Cenas de uma aula de álgebra: produzindo e negociando significados para a "coisa"

Abstract

This paper intends to analyze, from a semiotic, epistemological and pedagogical point of view, the meanings produced and negotiated in a math class of the 7th grade when the teacher and her pupils conduct an algebraic activity. The analysis, regarding the communication/meaning process, is founded theoretically on Vygotsky and Bakhtin. is founded on Bachelard e Brousseau. This study shows that whe the teacher and pupils try to produce/negotiate meanings for algebraic representations, they are likely to produce “polyssemies” (multiplicity of meanings) for words, such as, in the case, ‘‘square” and “thing” that may generate didactic, epistemological or verbal obstacles.