Reprodução e produção das condições sociais em aulas de matemática: uma perspectiva trilhada na sala de aula

Abstract

Traditional teaching practices still prevail largely in Brazil despite strong criticism that has being addressed to them as well as many alternative proposals, some of them from mathematical education field. Similar situations can be found in many countries and it challenges us to better understand what collaborates with their persistence. At the same time, it challenges us to contribute to overcome traditional teaching undesirable outcomes. In this dissertation we present a bibliographic search within sociology of the education field trying to elucidate relations between school and society that sustain traditional schooling. We are certain that the ways in which schools work are complexly connected to historically forged beliefs that are present in society. We also present two inside-classroom investigations that took place with the objective of interfering in the classroom environments by means of creating innovative proposals. With the analyzes of those investigations we intended to explore a theoretical tool which allows us to promote a confrontation between what we criticize and what was achieved. So the intention is to contribute to the mathematical education field by stressing the possibilities of generalizing this theoretical tool as well as detaching other elements found from the work inside the researched classrooms. We adopted coteaching as a research method considering the determination to work, as much as possible, close to the work conditions that teachers are subjected to in their day-by-day life. It includes sharing teachers position, videotaping classes and analyzing collectively specially chosen events. Three episodes were selected to be analyzed here. One of them happened in a federal elementary school which considers experimental teaching as a norm. The two others were extracted from another public elementary school, this time a State one in which traditional teaching is the norm without any visible questioning movement. Most of the fieldwork was done in this second school. We argue that the alienation concept is really adequate to indicate how human relations in traditional teaching mirror other relations that sustain the capitalist productive system. Using this concept, we have a reference to promote actions that intend to overcome the worse effects of traditional teaching which affects mainly students who come from unprivileged social classes.