Um estudo das competências e habilidades na resolução de problemas aritméticos aditivos e multiplicativos com os números decimais

Abstract

This research aimed to investigate the field of competence that students of the 6th year of primary school should have to solve arithmetic problems with decimal numbers, the additive and multiplicative field. We had the interest to answer the following research question: What is the field of competence that students 6th grade of elementary school should have to solve problems with decimal numbers?. The research was conducted through educational activities with decimal numbers with the students in the 7th grade of elementary school in a public school in Belém do Pará. We chose as research methodology aspects of the joint research, we believe that this method is the most appropriate for the type of study that set out to accomplish. The research instruments used in this research were the teaching, diagnostic tests, observation and audio recordings of conversations with students. To achieve the objective of this research, we use appropriate education activities of the study Jucá (2008) in which students could build the rules of operations with decimals and solve the additive and multiplicative field problems in connecting with their previous knowledge of operations and troubleshooting with the natural numbers, because we argue that knowledge of the natural numbers imply the learning of decimal numbers. So much so that this involvement extends beyond the operations, problem solving, and to this end, we seek justification in the theory of meaningful learning of Ausubel. To discuss about the semantic structure of arithmetic problems, we use the theory of conceptual fields of Vergnaud exploring problems related to additive and multiplicative structures. The results showed that the students who had skills with operations in the field of natural numbers learned satisfactorily operations with decimals, and showed better skills in problem solving. In view of this, we infer that for students to acquire competence with the decimal numbers they need to have competence with the natural numbers. In addition to that they are competent in solving problems with decimal numbers need to acquire skills with operations in modeling problems, to recognize and use the operation currently in trouble.