Mathematics in teacher training and teaching: processes and dynamics of production of professional knowledge, 1890-1990

Abstract

Throughout the on-going projects developed at GHEMAT, the topic teacher training has been recurrently suggested for future historical research. This proposal takes into account previous achievements of the group such as the consolidation of a network of researchers, the collective work practices that have marked its activities, the advances obtained in relation to the production of the completed projects and the quality of the digitalized database made available. Added to the profile of the group are the apprenticeship of the craft of historian and the operative character of concepts of cultural history and the search for new references to expand its theoretical-methodological base, as the recent readings coming from the works carried out by the History Research Team Education (ERHISE), University of Geneva, Switzerland. These references are concerned with the historical understanding of the professional knowledge of teaching, objectified in terms of legislation, decrees, among others, regarding the knowledge to teach and the knowledge for teaching. In addition to the experiential know-hows that integrate the basis of teacher training, already evidenced in several researches, in the present project, Mathematics is considered as a tool of the teaching profession, as a professional knowledge committed to teaching. Thus, this project has its focus on objectified knowledge, formalized knowledge, systematized and elaborated by historical processes and articulated dynamics, belonging to the formation and teaching of Mathematics. The survey carried out in recent studies on teacher training points to the absence of research on objectified and systematized knowledge that is transformed into institutionalized knowledge to train teachers and to teach Mathematics in the first years at school. In this sense, this proposal has as general objective to investigate processes and dynamics constituting the professional knowledge of the teacher who teaches Mathematics in the period between 1890-1990. Given its temporal scope, the project elicited specific cuts of the broad topic to be investigated implying its unfolding in four axes, each of them comprising at least ten subprojects, all concerned in making intelligible processes constituent of Mathematics to be taught and of Mathematics for teaching and their articulated dynamics. Although it focuses its discussions on different aspects of the complex professional knowledge, the structural axes remain articulated, allowing integration between their respective proposals. From the different cuttings (experts, processes of Mathematics to be taught; processes of Mathematics for teaching, Mathematics taught), the subprojects of the axes seek to achieve specificities of the thematic project, be it to deepen the framework of common work, analyzing the movement of components curriculum of the formation, gathering and problematizing information about experts in official actions and regulations for the constitution of professional knowledge, producing inventories that allow analysis of knowledge to be taught and knowledge for teaching Mathematics, located in textbooks and pedagogical manuals, notebooks and school tests, either by continuing the organization of the database available in the digital repository, holding meetings for discussion and improvement on research and socializing data in scientific events and means of dissemination pertinent to the area. Among the results to be obtained in the project, a synthesis work will be elaborated which intends to contribute with the advancement of the current debate, the initial formation of teachers, about the professional knowledge of teachers who teach Mathematics in the first years at school. (AU)