Software educativo : contribuições para o desenvolvimento do pensamento aritmético nos anos iniciais do ensino fundamental

Abstract

This research has the objective of analyzing, based on Vygotsky’s theory, how educative software contributes to the development of the arithmetic thought, in the initial years of primary school. The theoretical framework has as a base the concepts of mediation, interaction, proximal development zone, and internalization by Vigotski, articulated with authors of the area of Mathematic Education. The research corpus, produced from interviews inspired in the Clinical Method by Piaget, is constituted by six 4th, grade primary students from a public municipal school of Bento Gonçalves, who explore, in pairs, previously selected educative software. The corpus treatment is based on textual discursive analysis by Moraes and Galiazzi, from which six categories of analysis emerge: educative software triggering processes of teaching and learning; mediation in the processes of teaching and learning; interaction subject-software; socio-interaction in the processes of teaching and learning; interest in educative software; and signs and movements of autonomy. Articulation among emergent categories, in the perspective of the theoretical framework, allowed to identify possible contributions of the educative software for the development of arithmetic thought. These contributions are related to mobilization of mathematical concepts and different situations of teaching and learning made possible by exploration of software. During this software exploration, it was possible to note various situations of mediation, interaction, and socio- interaction between students and researcher. It was mainly in these moments that mathematic situations were evidenced, making possible to problematize, reflect, make and test hypothesis about the mathematic concepts involved. In these situations, it was also possible to act in the student’s proximal development zone, allowing the production of calculation strategies and the potential of argumentation, contextualizing mathematical knowledge and valuing the students ‘capacity. The moments of interaction with software, of intervention of the researcher, and socio-interaction with colleagues show movements of autonomy of students, besides their interest and enthusiasm when they perform the proposed actions. In this research, other studies were presented, that highlight contributions for the processes of teaching and learning with the use of software with different characteristics, if compared to those explored in this research. It was considered important to select in an adequate way the software to be incorporated to the pedagogic process.