Teachers’ conceptions and practices on the history of mathematics in teaching at 5th and 6th grades in Portugal

Abstract

This paper presents some results of the project (H)ISTO é MATEMÁTICA — História da Matemática no Ensino da Matemática (History of Mathematics in teaching), a research project that has as one of its main goals: to describe the initial and continuous training of Portuguese teachers in History of Mathematics (HM), as well as their conceptions and practices on the use of HM in teaching. In particular, we present the results of applying an online questionnaire to a group of 259 Mathematics teachers from the 2nd Cycle of Basic Education in Portugal (5th and 6th grades). With this survey our purpose is precisely to characterize teachers’: (i) training in HM; and (ii) conceptions and practices about the utilization of HM in the classroom. Notice that this study intends to respond, among others, the lack of studies on this subject, particularly at the level of the first years. We use quantitative data analysis methods, namely descriptive statistics. The main conclusions of this study are: 1) most teachers considered the training in HM obtained in their higher education as non-existent or reduced; 2) the overwhelming majority categorized as non-existent or reduced their continuous education in HM; 3) most teachers reported using HM as a didactic resource in Mathematics class (many of them in a regular basis); 4) teachers resorted more frequently to textbooks and favoured the use of HM in the introduction to new mathematical subject; 5) regarding to the potential of using HM in teaching, teachers evaluated the didactic potential of HM very positively; the biggest constraints were related to the extension of the official curricula, the scarcity of support materials and the difficulty of evaluation.