Mathematical Modelling and Bank Loan Systems: An Experience with Adults Returning to School

Abstract

We chose two Brazilian bank loan systems to discuss with a class of 20–38 year-old students from a last year in Brazilian “Education of Youth and Adults”, aiming to verify which kind of discussion—mathematical, technical or reflexive—emerges in a mathematical modelling environment. We divided the class in seven groups of three students, and organized four 90-min meetings during their mathematics classes, all of them in the evening. In each of the first three sessions, we presented three guiding questions to be discussed in the small groups. In the fourth, the teacher-researcher promoted a whole class discussion. In this article, we present some of the discussions raised during the sessions in one of the groups, which has shown interaction among them. We realised mathematical discussions were almost absent in their discourse and they were concerned with solving the questions as mathematical exercises.