Ethnomathematics: Legitimizing the link between Mathematics and Culture

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Ethnomathematics Legitimizing the link between
Mathematics and Culture

• Swapna Mukhopadhyay
• Graduate School of Education
• Portland State University
• swapna_at_pdx.edu

Oregon ?NAME Conference ? Oregon State
University, Corvallis, OR.
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• Swapna Mukhopadhyay
• SHOPNA
• MUKHO-PADTHAI

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Kolam
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Lusona (Sona, plural)
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Shipibo
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Tlingit, Alaska
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August 24, 2006
Quilts by women 1940- 2000. Gees Bend,
Alabama.
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• No people however hard their lives may be,
  spend all their time, all their energies in the
  acquisition of food and shelter Even the
  poorest tribes have produced work that gives them
  esthetic pleasure they devote much of their
  energy to the creation of works of beautyNo
  matter how diverse the ideals may be, the general
  character of the enjoyment of beauty is of the
  same order everywhere.
• Franz Boas (1927). Primitive Art. New York Dover

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What is Ethnomathematics?

• the mathematics practiced among identifiable
  cultural groups, such as national-tribal
  societies, labor groups, children of certain age
  bracket, professional classes, and so on. Its
  identity depends largely on focuses of interest,
  on motivation, and on certain codes and jargons
  which do not belong to the realm of academic
  mathematics.
• DAmbrosio, 1985

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ethno mathema tics ethnomathematics

• ethno - within a cultural environment
• mathema - explaining and understanding in order
  to transcend, managing and coping with reality
  in order to survive and thrive
• tics - techniques such as counting, ordering,
  sorting, measuring, weighing, ciphering,
  classifying, inferring, and modeling.
• DAmbrosio, 2001.

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Connecting to the museum as a resource
A field trip to the local museum.
Pre-museum activity
Semi-structured fieldwork
Post-museum activity
Curricular follow-up
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Alternative forms of knowledge construction
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In preparation
Translation
Reflection
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Reflection
Rotation
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Glide
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Translation
Reflection
Rotation
Glide
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In a patterned weave, the pattern is generated by
working one row at a time like stacking layers
of disembedded patterns in a row. Without a
routinzed algorithm, the weaver relies heavily on
her capacity of visualizing the entire pattern,
breaking down each layer of it, keeping a
counting sequence as well as the ability to
visually predict the entire sequence of pattern
and self-correct counting mistakes made.
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A few comments

• When making this kind of art, thinking about
  math is unavoidable. The project makes art and
  math synonymous.
• Do not teach an ethnocentric curriculum.
• And if nothing else, the museum can serve as a
  humbling experience.
• striking interplay of art and function.
• amazing connection to the globalized world.
• Ethnomathematics encourages us to witness and
  struggle to understand how mathematics continues
  to be culturally adapted and used by people
  around the planet and throughout the time.
  DAmbrosio, 2001.

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The intellectual activity of those without power
is always characterized as non-intellectual.
(Freire Macedo, (1987), Literacy. Reading the
word and the world, p. 188. Westport, CT Bergin
Garvey)
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Thank you
Lets stay in touch
swapna_at_pdx.edu