A study and research path for the study of simple and compound interest notions

Abstract

In this paper, we present a study of the personal relations of a group of higher education business management technology students submitted to a Study and Research Path - SRP. We focused on the SRP implementation and experimentation process and the analysis of didactic gestures found during this process. As the didactic engineering of SRPs is a theoretical construct of the Anthropological Theory of the Didactic - ATD, we consider here the elements of this theory that theoretically grounded the research, in particular, the notions of personal relation, praxeologies, and the inquiry dialectics. The research was of a qualitative nature and the SRP experimentation was carried out with ninety students from a private university of the state of São Paulo in eight one-hour sessions. We observed that, as a result of the new methodology used, the notions of the financial mathematics field were treated by the students as tools integrated to other disciplines, which does not correspond to the usual development of the course.