Teaching algebra to visually impaired students

contributions from triggering learning situations

Abstract

Considering the need to combine theory and practice in planning teaching situations for visually impaired students, this research adopted the assumptions of the Historical-Cultural Theory and the Activity Theory, and was based on the Teaching Guiding Activity. Learning triggering situations for algebraic knowledge were developed, and interventions carried out with a 7th-grade student and another from 8th grade, both visually impaired and attending the multifunctional resource room of a public school in the state network, were analyzed. The aim of this article is to recognize the appropriation of algebraic knowledge by visually impaired students from learning triggering situations. To this end, the data were organized into two categories: manifestations of conceptual nexuses and manifestations of thought and language. These two categories allow understanding the phenomenon of "appropriation of algebraic knowledge" from the situations presented to the students. At the end of the study, it is highlighted that the elaborated situations allowed symbolic and instrumental mediation, enabling the appropriation of the conceptual nexuses of algebra (variation, variation field, and fluency) and of some selected school contents (recognition of unknowns, dependency of variables, and operations with monomials and polynomials). It should be noted that the proposed triggering situations achieved these results through a teaching organization process that considered the conditions for accessibility of the students served.