NARRATIVES OF UNDERGRADUATES IN PEDAGOGY ABOUT SCHOOL MATHEMATICS AND THE TRAINER'S CHALLENGE

Abstract

This paper analyzes how future teachers have understood/understand mathematical concepts throughout their school and academic trajectory and how their representations related to school mathematics and its teaching can influence the elaboration of new representations. This text is the product of a training-research methodology that used (auto)biographical studies as the theoretical-methodological framework. Data were produced by a memorial on education, pedagogical narratives, and transcriptions of the discussion-reflection group meetings. We carried out a narrative analysis of the produced data. The research evidenced clues that students have understood/understand mathematical concepts, often, painfully. Punishment and/or powerlessness are the most visible aspects that create representations of school mathematics as cold and hard to access, that few could learn and only deals with calculations. Students have distanced themselves from mathematics and believe they cannot teach it. The clues left by the students revealed the size of the challenge that the professors need to face: making the undergraduates aware of the obstacles arising from their school mathematics training so that these difficulties became an object of reflection, overcoming, and (re)signification during their academic education.