ETHNOMATHEMATICS IN THE SCHOOL ENVIRONMENT: FROM READING BARCODES TO SUPERMARKET TRANSACTIONS

Abstract

The automation of cash registers through barcodes does not replace just one task, but a broad set of skills, including rapid mental calculation, weight and price estimation, manipulation and rounding of values, as well as the social interaction required during conferences. Ethnomathematics provides an approach to recognizing, valuing, and discussing this loss of cognitive and cultural skills. Thus, this study questions which mathematical knowledge, both cultural and social, present in the traditional activity of the cashier, becomes invisible or is altered with automation using optical readers, in addition to investigating how this knowledge can be recovered for pedagogical purposes. The overall objective is to explore, in light of ethnomathematics, the practices and mathematical knowledge related to working at a supermarket checkout before automation, and to propose educational activities that take advantage of this context as a significant resource for teaching mathematics, stimulating critical reflection on the relationship between technology and society. In this sense, educational activities will be proposed, such as simulations of “human cashiers” without the use of technology, interviews with professionals in the field, and comparative analyses of the processes. These initiatives aim to give visibility to this knowledge, use it as a basis for teaching operations and quantities, and foster a debate on the effects of technology on work and on our daily interaction with mathematics.