Educação matemática e ambientes virtuais: uma análise das interações ocorridas em um chat educacional

The present study is inserted in the scope of discursive practices of students in high school in the context of mathematical education, supported by information and communication technologies. The few opportunities of dialogic interactions offered to these students led the research teacher to propose and analyze a didactic experiment using the internet chats. Therefore, the objective of this study was to verify the discursive dynamic between students and teacher and the way the later mediated the interactions development. The study also sought to investigate the presence of the argumentative speeches in the activity developed, recognized instruments in the collective building of meanings. On the contrary of what normally occurs in conventional classrooms, the analysis of the speech in the chat class revealed a discursive predominance of the students in relation to the teacher, in addition to the reduction of their asymmetric relations. Several argumentative episodes were also observed, which were classified in a crescent scale of quality, noting, this way, several efforts of negotiation and, consequently, of building of meanings. However, the intense communicative flow, associated to restrictions of symbolic records of the chat environment, brought some communicative difficulties to the teacher and the students. Nevertheless, through the exchanges of synchronous messages, something so appreciated by the young, it is possible to involve students and teachers in rich dialogical interactions. In other words, the present study concludes that the chat showed itself to be fruitful in the favoring of discursive dynamics and the knowledge construction of the students.