A matemática na formação em engenharia na perspectiva da tecnociência: o que dizem os egressos da Unifei-Itabira

Abstract

Itabira, MG, is a city dependent on iron mining, dominated by one of the largest mining companies in the world, Vale SA. The implementation of Unifei's campus pointed to the possibility of diversification of the economic matrix, anchored in the production of technological knowledge for the social improvement in the region by offering nine engineering courses. Within these macroeconomic and microeconomic scenarios, this research was conducted with the objective of analyzing mathematics in engineering courses at Unifei-Itabira, seeking to understand its relationship with decision-making by graduates, facing the social, economic and environmental problems of Itabira. and region. At first, the Pedagogical Projects of the courses were analyzed, as they are the guiding document of the proposal of the formation of the courses. In them, excerpts were highlighted with the contextualization of the professional activities in the social, economic and environmental areas of Itabira, refining the analysis in the curriculum components that allowed us to understand the insertion of mathematics in the training path of the engineers of that university. The analysis of the Pedagogical Projects pointed to technoscience as the structuring axis of the training of engineers, in line with the national curriculum guidelines and guided the elaboration of the graduates questionnaire. Secondly, an online questionnaire was used as an instrument of data construction, composed of questions with stimulated answers (multiple choice) and essays, supporting the analysis of this research material in studies on the relationship between education and technoscience, in contemporary times. The data obtained from the graduates' answers were processed, presenting them through graphs and tables. Then, the analysis of utterances taken from the graduates' dissertative answers was deepened, questioning the academic, economic, media and political discourses of technoscience in the education of Unifei-Itabira engineers. It was also identified, in the speeches of the graduates, relationships between the training offered in the courses and decision making in the face of social and environmental problems in the region. The result of the analysis of the data obtained from the graduates converges to a training in engineering based on technoscience, having mathematics as one of the elements that guarantee the formation in the basic sciences, as described in the following themes: a) Unifei in the training of engineers for the scientific and technological development; b) Unifei in the university-government-market triad; and c) Mathematics in engineer training and technoscientific implications for professional practice. It is concluded that there are tensions present in the training objectives expressed both in the pedagogical projects and in the speeches of the graduates, between meeting market demands and working towards social and regional awareness. There are also tensions in the approximation between theory and practice, between mathematics and its application in engineering, and the transition from a curriculum to the formation of multidisciplinary skills to contemporary work. Mathematical training is valued by graduates because it contributes to the development of logical reasoning and instrumentalizes it in the aid of programming functions and the development of logical analyzes that are, according to them, capacities valued by the market. Thus, mathematics, albeit indirectly, supports the decision making by the engineer, in the socioeconomic and environmental context in which he operates.