TIME in Action: Theory and Research in Elementary Mathematics

Abstract

The goal of this paper is to describe and analyse some activities carried out in the extension project called Theory and Research and Elementary Mathematics (TIME), which is run by teachers of the Department of Mathematics at the Universidade Estadual de Maringá. Aimed at students and teachers of Basic Education, it uses approaches in the form of Problem Solving, Workshops and Mathematical Research methodology. This project has gained prominence in Maringá and region for its approaches and results in olympic competitions of Mathematics, leading us to want to understand how their meetings, their methodological approaches, their organization and the results regarding the participation and learning of their attendees. In this sense, we conducted a qualitative research, which follows the interpretative paradigm in the participant observation modality. Following these paths, we observed the operation of 3 workshops that were held during some of the TIME meetings in 2018. The results of this research show that the TIME provides a space of methodological experimentation for students and teachers of the Mathematics degree, besides contributing to its participants understand how mathematical knowledge is built, thus enhancing critical and creative thinking. Thus, the project contrasts with traditional teaching, which generally presents mathematics as a ready and finished knowledge, sequentially exposed based on axioms, definitions, theorems, demonstrations, examples and fixation exercises.