ABSTRACT

Between 1947 and 1967, during technical training in Portugal, students attended the Ciclo Preparatório do Ensino Técnico [Technical Education Preparatory Cycle]. This teaching cycle, for children aged 10/11, intends to provide generalist training to students immediately after primary school and delay the decision-making process of the child who would have to choose a professional path at the age of 12.

 

During this period, textbooks to support mathematics education were published. In Portugal, a law was in force that determined the existence of a single book, called Livro único, with a single textbook being approved by the central administration, to support the teaching of the subject.

 

This research will carry out a documentary analysis of two curricular dimensions: the ‘prescribed’ and ‘enacted’ curriculum. In countries with centralized educational systems, as was the case in Portugal in the decades under study, the prescribed curriculum (the program), involves decisions by government entities. Once established, the programs are presented to teachers in the form of curricular materials, mainly through textbooks. We will analyse the ‘enacted’ curriculum using the methodological framework of Okeeffe (2013) and Kruger (2010), applied by Almeida & Rodrigues (in press) and Rodrigues (in press).

 

The mathematics program remained constant during this period. In this text, we will analyse the textbook Matemática. 2.º Ano do Ciclo Preparatório, for the second year, published in 1957. After a chapter with revisions of concepts taught in the 1st year, the textbook is organized into 3 chapters, two on intuitive geometry and one on practical arithmetic. According to the author (Santos Heitor), to facilitate understanding of the concepts, real-life problems are contextualized through the Silva family, made up of a couple and two children. We will focus our analysis on the Geometry chapters.

 

It can be seen that the approach to the mathematical theme of Geometry often uses the contextualization of situations in the daily life of the Silva family and the visualization in terms of the figures to be studied.

 

The information collected in the analysis of the manual allows us to reflect on the importance of the textbook in student learning, at a time when mathematics teaching has undergone major transformations. Authors of the textbooks tried to incorporate their experience as teachers in the preparation of textbooks, not losing sight of the importance of preparatory training from the perspective of professional training and, at the same time, preparation for life in society.

 

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Kruger, J. (2010). Lessons from the early seventeenth century for mathematics curriculum design. BSHM Bulletin, 25, pp. 144–171. https://doi.org/10.1080/17498430903584136

Okeeffe, L. (2013). A Framework to Textbook Analysis. International Review of Contemporary Learning Research, 2(1), pp. 1–13. http://dx.doi.org/10.12785/IRCLR/020101

Rodrigues, A.S. (2014). Os programas de matemática no ensino profissional [Mathematics programs in professional education]. In A. J. Almeida & J. M. Matos (Eds.), A matemática nos programas do ensino não-superior (1835–1974) (pp. 95–113). UIED e APM.

Rodrigues, A.S.C. (2015). A matemática no ensino profissional: os programas e as representações dos professores [Mathematics in professional education: programs and teachers’ representations]. Doctoral thesis. UBI. http://hdl.handle.net/10400.6/3992