Didactic Experimentation for the Development of Meaningful Learning Aiming at Understanding Rationals: a study based on teaching research

Abstract

The objective of this research was to develop an attractive and dynamic way of learning rationals to facilitate the understanding and assimilation of this content for students of the 6th year of Elementary School. For this purpose, a survey was conducted with 30 Mathematics teachers from public and private institutions in the North and Northwest Fluminense of the State of Rio de Janeiro, in order to obtain specific success data for this learning in their classes. In this Teaching Research, it was found to be appropriate to conjecture experiments using contextualized activities, games and manipulative materials, with the intention of promoting the development of a more meaningful learning. In this sense, for the construction of the didactic proposal, this research was based on the data from the aforementioned Teaching Research. The qualitative methodology was used, with a view to analyzing the assimilation of the contents by the students from the experimentation, verifying to what extent these resources integrated into the didactic proposal would make learning meaningful. Data were collected through the application of investigative questionnaires, didactic sequence and evaluations, in addition to observations and pedagogical interventions. The didactic sequence and data collection were implemented in three 6th grade classes of Elementary School at Colégio Estadual Maria Leny Vieira Ferreira Silva, in the city of São José de Ubá - RJ. The results were analyzed in the light of David Ausubel's theory and showed that the proposed experimentation significantly contributed to the broad understanding of rationals, promoting students' autonomy, critical sense and argumentative capacity.