Fourth International Conference

on Ethnomathematics – ICEm4

Towson, Maryland, USA, July 25-30, 2010

Maria do Carmo S. Domite

Robert D. Pohl

Brasil

The focus

Indigenous teacher education

Specifically…

The encounter of non-indigenous teacher educator and

indigenous teacher: the invisibility of the challenges.

Motivation and Mission

!"Over the lifetime of PME, the world has changed, and so

have schools and classrooms. !

!In many parts of the world, teachers—mathematics

teachers—are facing the challenges of teaching in

multiethnic and multilingual classrooms containing

immigrant, indigenous, migrant, and refugee children, !

!and if research is to be useful it has to address and help us

understand such challenges.”!

(GATES, 2006)!

Motivation and Mission

...pre-occupation and pre-disposition from both

indigenous and non-indigenous groups towards

the preservation and comprehension of culture

within the scope of cross-cultural and school education.

Motivation (Legislative history)

União das Nações Indígenas UNI 1980

e Organização das Nações Unidas

para a Educação, a Ciência e a Cultura

UNESCO

A view of the presence of indigenous

peoples in Brazil

A view of the presence of indigenous

peoples in the State of Sao Paulo - Brazil

•! Guarani villages - 15

•! Kaingang villages - 02

•! Krenak village- 01

•! Terena villages- 04

•! Tupi villages – 07

A brief history

Since the end of the XX Century, the Brazilian

indigenous peoples were part of a more scholarly

education movement, taking over the school of the villages.

I have been involved in this political and educational

movement as a teacher educator of the indigenous

group in the State of São Paulo.

Introduction

From 2001 to 2009, in a partnership of the College

of Education of the University of São Paulo and

the State Secretary of Education, I have coordinated the Indigenous Teacher Education

Program of the State of São Paulo.

From 2001 to 2003 - a High School level Teacher

Course

From 2005 to 2009 - the Intercultural

Undergraduate Indigenous Teacher Course

81 indigenous student-teachers from 5 different ethnic groups

What I have learnt...

What I have learnt as an indigenous teacher

educator external to the indigenous culture…

... challenges we need to face: seeing the

invisible

... perspectives we need to focus: looking in

from the outside

Perspectives

The proposals for indigenous education have as perspectives that the teacher educators:

•! listen, understand and orient the indigenous teacher in light of the needs and solutions of the indigenous community’s essential problems;

•! incorporate other information, already elaborated knowledges, techniques and theories in order to help the indigenous teacher to operate the understanding of reality.

Grupioni (2003), Monte (1999), Ferreira-Sebastiani(2004), Ferreira_Kawall (2002); Barton & Alangui (2004)

Challenges

In particular in the scope of mathematics education, the

mentioned perspectives have placed us face to face with

challenges of different orders:

•! Social

•! Cultural

•! Political

•! Epistemological

•! Pedagogical

CHALLENGE: two positions ...

Challenge 1: socio-political order

The taking into account the group’s culture in the

scholar work has different positions

One position prefers:

To reject the incorporation of previous/cultural

knowledge in the curricula: no cultural

mathematics/ethnomathematics whatsoever.

(South African radical position - Horsthemke &

Schäfer, 2006)

To the other one:

It’s not possible to develop someone isolated from

their cultural context. One's culture are one's roots (D'Ambrosio)

CHALLENGE: the “listening” of the

indigenous teacher educators ...

CHALLENGE: The “asking” of the

indigenous teachers...

CHALLENGE: Dialogue

Indigenous teacher’s

out of sight asking

Indigenous teacher educator’s

underdeveloped

listening

And the so waited for dialogical process between

indigenous teachers and teacher educators cannot

be established

CHALLENGE: Transdisciplinarity vs

Disciplinarity

CHALLENGE: Transdisciplinarity vs

Disciplinarity

At the same time we look for an interaction with the

indigenous teachers in order to perceive their

knowledges and codes – respecting their transdisciplinary way of building

knowledge...

... since we have only looked at knowledges through

only one discipline, we run the risk of inserting

them into our disciplinary categories

The invisibility of the challenges

Surely there are many other challenges that are not

so visible as those we just saw when we as

indigenous teachers educators have the following perspectives:

•! To listen, understand and orient the indigenous

teacher in light of their needs

•! To incorporate other information in order to help

the indigenous teacher to operate the understanding of reality

To sum up, as teacher educators external to the

indigenous culture, we recognize the permanent

need to:

•! constantly problematize our ways of thought;

•! have a wider focus upon the values of the society

being thought… looking at its rationality, terms,

points of view, systems of representation, modes

of classification, among others;

•! question the role and the meaning of the scientific

knowledge;

•! recognize the difference as a positive factor.

My focus in terms of research...

Specifically on the “listening” of the mathematics

educator, external to the indigenous teacher

culture...

Research questions:

1.! How much we as indigenous teacher educators

are capable of transcending these empirical arguments?

2.! What kind or procedures/attitudes are involved in

these transcendent processes?

Thank you