INFLECTIONS OF PRAISE FOR MATH EXERCISE LISTS: PRATICAL – POETIC LISTS

Abstract

This article analyzes Critical Mathematics Education (CME) through a Foucauldian lens, specifically within the framework of discourse analysis. The main objective is to discuss how the learning environment of the exercise paradigm persists and/or is updated in mathematics textbooks. The research, documentary in nature and with a discursive approach, analyzes the collections: A conquista da Matemática (2018) and Contato matemática (2016), for elementary and secondary education respectively, distributed by the National Textbook and Didactic Material Program (PNLD) of 2020. The focus is on proposing a study environment that does not oppose contemporary learning environments, but rather shifts the gaze in other directions and senses, praising exercises through practical-poetic exercise lists. The results indicate structural continuities of the exercise paradigm in the architecture of textbooks, even if traversed by subtle discursive updates in the wording of some exercises. Just as a way of shifting and repositioning the lenses that observe the exercises, the proposition of the practical-poetic study environment (re)signifies the lists by articulating practice, technique, and experiencing the world. Therefore, we find that the paradigm of the exercise remains and predominates in relation to the landscaps; however, it can be challenged, fractured, and (re)configured.