The encounter of non-indigenous teacher educator and indigenous teacher: the invisibility of the challenges - Maria do Carmo S. Domite and Robert D. Pohl

1. Fourth International Conference
on Ethnomathematics – ICEm4
Towson, Maryland, USA, July 25-30, 2010
Maria do Carmo S. Domite
Robert D. Pohl
Brasil

2. The focus
Indigenous teacher education

3. Specifically…
The encounter of non-indigenous teacher educator and
indigenous teacher: the invisibility of the challenges.

4. 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)!

5. 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.

6. Motivation (Legislative history)
União das Nações
Indígenas
UNI 1980
e
Organização das Nações Unidas
para a Educação, a Ciência
e a Cultura
UNESCO

7. A view of the presence of indigenous
peoples in Brazil

8. 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

9. 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.

10. 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

19. What I have learnt...
What I have learnt as an indigenous teacher
educator external to the indigenous culture…
... perspectives we need to focus: looking in
from the outside
... challenges we need to face: seeing the
invisible

20. 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)

21. 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

22. 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)

23. CHALLENGE: the “listening” of the
indigenous teacher educators ...

24. CHALLENGE: The “asking” of the
indigenous teachers...

25. CHALLENGE: Dialogue
Indigenous teacher educator’s Indigenous teacher’s
underdeveloped out of sight asking
listening
And the so waited for dialogical process between
indigenous teachers and teacher educators cannot
be established

26. CHALLENGE: Transdisciplinarity vs
Disciplinarity

27. 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

28. 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

29. 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.

30. 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?

31. Thank you