Mathematics Education and the genre conception in memes: an analysis under decoloniality lens

Abstract

This research aims to investigate how the gender conception of students from the 1st year of high school is shown through activities with memes in a math class. In this way, theoretically we rely on studies on gender and decoloniality, focusing mainly on the idea of ??decoloniality of gender, which is opposed to gender coloniality that is evidenced from a Eurocentric perspective of knowledge, that is, as something belonging to white men, in our case, effectively mathematical knowledge. Thus, we developed activities with memes from the internet that dealt with the gender theme, perpetuating a colonial position, as well as memes that referred to women as not having the logical-mathematical knowledge. These activities were sources of reflection on each student’s own conception of gender and enabled these conceptions to come to the fore. Our results indicate that the colonial conception appears initially, however, the reflection provoked in group and on the “mathematical knowledge” allows for signs of transformation, reconsideration and confirmation of diverse gender conceptions, in order to promote a decolonial movement in terms of that conception.