Curriculum, Culture and Ethnomathematics: The practices of ‘cubagem of wood’ in the Brazilian Landless Movement

This paper looks at the field of Mathematics Education and its relationship with cultural, social and political issues. It approaches this theme within the landscape of the struggle for land carried out by the Brazilian Landless Movement (Movimento Sem Terra - MST), and the role that has been played by Education in this social movement. The first section of the paper presents a succinct view of this landscape. The second section discusses Ethnomathematics, focusing on some of the issues that are currently being studied in this field of Mathematics Education. The third section shows and discusses an excerpt of an empirical study based on an ethnomathematics approach, performed with a group of students of an MST Teacher Education Training Course. The study had as its main theme the practices of 'cubagem of wood'. Here the previously analyzed ideas interact with the data collected during the fieldwork. The paper ends by presenting some final thoughts.