Resumen

This paper presents a detailed example from the practice that encourages respect for a diversity of ways of knowing and for a diversity of knowledge. This approach represents an ethnomathematical pedagogy, and develops a theoretical discussion of an ethnomathematical perspective. Then this paper concludes with theoretical return to our original point about respecting mathematical diversity. It happens because not only must teachers respect their own and their students’ knowledge, but students often need to learn to respect their own and others mathematical activities and products. There are many different ways, using the mathematical activities of peoples all over the world to enable students to develop this respect. The basic idea behind all of them is that peoples’ cultural material context infl uences their knowledge and activities in the world. In particular, students learn the importance of respecting their own and other peoples’ knowledge, and how all of our cultural backgrounds interact with the development of mathematical knowledge. Further, the examples show a variety of forms in which mathematical knowledge can be encoded differently from that in ‘academic’ textbooks.