PROBLEMAS DE OTIMIZAÇÃO E MUDANÇA DE QUADROS EM UM TRABALHO COM PARTICIPANTES DE UM CURSO DE ENGENHARIA

Abstract

In the teaching experience, difficulties of initial semesters’ engineering students in working with functions and their representations were found. The objective of this research was to identify the contribution of an intervention based on a set of optimization problems to expand the participants' knowledge about functions. The research was guided by the Design Experiment by Cobb et al, a methodology of interventionist nature whose intention is to investigate the possibilities of educational improvement, bringing new forms of learning. Douady's ideas about frame changes provided the theoretical support and we aim, with the proposed problems, to bring such changes by solving optimization problems. The participants had the opportunity to analyze the data and concepts that were presented to them in basic education with more depth and propriety and to develop a vision about understanding the use of functions to solve optimization problems.