ISGEm supports the development of activities and publication that improve collaboration, exchange, and dissemination of ideas and information on all aspects of theoretical, methodological, and practical bases of ethnomathematics and its connections to mathematics education, total peace, social justice, decolonization processes regarding to the procedures, techniques, strategies, and practices developed locally, globally, and glocally by members of distinct cultural groups.
ISGEm also fosters efforts to improve the quality of mathematics teaching and learning worldwide through ethnomathematics and the connections between mathematics and culture to respect and value diverse modes of doing mathematics, as well as to support and assist meetings and/or conferences of affiliates organizations. As ISGEm and ethnomathematics in general move on past this almost forty-years anniversary, the challenges of these times of fake news, pandemics, and wars, environmental and sociocultural issues fit into the underlying objectives of ethnomathematics. It is time for ISGEm to answer this call and the Executive Board count with the support of ICMI. It is important to state here that these reasons are also related to the purposes of ICMI.
In the last four decades since ISGEm was created in 1985, there have been five presidents of this study group: Gloria F. Gilmer (from August 1985 to July 1996), Ubiratan D’Ambrosio (from July 1996 to July 2000), Paulus Gerdes (from July 2000 to November 2014), Maria Luis Olivera Contreras (from November 2014 to July 2018), Lawrence Shirley (Interim President from July 2018 to January 2020), and currently, Milton Rosa (since January 2020). It is important to emphasize that, in 1985, the International Study Group on Ethnomathematics (ISGEm) launched Ethnomathematics internationally and helped this program to grow theoretically and methodologically. Also, in August 1985, the ISGEm Newsletter was launched and published twice a year: May and November.
More information about ISGEm can be found on the ISGEm website.