Software educativos para o ensino de matemática: desenvolvimento e classificação com base em requisitos pedagógicos de práticas com materiais concretos

Abstract

In recent years, many educational practices have been based on constructivist principles which posit that learning is a process in which students build knowledge. Thus, it is common to use concrete materials to assist in the education of school children. Educational software is another resource that has led to important changes in the way mathematics is taught and learned. This study aimed to (1) contribute to the development of mathematics educational software by building a database of educational requirements that considers educational practices that employ concrete materials; (2) use the educational requirements of a "doublepan balance" to develop a computational tool (a virtual double-pan balance ) that would solve some of the material challenges facing Brazilian teachers and to observe the tool s affect on the computational aspects of the learning process; (3) conduct a survey to determine which educational practices employing concrete materials, educational software and software assessment methodologies are in use by mathematics teachers at the best schools in Brazil; and (4) create a model to classify mathematics educational software that considers the requirements of teaching geometry with concrete materials. In order to assist developers and evaluators of educational software, the database of educational requirements includes twentyseven requirements on the subject of "Numbers and Operations"; twenty-nine on "Space and Shape", twenty-three on "Quantities and Measurements" and six on "Data Processing". The computational tool fulfilled the requirements of Brazilian teachers and increased student motivation, accountability, dialogue, cooperation, discussion, reciprocity and reflection during the process of building procedures to solve linear equations. Regarding exploratory practices, all the mathematics teachers surveyed had adopted teaching strategies that used some kind of educational material. More specifically, twenty-nine types of concrete materials and twentytwo types of software were in use. Most of the teachers were using software that had been recommended by other teachers, found through internet searches or mentioned in textbooks. None of the teachers mentioned using evaluation methodologies for educational software. The classification model for mathematics education software was based on the participation of all involved stakeholders. Thus, the satisfaction (or dissatisfaction) with the presence (or absence) of a product s requirements was determined. An indicator was used to qualify the educational software as Basic, Advanced or Superior and each of these categories was subdivided into three levels of quality. The proposed classification system considers parameters specific to mathematics education in addition to general educational parameters.