MATHEMATICAL MODELLING AS A PEDAGOGICAL ACTION: EXTRAPOLATING CLASSROOM SPACES

Abstract

This article presents an excerpt from a research for a professional master's degree in mathematics education conducted with 17 second-year high school students, from a private school, in a city located in the eastern region of the State of Minas Gerais, whose objective is to present a pedagogical action for the sociocritical perspective of Mathematical Modeling related to the development of Combinatorial Analysis concepts. During the development of the modelling activities, students in their groups visited gyms to observe the processes of prescription of bodybuilding training sheets at peak times, in which it is usually necessary to rotate equipment between the attendants of this type of physical training. After this visit, students performed curricular activities in mathematics classes to analyze processes of prescription of training sheets and develop mathematical models with the support of the knowledge related to combinatorial analysis, which aimed to minimize and/or reduce the problem of congestion in the visited gyms. The data produced in this research are qualitative in nature in which they were analyzed through an adaptation of the Grounded Theory. The results show that one of the suggestions to minimize the problem of congestion in these gyms was to increase the number of machines in the weight room. It is important to highlight that the critical and reflective discussions about the quality of the service offered by the gyms were also observed by the students in the process of elaborating mathematical models.