Atitudes em relação à leitura e desempenho na resolução de problemas de alunos ingressantes do curso de matemática

Abstract

Research has shown that writing and reading are important in the development of students in problem solving. Others point to a close connection between students' attitudes towards certain areas of knowledge, such as Mathematics and Statistics, and their performance in these activities, respectively. Thus, it is possible to hypothesize that the attitude towards reading may be related to problem solving, since understanding what the problem proposes is a reading activity and without which it is not possible to proceed with the resolution. This dissertation aims to identify whether the attitude of students of the Licentiate in Mathematics course towards reading is related to their performance in Mathematics Test. The research had a descriptive exploratory approach. The locus of the research was the Federal University of the South and Southeast of Pará (Unifesspa) and the students of the Mathematics course (Licentiate) who attended the first semester in the year 2020. Two instruments were applied for data production: the Scale of Attitudes towards Reading and a Mathematics Test. The results show that the group's attitudes towards reading were more negative, and the female gender showed more positive attitudes towards reading than the male subjects. The overall grade average for the class on the Mathematics Test was below the average for this test (0,0 to 10,0 points). Regarding attitudes towards reading and how it relates to students' performance on the Mathematics Test, we identified that negative attitudes were mostly concentrated in the group of those who obtained the highest grade on the Mathematics Test and those located in the group that had lower grades had more positive attitudes, pointing to a possible inverse relationship between the constructs in the researched group.