Aproximação entre teoria e prática: a modelagem matemática como método facilitador para o ensino de funções exponenciais

Abstract

The fact that results about the main indicators at national and international level, that deal with the quality of the teaching-learning relationship in Mathematics in Brazil presenting worrying data, has instigated the looking for methodological alternatives to the teaching of this curricular component. Thus, the present research has the purpose of analyzing the use of Mathematical Modeling methodology as an alternative for developing better the teaching of exponential functions. And in order to accomplish this purpose, the informations have been collected by two questionnaries: one applied starting from the working-out of an experiment by the afternoon High School 1st grade ‘A’ class, in Aristófanes Fernandes School (EEAF); the other questionnarie, where the same students have evaluated the development of the classes, the methodology applied and have done a self-evaluation in relation to what they have learned about the content and the difficulties they find. Therefore, we have used 04 (four) classes of 50 minutes each one, to present the exponential functions content in a different way closer to the students reality. So, it has been from the “Lake Cleaning” experiment that the research has developed, facilitating the collection of information made by the students in the working-out of the proposed questions, to further analysis. In what concerns to data analysis, this process has been based on the theoreticals concepts about Mathematical Modeling and about observations and impressions done by researcher. From this perspective, one has concluded that the use of the proposed methodology is an alternative to optimize and/or facilitate the exponential functions teaching