The stories of systems of measures of length: contributions to the contextualization in the Mathematics teaching

Abstract

The article presents a contextualized approach to the subject of Measurements and Quantities, a component of the Mathematics curriculum of the Brazilian Basic Education, aiming to contribute to an interdisciplinary and historically situated analysis of these contents presented in the curricular organization as conventional measurement systems. Through a bibliographical and documentary research,  the themes and their indications of approaches in the National Curricular Parameters of the initial and final grades of Elementary and High  School were located ithin the scope of the guiding and recurrent proposition in these documents of contextualization and interdisciplinarity, problematizing the polysemy that carries these concepts in the educational debate. Then important historical milestones on the processes of formulation and adoption of measures adopted as universal standards were systematized, understanding them in the context of international political and economic disputes, and, in the Brazilian case, in the process of building unity and national identity forged throughout the 19th century. It is concluded that a more complex approach to the curricular themes, especially the content focused here, implies not only a rethinking of the Mathematics conception  in the first stages of Elementary School, surpassing the instrumental perception of this Science, but also in a historical understanding of the concepts that are taught. Thus, it is sought to add to the contributions on the new perspectives and possibilities of mathematical education, especially to the methodological tendency in the mathematics teaching that has as keen ally the history and the mathematics history as a teaching strategy.