Cultural differences, oral mathematics and calculators in a teacher training course of the Brazilian Landless Movement

This paper discusses aspects of a two-year study of a teacher-training course for adult mathematics education organized by a Brazilian landless peoples' social movement. It takes ethnomathematics as a theoretical framework in which cultural differences are central. The paper analyses some of the oral mathematics practices that mark the landless peoples' culture studied. In particular, it discusses a pedagogical process involving the articulation of oral mathematics practices with the use of the calculator, focusing on how pre-service teachers give meaning to their experience and on how cultural differences operated in this setting.