The perception of high school students in a public school regarding the applicability of mathematical knowledge in targeted professions

Abstract

It is common to the Mathematics’s teachers to hear from their students questions about why they are learning and developing certain content besides asking about when they will use it in their lives. The answers to these questions, that are typical adolescence and which must be received and answered with the proper attention by the educator, are definitive for the student's decision about the choice of his/her future profession. This is an approach considered important in the set of documents that guide education at the national level. However, at some moments, the educator doesn’t have the necessary time and deep knowledge around the diversity of applications of mathematical knowledge in different professions. So the present work aimed to: 1) make a survey about the possible graduation courses that a group of high school students from a public school intend to perform and recognize their perception about the use of mathematical knowledge in the professions of the courses mentioned; 2) intervene with these students, presenting to the group the specific mathematical applications for the intended courses and 3) allowing the class to evaluate the intervention in order to have added new knowledge about the professions. It was possible to note that, in the observed group, more than half of the class intends to graduate, for the vast majority, the intervention was positive, bringing new information about the use of mathematical knowledge in different professions.