THE DEVELOPMENT OF COMPETENCES FROM MATHEMATICAL MODELING: A STUDY WITH STUDENTS OF THE FOURTH YEAR OF GERMAN PRIMARY SCHOOL

Abstract

The objective of this work was to identify the mobilized mathematical competences by students of a fourth year of a German Primary School. The study was developed within the scope of qualitative research, based on the development of a task of Mathematical Modeling by three groups of students. The resolutions and negotiations produced by the participants were analyzed according to the theoretical assumptions of the development of competencies comprehended in the modeling cycle of Blum. Among the results, we emphasize that the research subjects were capable of: (i) negotiating and justifying the relevant information to the proposed problem situation, which enabled the groups to understand the situation, simplify and structure the data and construct a mental model of the situation; (ii) arguing and defining actions to represent mathematically the data considered relevant and translate them into a mathematical model and (iii) interpreting the obtained mathematical model and validating such result for the real situation, leading them to an appropriate solution of mathematical problems to their hypotheses.