MATHEMATICAL COMMUNICATION: CONCEPTIONS AND PRACTICES OF FUTURE TEACHERS

The skill of communication has great importance in education, providing moments of argumentation and discussion. Thus, it is essential to adopt a favourable communicative environment, creating opportunities to promote the questioning in order to clarify, challenge and evaluate, encouraging interaction, discussion and negotiation of meanings. The teachers' role is crucial, they explain, ask, listen and answer, regulating the speech of students, promoting the development of their thoughts and dialogues. The teachers' perspective in relation to communication and their role in mathematics learning affects and defines their professional practice. In order to investigate the concepts and practice of mathematical communication of 12 Preservice Teachers of Portuguese basic education, in a perspective of reflection on their practices, we studied how they use mathematics communication in the classroom. The kind of tasks implemented in the classroom, the school environments, which favoured social interactions, the communication practices and the mathematical processes, which have been established in class have all been identified. The methodology was qualitative, following a case study design using a survey by semi-structured questionnaire supplemented with individual interviews, when necessary, in order to examine how to use mathematical communication in the context of teaching practice. Content analysis and SPSS software to record and cross the data collected were used. We conclude that these young teachers claim the use of different work methods and mutual aid in school, as well as planning creative and challenging mathematical tasks that provide communication in the classroom. These tasks also promote and encourage the dialogue between students, as well as between students and teachers in the development of mathematical processes in which mathematical communication is potentiated.