A matemática na prática profissional de feirantes: uma relação necessária

Abstract

Mathematics is present in several tasks performed in our daily lives. Thus, a better understanding of how mathematical knowledge is applied by market traders can promote the diversity of knowledge and also value everyday knowledge and can contribute to education in different cultures. The general objective of this research was to investigate how people who work in street markets use mathematics in their profession and what is their understanding of this use. Through a bibliographic and field research, using interviews with some street market vendors from the states of Paraíba and Pernambuco as an instrument of data collection, the research discussed ethnomathematics, understanding its importance in emphasizing the informal mathematical concepts that are developed by students by means of their knowledge acquired even outside (and even before) school, that is, experienced in their everyday life. Thus, by using the ethnomathematics approach to explore the mathematics present in the daily life of street market traders, it is possible to expand the understanding of mathematics as a subject intrinsically influenced by the social and cultural aspects that surround it. To this end, we draw on the studies of D'Ambrósio (2008; 2019), Matté (2018), Cunha (2017), Figueiredo (2017), Costa, Tenório, and Tenório (2014) that theoretically ground this research. We emphasize that from the data collected in the interviews, we identified that most of the market traders have a low level of education (elementary school, not always complete), which makes them have fewer experiences with mathematics. We also identified that many market vendors do not recognize the mathematics taught in school as useful for their professional practice, and also that there is no need to learn more mathematics content, because what they know is considered sufficient to develop their work as market vendors. In this sense, we defend the idea that research that discusses ethnomathematics has the potential to broaden the knowledge about the teaching of mathematics, taking into account the social and cultural reality of the students, which may lead to more meaningful learning for the students and increasingly help teachers in the classroom.