Ethnomathematics and Freirean pedagogy: an intercultural experience with the Kaingang community

Abstract

The paper exposes an experience of mathematical education in the initial formation of indigenous teachers of the
Kaingang ethnic group within the Indigenous Intercultural Licentiates in Mathematics and Natural Sciences. The
experience represents an effort to develop mathematical teaching in the perspective of intercultural education,
specific, bilingual and differentiated. It is based on three concepts: ethnomathematics, Freirean pedagogy and
intercultural perspective. Such a theoretical framework proved to be an important device to translate into daily
practice the objectives of an indigenous school education that respects the cultural traditions of each ethnic group.
From the understanding of some of the social and cultural practices of the Kaingang tradition and of logical and algebra notions, we evidenced binary logic in the Kamé-Kairú cosmological duality, which assumes the logical
principle of identity and excluded third, along with that of noncontradiction. In the development of the work, we
explain the methodological and pedagogical conceptions, the activities carried out and explain how we use the
paradigm of ethnomathematics to develop contents, materials and research in order to contextualize teaching in
the Kaingang culture.