Candy Selling and Math Learning

Abstract

An overview of accumulating research on children's out-of-school mathematics raises critical questions about how children come to form mathematical understandings in their out-of-school activities and about the interplay between informal and school mathematics learning. The author investigates these questions in an illustrative multimethod study on Brazilian child candy sellers. Findings show that sellers with little or no schooling develop in their practice a complex mathematics that contrasts sharply with school mathematics. Further, analyses reveal an interplay between what they learn in selling candy and what they learn at school: Sellers in school use their street mathematics to work school mathematics problems, and schooled sellers use some limited aspects of their school, mathematics to solve problems in their practice.