Pedagogical practice of geometry in youth and adult education: teaching and learning

Abstract

This article presents results of a survey that aimed to identify, interpret and describe the methodology adopted by teachers of Youth and Adults Education (YAE) to teach quadrilaterals and parallelograms and check the main ideas assimilated by the students in this content. As theoretical foundations of the research were used, mainly, the development model of the geometric notion proposed by the educators Dina Van Hiele-Geldof and Pierre Van Hiele, the Mathematics Curriculum Guide (MINAS GERAIS, 1997), the Curricular Proposal intented to YAE (BRASIL, 2001), and Crowley Studies (2011) in the Van Hiele’s model. Two groups of reviewers were studied, the first consisting in five teachers and the second in ten students. To collect the data needed do develop the required search, an interview was recorded with the teachers, and was asked to the students to solve a practical activity involving the knowledge inherent in parallelograms quadrilaterals. With the study was found that the surveyed teachers develop their teaching predominantly by expositive and demonstrative manner with emphasis on transmission of information, considered essential, in view of geometric shapes’s images, the resolution of standard exercises, structures and elaborated based in informations that were passed on verbally and in models, suggested in differents textbooks. Due to these strategies and teaching procedures adopted by the teachers, students of YAE can’t dominate the fundamental properties that characterize the geometrical figures and end up having difficulties in identification of these forms.