Actividades enfocadas en el aprendizaje basado en problemas que favorezcan la adquisición de destrezas de pensamiento lógico matemático en estudiantes de octavo año EGB del Colegio de Bachillerato “Prof. Nelly Aguirre Cárdenas” periodo lectivo 2023-2024

Abstract

The current research work starts with the presenting difficulties in the area of mathematics of the students of the eighth grade of General Basic Education of “Prof. Nelly Aguirre Cárdenas” high school, by not having developed an adequate mathematical competence, presenting difficulties when students formulating, solving exercises and problems that imply mathematical- logical thinking skills application. It establishes as objective to propose activities focused on Problem-Based Learning that favors these skills acquisition. The research is based on the qualitative approach, with a socio-critical paradigm; it is inductive and interpretative research because it is concerned with visible facts to interpret and understand them, using like methodology, the case of study with its phases; for data collection, it applies participant observation, a semi-structured interview with the teacher, and a semi-structured interview with a focus group of students. After data analysis, the following barriers were identified: cognitive difficulties associated with not understanding mathematical concepts, content, and procedures; also, the majority of students do not use reflective strategies, they use meaningless processes, they use algorithms without really understanding their meanings; sometimes, pupils do not get to make connections between the proposed situations and their daily reality; moreover, students consider math as not practical and not useful subject for their daily lives; to this problem, it adds the lack of flexibility to encode and decode the presented information, because of students generally memorize the procedure, but when other problem with different parameters is presents, they cannot solve it; with the design of activities focused on PBL that favor the mathematical-logical thinking skills acquisition, the teacher, instead of providing knowledge, encourages the student "to learn to learn", allowing their participation in the process be active, conscious, and reflective; since it is an approach that focuses on the meaningful active learning of students; through the resolution of problems focused on situations of the context where they interact.