EDWARD LEE THORNDIKE, JOHN DEWEY AND MATHEMATICS EDUCATION ALONG NEW SCHOOL MOVEMENT IN BRAZIL

Abstract

The following research project has as theme the history of mathematics education in Brazil during New School movement. Specifically, it is related to the appropriation of authors as John Dewey (1859-1952) and Edward Lee Thorndike (1874-1949) in Brazilian mathematics education having as background New School's ideas. The theme started getting shaped during the execution of master research (RABELO, 2010), in which elements related to circulation of educational ideas and appropriation by educators in Brazil appeared and gave birth to a series of questions. With my insertion in NIEPHE (Interdisciplinary Nucleus of Studies and Researches in History of Education) and GHEMAT (Group of Research in History of Mathematics Education), and having as reference a wide literature about the theme, as Tanuri (2000),Vidal (2000a, 2000b, 2001), Warde (2002), Santos (2006), Saviani (2009), Valente (2012), besides ample production from NIEPHE and GHEMAT, the early questions got shaped until culminate in the present project. Such project has as guiding question: Which role did John Dewey and Edward Thorndike have in Brazilian mathematics education during New School movement? Thus, it is aimed to investigate the difusion and appropriation process of these authors' studies in the mathematics teacher education in Brazil between 1930s and 1960s. The research will be developed based in Cultural History, in which concepts such as practice, representation and appropriation, as addressed by Chartier (1990, 2009), will be essential, as much as notions of circulation and transfer that are related to a comparative education perspective (BEECH, 2006; GROUX, 2009). Research will count on source collecting in places such as CPDOC/FGV, USP's archive, UFRJ's archive, Teachers College/University of Columbia, articles in Brazilian pedagogical journals from 1920s to 1960s (for example, Revista Brasileira de Estudos Pedagógicos-RBEP); publications of National Council of Teachers of Mathematics-NCTM-USA and the original and/or translated works of Dewey and Thorndike. Furthermore, the research will count on the data and results obtained in the researches developed in the ambit of NIEPHE and GHEMAT. With the research proposed it is expected to identify elements that point to different appropriations of Dewey and Thorndike, even though such appropriations are divergent, and the way it happened. Moreover, with the results and the compiled database, it is expected to move forward through new researches, in relation to both a compared history of education and the circulation of educational ideas in the field of mathematics education in Brazil.