Atividade de ensino do número natural nos anos iniciais do ensino fundamental: perspectivas e práticas

Abstract

This thesis presents the results of a study aimed at understanding how teachers organize the Teaching Activity of natural numbers in the early years of Elementary Education. It is grounded in Vygotsky’s (1995) Cultural-Historical Theory and the Theory of Activity developed by the Russian thinker Alexis Leontiev (1988), which provide support for understanding human development through social relations and the appropriation of knowledge. In this sense, the development of teachers’ actions in teaching must be constituted as an Activity, based on the understanding that the organization of teaching is essential for the teacher to engage in Teaching Activity. In the search for answers, we investigated four in-service teachers working in the early years to gather elements about the constitution of teaching activity within the context of the labor society. The methodological path of this thesis was guided by a qualitative approach through field research conducted in two stages. In the first stage, to grasp the studied reality, semi-structured interviews were carried out with four teachers who teach Mathematics in the early years of Elementary Education. In the second stage, observations of planning routines and classroom lessons were conducted in the schools Atelier I and Atelier II, using the researcher’s field diary. Data collection took place between February and March 2024, a period during which the teaching of natural numbers was being developed in the classroom. From these instruments, the data for analysis were organized, initially, into two categories: Teaching Activity: Organization and Planning; Training and Professional Activity. Subsequently, the category Teaching Resources was added. These categories are understood as part of reality and capable of revealing manifestations of teachers’ appropriation of the Teaching Activity. Although not claiming to exhaust the perspectives on the subject, this research allows us to defend the following thesis: even in the face of working conditions marked by alienating processes and the fragmentation of pedagogical practices, there remain possibilities for teaching actions to be constituted as Activities that reverberate in the teacher’s work — in the sense that the Activity performed becomes richer and truer than the consciousness that preceded it. Throughout the research process, the investigations revealed manifestations from the teachers regarding their appropriation of the constitutive elements of pedagogical activity organization, which resonate among the teachers studied. We understand that the way teachers structure pedagogical activities for teaching natural numbers allows us to identify how the relationship between teaching and development is realized, showing the role of teaching action in the formation of culturally elaborated modes of mathematical off concrete working conditions and academic training capable of promoting human development, transformation, and the emancipation of individuals through the mastery of historically and collectively produced knowledge.