Learning Ecology for Teaching Probability in the Final Grades of Elementary School

Abstract

In this paper, we present an investigation that aims to develop, apply, and analyze a sequence of activities characterized as learning ecology oriented to the Teaching and Learning of Probability in the final grades of Elementary School. We selected students in the 7th and 8th grades of the last years of Elementary School from a public school in the state of Pernambuco. Based on the theory of Design Experiments, the research was carried out through three investigative cycles involving, respectively, the concepts of randomness, sample space, and quantification and comparison of probabilities. In the design development, we noticed that the main difficulties presented by the students are centered on the mapping of possibilities, which is related to the lack of repertoire of strategies used for combination, because the students did not know them or they did not know how to apply them in the activities. The results show that the resources and activities experienced by the students enabled them to learn probability contents. Among the results, we point out the conceptual construction of the notions of probability through the understanding of different situations of random nature and by situations involving the frequentist and classical conceptions of probability.