Crenças e concepções sobre a natureza da Matemática de professores de Cálculo Diferencial e Integral nas engenharias

Abstract

This work came from a concern when reading and observing the scenario of difficulties that managers, teachers and students have encountered in the discipline of Differential and Integral Calculus (DIC) in Engineering courses. When searching for answers in the literature, it is clear that any effort to improve the quality of DIC teaching should begin with an understanding of teachers' epistemological beliefs and conceptions and how these are related to their pedagogical practices. Thus, the general objective of this study is defined as investigating and understanding the beliefs and conceptions about the nature of Mathematics of teachers, who teach or have already taught DIC in Engineering at the IFMG campus Bambuí and, investigating the correlation of these with their practices taken to the classroom. Having chosen the qualitative nature with a focus on the case study as a methodological research guideline, two instruments were considered for data production and collection: an open questionnaire and an individual interview that addressed different beliefs and conceptions about the nature of Mathematics. The interpretation and analysis of the data obtained, in conjunction with the elements of the theoretical foundation (THOMPSON, 1982; ERNEST, 1988; PONTE, 1992) used, indicated that beliefs and conceptions mobilized by teachers are related to their life stories and professional experiences. However, we found that teachers' beliefs and conceptions about the nature of Mathematics and its teaching, identified by their statements through the themes i) professional training; ii) methodology and iii) the DIC discipline are linked, but do not directly correlate. Thus, elements of different conceptions were identified in the same teacher. This means that the same teacher can mobilize different conceptions depending on the situation and moment he experiences in his teaching practice.