Breaks and continuities between school content and out-of-school mathematical learning in rural communities

Abstract

This article aims to reflect on the planning of mathematics teaching in multigrade classrooms in rural schools, where diversity is present in multiple forms, not only in the range of teaching contents and work rhythms, but also in the variety of school and out-of-school knowledge, family, and cultural knowledge that circulates (or could circulate) within the classroom.

Our focus is to analyze a set of tensions that arise around the selection of school mathematical content: What place is given to what is common and what is diverse, to the universal and the local? (Záttera, 2015, 2020). What kinds of dialogues and ruptures are generated between the selected mathematical content and the knowledge circulating in the rural community? Which mathematical forms of knowledge are embedded in family and cultural practices? From this perspective, we examine the decision to adapt mathematical problem statements so as to situate them in contexts that are familiar and meaningful to students, an idea widely promoted in rural education.