Motivos para envolvimento em tarefas investigativas em aulas de matemática à luz da teoria da atividade: um estudo com alunos do ensino fundamental

Abstract

This research focused on the study of students' motives for participation in investigative tasks in the mathematics classroom. In this sense, the main objective was to relate the involvement of these students in environments called landscapes of investigation and possible rapprochement between their motives and the object of this activity. For an understanding of activities, motives and object, sought support in the Activity Theory, which grounded this study, and whose roots lie in studies of Vygotsky, to also highlight Leontiev, Davydov and Engestrӧm. The methodological approach was qualitative. The fieldwork took place over one semester, during which time the researcher followed Mathematics lessons of two ninth grade classes in a public school in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais. Throughout my stay in the class, proposed four investigative tasks to the students, who were divided into groups of four or five members to work on the tasks. I chose to analyze, in more detail, their work on two tasks by a group of four students, with ages ranging from 14 to 17 years old. The methodological procedures were participant observation; two semi-structured interviews; written records of the tasks; questionnaires after the tasks; audio and video recordings in the classroom during work. Results showed that students, to verbalize their motives for participating in the proposed tasks, reproduce speech about the social significance of mathematics, as something useful for everyday life and for professional success in the future. The accepted the invitation to participate in landscapes of investigations for research is driven by local motives as 'fulfilling the role of student performing the task,' 'maintain a good image of student', and for these motives they became involved in the tasks. They were involved because they accepted the invitation. Other local motives such as 'like mathematics' or 'the challenge of the task', accounted for their involvement as well as their relationship to objects that were in the mathematical task such as a cellphone plan.