A história da matemática como alternativa didática: uma coletânea de atividades

Abstract

The use of Mathematics History as a didactic tool is not common yet in Brazilian Schools, not even with the intensification of debates around this possibility, after the 1980’s, with emergence and fortification of Mathematics Education movement, that struggles to improve the teaching of such a discipline, showing new approach alternatives, among them Mathematics History. In this context, the aim of this work is to offer a didactic possibility for the teaching of mathematics, taking as reference Mathematics History, because we consider that to know the history of the contents worked in classrooms gives the students the opportunity to discover knowledge through investigation, what makes Mathematics History not only a motivating element for classes, but also an instrument of knowledge building, once it instigates students to solve questions they normally ask about Mathematics theories and concepts. In order to reach our desire, we opted to dedicate, at first, to know how Mathematics History is constituted in the world and in Brazil, after that we made a survey with mathematics teachers in Mossoró in order to analyze several factors related to mathematics classes. Among them, the most important thing was to verify if the teachers knew Mathematics History and made use of it as a didactic resource, and their disposition to this alternative of teaching. Through this survey, it was clear, although we believed that teaching through history bring benefits to learning, that only a few teachers used this alternative, that is why we decided to propose, as a final product of this work, a collectanea of activities of mathematics focused on History, that we compiled from other actors, to collaborate with teachers who are open to inovate their mathematics classes. We believe that offering an organized material, in which the teachers find several matters of school curriculum being covered in a historical way, we are contributing to insert this didactic alternative at schools