Cultural artefacts as a metaphor to communicate mathematical ideas

Abstract

The cultural artifacts created by the culture of a particular group of people embed sophisticated mathematical ideas and knowledge. The cultural artifacts familiar to students mediate to communicate abstract ideas of mathematics. This paper is intended to explore the mathematical ideas embedded in cultural artifacts and to assess its contribution to the process of teaching and learning of school mathematics. The ethnographic methodology was used to collect the data. Highly sophisticated mathematical ideas were found in the analysis of different cultural artifacts observed in the out-of-school environment. The cultural artifacts familiar to students are the source domain of conceptual metaphor to communicate difficult and abstract concepts of mathematics. Both teachers and students reported that the cultural artefacts and different cultural activities of the group of people help them in teaching and learning of mathematical concepts.