1 Teaching mathematics to first grade Romany children, through familiar every day money dealings

This study examines the conditions in which the informal cognition children acquire through their every day experience is a suitable didactical context, in relation to the cultural particularities of the student group and its participation in the school. More specifically, an experiment was conducted to examine whether the informal cognition Romany children acquire through the money dealings in which they are involved, could be a working didactical context for teaching mathematics in a first grade education. It seems that the use of this context leads to the improvement in math education of this particular cultural group only if we use in the classroom very concrete money units. The results are different when we keep the context – money dealings- but we use money units unfamiliar to them, as units of small value are. A comparative study shows that this context is an ineffective one when the student group has not the same cultural particularities and school behavior