The use of history episodes of mathematics in a didactic task looking at the production of meaning

Abstract

The present work refers to a qualitative approach and through a field research carried out with two students of the 2nd year of High School, to which was applied a didactic task using episodes of the history of mathematics for the study of the Thales Theorem. We aim to analyze the production of meaning under the contribution of the Semantic Fields Model (SFM), adopted as an epistemological reference in the research. We construct an episode in traditional report on the structuring of the Tales Theorem from the problem of calculating the height of the pyramid by Tales of Miletus in Ancient Egypt. We analyzed the written records of the students, the transcribed speeches, and gestures evidencing a reading about the production of mathematical meaning by the students. The productions of the students walked in the direction that was objectified, occurring production of mathematical meaning for the task submitted to the application. The elaborated task, for the authors, is capable of becoming an instrument that is incorporated into the strategies adopted by Mathematics teachers in the use of the history of mathematics in the classroom, enabling the approximation between student and teacher and between student and student, once that SFM allows and envisions this approximation between individuals.