Once Upon a Time… The Gypsy Boy Turned 15 While Still in the First Grade

Abstract

The need to develop a bottom up curriculum for Roma students (preschool education) in order to support their learning at school—language and mathematics—and with a view to contribute to their social inclusion through an ethnomathematical perspective led us to conduct fieldwork on the Roma students’ community of origin. The ethnomathematical perspective supported the combination of a critical ethnographical fieldwork using critical communicative methodology (CCM) for exploring students’ funds of knowledge as well as the parameters that affect Roma children’s education . Poststructural ideas such as power/power relations contributed to understanding how inequalities are constructed through discursive practices, making the inclusion of Roma (and other marginalized groups) merely rhetorical. The pragmatological material, discourse, discursive practices, practices, representations etc.; derived from the community informed both our practices/our interventions in the kindergarten, and our future actions in the community aiming to respond in social justice issues, important for both Roma and non Roma communities.