Mathematics Teaching in Brazil: Overview, Current Context, and Challenges

The article provides an overview of mathematics teaching in Brazil, examining various scenarios throughout the country’s history, guided by the question: What are the main historical milestones of mathematics teaching in Brazil and the intersections that have influenced this process? The qualitative research, descriptive-bibliographic, consisted of analyzing a corpus comprising official documents and reports, results of international assessments, and data from the Brazilian educational census, retrieved from repositories linked to the Brazilian Ministry of Education and universities. It was also based on the work of leading Brazilian researchers in the history of mathematics teaching. The analysis pointed the main historical milestones that contributed to the consolidation of mathematics as a school subject in basic education were highlighted, the implications of some international indicators related to student performance in the constitution of the school curriculum, as well as the developments of the central current public policies related to the teaching of mathematics and the contributions of mathematics education to the improvement of teaching. In conclusion, highlights aspects that characterize mathematics teaching in Brazil, including alignment with teacher education guidelines, perspectives derived from the common minimum curriculum, and the impact of research results in mathematics education.