Construção da identidade pessoal e do conhecimento: a narrativa no ensino de matemática / Building of personal Identity and knowledge: narrative in the teaching of mathematics

AUTOR(ES)
DATA DE PUBLICAÇÃO

2006

RESUMO

A splitting between knowledge and personal identity occurs during everybody´s school days. In the case of Mathematics, it is possible to notice clearly the separation of both phenomena, because of the debatable objectivity of the matter. Contrary to what is taken for granted, the difficulties that our students face are not technical but of affective origin: when someone wants to learn even the most difficult obstacles can be overcome. So, what should we do when the students give Mathematics up? How to restore their relationship with Mathematics? How to recover someone who has gotten lost facing numbers and mathematical formulae? Taking such questions in consideration, the target of this paper is a theoretical investigation to adequately understand the building up of the personal identity and the building up of the knowledge. Our intent is to demonstrate that the narratives can articulate both processes, so that the meanings, according to Jerome Bruner, are negotiated and established via narratives, because the concept of identity, in Charles Taylor´s opinion, demands a narrative understanding of the life. Supported by Paul Ricoeur and Julian Marías, we have checked the interdependence amongst the personal identity, the language, the narrative, the human action and Ethics. We have also checked how someone´s self is preserved throughout life, historically and culturally, as well as the role of fiction for the self-understanding. Concerning the construction of knowledge, we dealt with the construction of the reality, afterwards we dealt with the matter of concepts, and culminated with the study of the narrative as a way to attain knowledge. At this point, our conclusions came together with Ortega y Gasset´s and Jose Antonio Marina´s findings. As far as Mathematics is concerned, we ascertained that many concepts are based on stories of action and manipulation of objects; besides, the narratives mean a possibility to insert Mathematics in the fields of human achievements, with a more dramatic meaning. And Kieran Egan taught us how a Mathematics class, shaped as a story, could be. Finally, we have presented some suggestions which could be a starting point to use the narratives in the Mathematics classes. We have concluded that the narratives are indispensable because with them we can assemble the construction of meanings for the contents of our teachings, to quietly build a set of moral values and to seed projects.

ASSUNTO(S)

ethics knowledge Ética mathematics ensino personal identity narrativa teaching conhecimento matemática identidade pessoal narrative

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