Understanding how children experience the relationship between home and school mathematics

This paper examines how children experience the relationship between their home and school mathematics. First, it is argued that the current theory of culture and cognition provides a limited explanation of that relationship. In particular, it is argued that it fails to take into account (a) diversity at the individual level and (b) the valorization attached to forms of knowledge of particular social groups. Secondly, it is suggested that current social representations and social identity theory can offer a basis to reconceptualize that relationship. Finally, a study with school‐children growing up in a farming community in rural Brazil, where home mathematics differs markedly from school mathematics, is described to support the above argument.