Abstract

FAVERO, Maria Helena  and  NEVES, Regina da Silva Pina. Problem solving competencies and problem solving analysis competencies: a study of teachers, education students, education graduates and psychologists. Psicol. esc. educ. [online]. 2009, vol.13, n.1, pp.113-124. ISSN 1413-8557.

Official reports in Brazil reveal specific difficulties related to division and rational numbers, suggesting that the teaching valorizes algorithmic rules over the concepts themselves (Fávero, 2001; 2007). We describe two studies. In the first one, we show three written and typed school assessment tasks to 20 teachers who work with grades 1 through 8. We asked questions regarding notation, error interpretation, the corrections made and the sort of procedure which could help solve the difficulties shown in each of the three tasks. In the second study, we showed two tasks to 26 education majors and 6 psychologists: the solution to a problem situation and the analysis of the records produced by seven students who worked on the problems. The results indicate that: participants describe errors without formulating hypotheses; they attribute them to the students; they speak in Constructivist terms, which are incompatible with their conceptual doubts and answers.

Keywords : Mathematics education; Problem solving; Evaluation.

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