Considerations about Ethnomathematics, the culturally relevant Pedagogy and social justice in Mathematical Education

Abstract

One of the challenges internationally faced by education systems is related to the growing number of students from linguistically and culturally diverse origins, a fact that calls the attention of teachers and researchers. Because these fields are connected to traditional education systems, there is a growing urgency to solve such inability to effectively reach all students. With respect to the social justice context, it is necessary assessing the embodiment of mathematics’ cultural perspective in the classroom, as well as creating the very basis for the ethnomathematics approaches and for pedagogy in mathematics discipline matrices, since it aims at developing this knowledge production. This approach focuses on promoting social justice and on the quality of students’ educational experience. Thus, this sociocultural diversity has growing in educational research, since it is an area that seeks to connect the daily experiences of students with the teaching and learning process aimed at making education systems humanized. In the context of social justice, it is necessary to examine how mathematics is found in all cultures and, at the same time, to base it on ethnomathematical and culturally relevant pedagogies that can assume, in mathematical curricula, the various linguistic and cultural forms of knowledge. Thus, the main objective of this approach is the integral promotion of student daily experiences in the school mathematics curriculum.