time (pp. 85–91). Springer.
  31. McDermott, R., & Hall, K. D. (2007). Scientifically debased research on learning, 1854-2006. Anthropology & Educational Quarterly, 38(1), 9–15.
  32. Memmi, A. (1965). The colonizer and the colonized. Orion. (Original work published 1957).
  33. Mukhopadhyay, S. (2009). The decorative impulse: Ethnomathematics and Tlingit basketry. ZDM Mathematics Education, 41(1–2), 117–130.
  34. Mukhopadhyay, S. (2009, March). The appreciation of pattern: Beauty and structure [Conference presentation]. Wooshteen Kanaxtulaneegí Haa At Wuskóowu, Sharing our Knowledge: A Conference of Tlingit Tribes and Clans, Juneau, AK.
  35. Mukhopadhyay, S. (2012, November). Non-literate Indian boat-builders: Vernacular engineering and the rigor of reality [Conference presentation]. 111th Annual meeting of the American Athropological Association, San Francisco, CA, United States.
  36. Mukhopadhyay, S. (2013, April). The mathematics of those without power [Conference presentation]. 7th Mathematics Education and Society conference, Cape Town, South Africa.
  37. Mukhopadhyay, S., & Greer, B. (in press). The wisdom of others.
  38. Mukhopadhyay, S., & Roth, W-M. (Eds.). (2012). Alternative forms of knowing (in) mathematics. Sense.
  39. Netz, R. (2003). The shaping of deduction in Greek mathematics: A study in cognitive history. Cambridge University Press.
  40. Ochigame, R. (2021). Remodeling rationality: An inquiry into unorthodox modes of logic and computation [Doctoral dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology].
  41. Paris, S., & Alim, H. S. (Eds.). (2017). Culturally sustaining pedagogy. Teachers College Press.
  42. Pinxten, R., van Dooren, I., & Harvey, F. (1983). The anthropology of space: Explorations into the natural philosophy and semantics of the Navajo. University of Philadelphia Press.
  43. Powell, A. B., & Frankenstein, M. (1997). Ethnomathematics: Challenging Eurocentrism in mathematics education. SUNY Press.
  44. Raju, C. K. (2007). Cultural foundations of mathematics: The nature of mathematical proof and the transmission of the calculus from India to Europe in the 16th c. CE. Pearson Longman.
  45. Skovsmose, O. (2022). Concerns of Critical Mathematics Education and of Ethnomathematics. Revista Colombiana de Educación, (86), 365–382.
  46. Stevens, R. (2010). Learning as a members’ phenomenon: Toward an ethnographically adequate science of learning. Teachers College Record, 112(13), 82–97.
  47. Swetz, F. (1994). From five fingers to infinity: A journey through the history of mathematics. Open Court.
  48. Tate, W. F. (1995). School mathematics and African American students: Thinking seriously about opportunity-to-learn standards. Educational Administration Quarterly, 31, 424–448.
  49. Urton, G. (2012). Mathematics and accounting in the Andes before and after the Spanish Conquest. In S. Mukhopadhyay & W-M. Roth (Eds.), Alternative forms of knowing (in) mathematics (pp. 17–32). Sense.
  50. Vithal, R., & Skovsmose, O. (1997). The end of innocence: A critique of ‘ethnomathematics’. Educational Studies in Mathematics, 34, 131–157.
  51. Washburn, D. K., & Crowe, D. W. (1987). Symmetries of cultures: Theory and practice of plane pattern analysis. University of Washington Press.