THE PYTHAGOREAN THEOREM BEYOND THE CONTEXTUALIZATION IN RIKBAKTSA INDIGENOUS SCHOOL EDUCATION

Abstract

Indigenous school education among the Rikbaktsa people, encompassing their basic education, is well-developed, with schools located in their communities and Rikbaktsa teachers working in all areas of knowledge. In the field of mathematics education, Rikbaktsa mathematics teachers work from an ethnomathematical perspective, which seeks to value the traditional mathematical knowledge and practices of the socially identified community through their contextualization in the teaching and learning process of mathematics, as well as their inclusion in the school curriculum. This work aims to present the results and conclusions of the workshop entitled "The Pythagorean Theorem in the Rikbaktsa Context," developed by three Rikbaktsa mathematics teachers and the authors of this article. To this end, it begins with three contextualized problems that the three Rikbaktsa teachers brought to foster the workshop. This is a qualitative study that analyzes and brings to light the discourses of indigenous teachers about their people's methods of measurement and how they interact with the non-indigenous Pythagorean theorem. The results indicate that the Rikbaktsa use sticks or ropes made of vine, which are marked with urucum-based paint, as references for measuring the legs and hypotenuse in the process of constructing the right triangle and developing the Pythagorean theorem.