Os obstáculos epistemológicos com números inteiros negativos: um estudo de caso com os alunos do 7º ano do ensino fundamental da Escola Orley Cavalcante Pacheco

Abstract

This paper presents the results of a research developed with students of the 7th grade of Orley Cavalcante Pacheco Elementary School, who present difficulties in conceptually understanding negative integers. The main question of this research is: What are the obstacles encountered by students when studying with negative integers? How to help solve this problem. Thus, we intend to identify and analyze the epistemological obstacles present in the process of teaching learning. In this way, it is possible to understand the theory of negative integers, their history, origin and application, which was studied. In order to reach this goal, we performed the research in three moments: in the first moment, the application of diagnostic test containing the operations with integers, in the second moment was applied the workshop of integers to try to heal these epistemological obstacles and, to finish in the third moment was Applied another diagnostic test involving operations with negative integers. We observe that the identified obstacles refer to the epistemological with the following cases: One refers to the transition from knowledge of natural numbers to negative numbers, and the other in the process of memorizing the operative rules. However, the student cannot perceive that these form a single set that is the set of relative integers.