• School Mathematics
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.625-642
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• 2009

This paper presents an overview of theories about ethnomathematics to seek for implications for multicultural mathematics education. Initiated by anthropological inquiries into mathematics outside of Europe, research of ethnomathematics has revealed the facets of mathematics as a historicocultural construct of a community. Specifically, it has been shown that mathematics is culturally relative knowledge system situated within a certain communal epistemological norms. This implies that indigenous mathematics, which had traditionally been regarded as primitive and marginal knowledge, is a historicocultural construct whose legitimacy is conferred by the system of the communal epistemological norms. The recognition of the cultural facets in mathematics has faciliated the reconsideration of what is legitimate mathematics. what is mathematical competence, and what teaching and learning mathematics is an about. This paper inquires multicultral discourses of mathematics education that research of ethnomathematics provides and identifies its implications concerning multicultural mathematics education.

• Research in Mathematical Education
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• v.1 no.2
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• pp.107-116
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• 1997

The purpose of this study is to develop a teaching/learning model for the mathematical enculturation of elementary and secondary school students. It is clear that the development of teaching and learning in the classroom is essential for the realization of global innovations in mathematics education. Research questions for this purpose are as follow: (1) What can be learned from literatures reviews of the socio-cultural perspective on mathematics education, and of ethnomathematics as a mathematics intrinsic to cultural activities? (2) What is the direction of teaching and learning from the perspective of mathematical enculturation? (3) What is the teaching /learning model for mathematical enculturation? (4) What is the instructional exemplification based on the developed model? This study promotes the establishment of mathematics education theory from the review of literatures on the socio-cultural perspective, the development of a teaching/learning model, and the instructional exemplification based on the developed model.

• Journal of Educational Research in Mathematics
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.381-405
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• 2015

The nature of school mathematics has not been asked from the epistemological perspective. In this paper, I compare two dominant perspectives of school mathematics: ethnomathematics and didactical transposition theory. Then, I show that there exist some examples from Old Babylonian (OB) mathematics, which is considered as the oldest school mathematics by the recent contextualized anthropological research, cannot be explained by above two perspectives. From this, I argue that the nature of school mathematics needs to be understand from new perspective and its meaning needs to be extended to include students' and teachers' products emergent from the process of teaching and learning. From my investigation about OB school mathematics, I assume that there exist an intrinsic function of school mathematics: Linking scholarly Mathematics(M) and everyday mathematics(m). Based on my assumption, I suggest the chain of ESMPR(Educational Setting for Mathematics Practice and Readiness) and ESMCE(Educational Setting For Mathematical Creativity and Errors) as a mechanism of the function of school mathematics.