As concepções de probabilidade de professores de matemática da educação básica e acadêmicos do PROFMAT

Abstract

The objective of this study was to investigate the conceptions of Mathematics teachers about Probability. We analyze the conceptions of two groups: Teachers who teach mathematics in basic education (final years of elementary and / or high school), working especially in the western and southwestern regions of Paraná, who are academics of PROFMAT (from a pole located in the southwest region of Paraná) (Group A); Teachers who teach mathematics in basic education (final years of elementary and / or high school), working especially in the western and southwestern regions of Paraná (Group B). Group A consisted of a total of seven participants (total of students in the class, except the researcher). We chose to select seven participants for Group B, so that both groups had the same number of participants. The choice of the teachers of group B was based on the fact that they were teachers with teaching experience in the basic school and because they work/reside in the same region of the state of the other participants. We also discuss whether the conceptions of the teachers graduated on these courses differ from those who were not graduated by PROFMAT. It was adopted as references researches in the area of Mathematics Education whose object of study are the knowledge of the teacher who teaches Probability. The data collection came from semi-structured interviews that were analyzed through the Content Analysis methodology. We emphasize the following categories for analysis: the academic formation of teachers, conceptions about Probability, conceptions about the probability of being taught at school, conceptions about the construction of probabilistic knowledge, conceptions about students difficulties in Probability, teachers conceptions about the difficulties in teaching Probability and on textbooks. Based on the performed analyzes, we conclude that the graduations, in particular the one developed in the scope of the PROFMAT, were not enough to make these conceptions close to what the specialized literature recommend as necessary for the teaching practice when teaching probability in school.