Memorização versus construção conceitual: reflexões sobre o ensino de matemática na 2ª série do ensino médio

Abstract

The difficulties presented by students in the 2nd year of high school regarding the understanding of the exponential function cannot be ignored in the process of teaching and learning mathematics. In light of this, this work presents the results of research aimed at analyzing how students construct (or do not construct) mathematical concepts when teaching moves away from simple memorization and approaches more meaningful practices. This is qualitative research (Creswel, 2010), which used bibliographic review, direct observation, and the application of a didactic sequence based on active methodologies (Moreira, 2011) as data collection instruments. The participants were 33 students from a 2nd-year high school class at a school in the city of Parintins-AM. The results obtained indicate that, from the perspective of meaningful learning, conceptual building in mathematics occurs more effectively when the content is contextualized, valuing the prior knowledge of students, their experiences, and active participation in the learning process.