Enquadramento de números racionais em intervalos de racionais: uma investigação com professores do ensino fundamental

Abstract

The basis for the present study were the activities developed by Régine Douady (1986) involving the framing of rational numbers on intervals, addressed to French students of the educational segment that corresponds to 1st-8th grades in Brazil. In the present study, those activities were updated taking into account elements from recent Brazilian investigations on the meanings assigned by Brazilian students of 1st-8th grades to relations and to order relations, and elements of the Brazilian Curricular Guidelines of 1997 and 1998. By applying the methodology of case study, and in the light of the notion of tool object dialectic of Régine Douady (1984), the updated activities were presented in eight sessions to two mathematics teachers of the 7th and 8th grades in a private school in the city of São Paulo, both of whom were experienced in working with this theoretical framework, with the purpose of investigating what aspects these teachers take into consideration when discussing and developing their lesson plans regarding those activities. Particular attention was given to the changes and adaptations they made to the activities in order to facilitate their use in the classroom, based on their teaching practice, the actual features of the school and educational system in which this study was conducted, the school s program, recent investigations conducted with Brazilian students, the Brazilian Curricular Guidelines of 1997 and 1998, and the theoretical framework developed by Douady. In the present study, this process has been termed reupdating