Ethnomathematics: Towards a Liberatory Mathematics Education

that circle back to the amount of fabric to sew the skirt of a dress; steps in the sevillana dance lead to mathematical projection using analytic geometry and to the concept of vector that determines the orientation of the dancers. The work shows how practitioners of two seemingly different knowledge systems involving seamstresses and dancers, and mathematicians and mathematics educators can get involved in a dialogue and a process of interrogation leading to enriched, contextualized, and relevant mathematics lessons.


Wilfredo V. Alangui 1
As a field of study, Ethnomathematics aims to re-surface and recognize the ways various groups of people make sense of quantity, relations, and space in their context.More than this, it also exposes how mainstream Western-styled education wreaks havoc on ways of thinking and doing mathematics for sectors who are in the margins of society.
The collection of articles in this volume shows the potential of Ethnomathematics to interrogate Western mathematics, how to diminish its role in the subjugation of other ways of mathematical thinking, disrupt its dominance over other knowledge systems, and redeem it from its complicity in coloniality.
In Stathopoulou's article, the marginalization of the Roma student is brought into focus, especially the student's encounters with mainstream Greek education, how it privileges Western modes of thinking while being silent about Roma's knowledge and ways of life.School, for the Roma student, is a venue of discrimination and alienation where the abyssal line is markedly experienced.
Stathopoulou highlights the experiences of the Roma to raise a challenge -how can Ethnomatematics fulfill its promise that attracted so many mathematics educators to the field, of attaining social justice and sustainability, and of restoring cultural dignity?
In a way, the other articles in the volume tackle Stathopoulou's challenge.Ethnomathematics allows mathematics educators to go beyond the confines of traditional Western mathematics instruction to center cultural practice, social context, histories, and epistemologies of the learner.
In their paper, Carrasco-Ruiz De Valdivia, Mallén and Albanese use the Andalusian dance to show how a beloved, highly systematized cultural practice may be used to interrogate and inform Western mathematics.A flamenco dress, or an Andalusian costume is linked to plane geometry, design of geometric figures, and calculation of areas that circle back to the amount of fabric to sew the skirt of a dress; steps in the sevillana dance lead to mathematical projection using analytic geometry and to the concept of vector that determines the orientation of the dancers.The work shows how practitioners of two seemingly different knowledge systems involving seamstresses and dancers, and mathematicians and mathematics educators can get involved in a dialogue and a process of interrogation leading to enriched, contextualized, and relevant mathematics lessons.

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Using the lens of ethnomathematics allowed this process of interrogation between cultural practice and mathematics in their work.
Fovos's ruminations about his dual role as researcher and teacher of mostly migrant students in a detention facility shows the potential of turning mathematics learning into a project of restorative social justice.Without the lens of ethnomathematics, students in the detention facility would continue wallowing in the meaninglessness of their mathematics experience.With ethnomathematics, redemption becomes a possibility.
The paper of Bruno and Ruiz-López shows the difficulty of transforming mathematics, without totally abandoning or rejecting the very system that promotes coloniality, inequity and injustice.
Decolonization requires building new structures that allow social justice to thrive and prosper, beyond the confines of the curriculum and the school.Transforming mathematics as a goal of ethnomathematics requires envisioning a radically different socio-economic and political world.Kyriakopoulos's paper takes us back to the Roma students and is a powerful deconstruction of research in mathematics education.His methodology exposes the researcher to an uncertain path, beyond theory, and allows himself to be guided by the contingency of a Roma student's historical present.Kyriakopoulos's ethnomathematics orientation compels him to pay attention to the students' lived experience towards what he calls a mathematics rhizome.He then uses this to develop a lived curriculum that allows the students to explore and tackle social injustice issues and to transform these into mathematically meaningful activities.He provides an insightful demonstration of how mathematics can be a channel for social transformation that is made possible by adopting an ethnomathematics research lens.
Stathopoulou's challenge is thus partly resolved.Issues of cultural identity, social justice and inequity impinge on the teaching and learning of mathematics.How can ethnomathematics transform mathematics to fulfill its promise?The four articles show possibilities for reconstruction and reclaiming.The volume is an important collection of what is possible within the realm of ethnomathematics as a framework of decolonizing the way we approach mathematics, of deconstructing its nature, pedagogy, and intent.
Years before the Philippine government's Indigenous Peoples' education program was formally launched in 2011, many Filipino teachers working with indigenous communities had already been doing their own effort of indigenizing and localizing mathematics lessons.Their experiences from the ground showed them that traditional ways of teaching mathematics were not working especially in the rural and indigenous areas.They needed to do something, at times engaging in creative insubordination against official policies that required them to teach mathematics using English as medium of instruction, use prescribed Western-designed mathematics textbooks with situations and examples that are alien to indigenous/Filipino reality and implement a mathematics curriculum that did not at all resonate with local and indigenous life.Learning mathematics remains a challenge for most Filipino students, especially Indigenous students, many of whom face issues of poverty, survival, and social injustice in their communities.
Such issues are urgent concerns of the people, not only in the Philippines but in many more places, including Europe.Does mathematics education even matter then?My contention is it does, and it should.The profound scholarship presented in this volume focuses on groups of people who are in the fringes of European society, and how their contexts and realities can bring back humanity in mathematics education.We all know that mathematics has been a tool for oppression.Our goal as practitioners of ethnomathematics and mathematics education is to turn mathematics into a tool for liberation.
There is promise in the use of ethnomathematics in the movement towards a liberatory mathematics education.It is this promise that keeps us going in our field, the promise of what is yet to come in mathematics education.The papers in this volume provide a compelling glimpse of that future.
En el artículo de Stathopoulou se pone de relieve la marginación de los estudiantes del pueblo Rom, en especial sus encuentros con la educación griega convencional, que privilegia los modos de pensar occidentales y guarda silencio sobre los conocimientos y modos de vida de los Rom.La escuela, para el estudiante Rom, es un lugar de discriminación y alienación en el que se experimenta marcadamente la línea abisal.