Práticas matemáticas nas lógicas de organização do tempo da vida, do cultivo e comercialização de hortaliças

Abstract

This dissertation has a main aim to analyze how peasant farmers’ knowledge and practices are mobilized in their vegetable cultivation and marketing strategies. This study is grounded in the field of Mathematics Education, more specifically from the perspective of Ethnomathematics. It is characterized as qualitative with an ethnographically inspired methodological approach. Data production was obtained through participant observation and semi-structured interviews, with photographic records, audio recordings, and field diaries. The collaborators in this study were a family of smallholder farmers from a countryside community in the municipality of Itaobim, Minas Gerais, who cultivate and market vegetables as a means of subsistence and a source of family income. This study dialogues with the formative processes experienced by the researcher as a peasant farmer, seeking to reflect on rural knowledge and its relevance for the (re)affirmation of peasant identity. Research results reveal that mathematical practices are fundamental in structuring peasants’ productive and commercial activities. They are mobilized based on the subjects lived experiences and adapted according to local needs. In this study, mathematical practices were highlighted in the ways time is organized at work, in the forms of measurement, and in the forms of negotiation. By considering mathematical practices as cultural processes, the study proposes a critical reflection on how knowledge is valued and reproduced in the school environment. Thus, it reaffirms the importance of recognizing the knowledge that emerges from peasants’ daily lives as legitimate knowledge sources. As part of a professional master's degree, we also produced an e-book as an educational resource, aiming to engage with countryside subjects and countryside education about the knowledge produced in the research and its contributions to countryside mathematics education.