Mathematical investigation contributions for the financial education and economics teaching

Abstract

Background: The proposal of financial education in classrooms is born in the expectation of changing an irresponsible consumption scenario that society is going through and should be included in all student educational contexts, from elementary to higher education, aiming to provide consumers-individuals with basic notions of economics and consumption. Objective: Analyse how investigative tasks can contribute to the financial education and economics teaching. Design: Methodology of mathematical investigation. Setting and participants: The research was carried out with twelve students in the discipline of Financial Mathematics, in a mathematics program at a university in the state of Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil). Data collection and analysis: This article is characterised as qualitative research and the data produced (tasks, recordings, questionnaire, forum) were analysed through discursive textual analysis. Results: Possibilities of conjectures and resolving strategies; investigative activity importance, in group, for the creativity and autonomy learning and development; critical thinking development in the decision making process; relations between the task and daily life situations; and analysis of difficulties during task execution. Conclusions: Through this study, we conclude that the investigative tasks have contributed for the teaching and learning processes, when the small groups made discoveries and followed different paths during each problem situation solving, they demonstrated enthusiasm, creativity, and autonomy. When the results were compared, at the moment of interaction with the bigger group, the groups realised they could have chosen other paths, or any important factor, which could have been part of the analysis, had not been considered, what yielded several discussions in the classroom as well as in the virtual forum, strengthening a critical and collaborative thinking development.