TEACHING COMBINATORIAL ANALYSIS IN MIDDLE SCHOOL: A SINGULAR PEDAGOGICAL APPROACH TO TEACH MATHEMATICS
Combinatorial analysis. Combinatorial Thinking. Mathematics Education. Physical Materials. Language.
Mathematics education presents itself as a major challenge to both teachers and students. Notorious obstacles can be found in different education levels. In order to lower such struggles in learning, the present work aims to investigate in which way the use of physical materials helps the process of developing knowledge for middle school students. To do so, we present, firstly, a brief historical description in humankind that allows us to show how math was created to attend certain civilizatory needs, through numeral systems. Furthermore, we approach a study that reflects on the curriculum projects to middle school's math teaching. In this sense, we discuss how mathematics appears in official documents: the Brazilian Common Curricular Parameters (Base Nacional Comum Curricular - BNCC) and the Brazilian National Curriculum Parameters (Parâmetros Curriculares Nacionais - PCN). Additionally, we discuss the concepts and implications of language study. Our intention is to understand how language contributes to the process of knowledge construction of combinatorial thinking. On this perspective, we debate on the definition of math literacy and brazilian students performance in Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). Aiming to complete and to strengthen the debate on how to diminish the difficulties in the process of teaching-learning mathematics, we discuss the importance of investing in research related to teaching combinatorial analysis, hoping that using physical materials significantly contributes to comprehending important mathematical concepts to the development of students.