UM ESTUDO SOBRE AS FONTES DE ATITUDES EM RELAÇÃO À GEOMETRIA

The Psychology of Mathematics Education, the theoretical field of this research, is an interdisciplinary area that aims to study the processes of teaching and learning Mathematics from the perspective of cognitive and affective aspects. Among the affective aspects, we highlight the attitudes that have a strong influence on student learning. The main objective of this research was to investigate the sources of attitudes of high school students towards Geometry. A total of 201 students from a technical school in a city in the interior of São Paulo participated in the study and responded to a scale of sources of attitudes towards Geometry (EF), developed and validated for this study. The statistical analysis indicated good reliability of the scale (Cronbach's alpha equal to 0.744). The sources of attitudes investigated were: direct experiences, vicarious experiences, social/verbal persuasion and teaching materials. The methodological design was based on exploratory research. Data analysis showed, in general, that the sources that most influenced the development of attitudes were direct experiences and the use of different teaching resources by the teacher. As for the other sources, social/verbal persuasion, the results showed that people who are closer to the research participants, such as friends, teachers and parents, exert more influence than people who do not have ties with the students, in the development of attitudes towards Geometry. Vicarious experiences had little influence on attitudes, when compared to the other sources.