KNOWLEDGE MOBILIZED BY YOUTH AND ADULT EDUCATION TEACHERS ABOUT THE PARALLELGRAMS AREA
Keywords: Parallelogram area. Youth and Adult Education. Theory of Conceptual Fields. teachers
The objective of this research was to investigate cognitive, didactic and/or mathematical knowledge mobilized by teachers of Youth and Adult Education in relation to the area of parallelograms (squares, rectangles and non-rectangles and non-diamonds parallelograms). As theoretical support, we use the Theory of Conceptual Fields, developed by Gérard Vergnaud and his collaborators, and the approach of area as geometrical magnitude proposed by Régine Douady and Marie-Jeanne Perrin-Glorian. The empirical material analyzed consisted of the responses of 24 teachers who teach or taught mathematics at EJA to a questionnaire prepared on Google Forms. In addition to questions aimed at outlining the profile of the research participants, teachers were asked to analyze some activities in the area of parallelograms and evaluate resolutions of supposed EJA students when answering these activities. After analyzing the results, we highlight the importance of more training aimed at teaching the area of parallelograms in EJA, as 45.8% of teachers reported never having had training aimed at teaching this content. This may have influenced the result of the interviewed teachers, as some showed signs of difficulties such as: lack of importance for the use of measurement units; difficulty in non-prototypical figures; difficulty in calculating area and perimeter of parallelograms.