A bandeira nacional na medida certa: um olhar para o ensino contextualizado de geometria

Abstract

This paper aims to present contextualized methodological strategies which focus at improving the teaching and learning of geometry. For that, it has been developed an applied and interpretive qualitative research with students from the 8th grade of elementary school in the city of Ponta Grossa, Parana, in 2009. It has been started from a contextualization with the National Flag of the Federative Republic of Brazil for the students to construct meaning, raise their prior knowledge, make inferences, comparisons, simulations, and value judgments, as well to use geometric knowledge to perform the reading and representation of reality and act over it. Throughout this process, in order to collect data it has been used school records, reports and pictures of students doing the activities and showing their results. The main conclusions obtained in this study were: a) a contextualized geometry teaching contributes to the students to produce meaning to the geometric content, b) the students demonstrated to become more aware that the mathematics related to geometry is present in things of the everyday. It is expected that this study contribute to the rupture of the formalistic character that pervades the study of geometry. From this research it was developed a textbook about the history and geometry in the flag of Brazil for teachers and students who seek to broaden their knowledge regardless of their formation area.