This study aimed to understand relationships between the everyday mathematical knowledge constructed by working-class youth and adults and the school mathematical knowledge that they confront when they return to school for basic education. For this study, an ethnographic research methodology was developed in a poor neighbourhood of the city of Rio de Janeiro, Morro de São Carlos, monitoring routines of a local course for adult education, as well as aspects of the daily life of the students and their community. Results showed a strong association between the use of mathematical skills in daily life and survival strategies to satisfy basic needs. Emotional factors appeared to stimulate some of the subjects' mathematical strategies. For the adults of our study, school world and daily life world were represented as separated, as well as the mathematical knowledge generated in each of these contexts.
ethnomathematics; adult basic education; quantitative and spatial representations