Chapter 4.

1
MODELLING AND APPLICATIONS IN
PRIMARY EDUCATION

Maria Salett Biembengut

Universidade Regional de Blumenau, FURB, Brasil, Email: salett@furb,br

Abstract: This chapter is the result of the reflections on contributions presented by the
participants of the Primary Education Modelhng Group during the ModelUng
and AppUcation Study conference held in Dortmund, Germany in February,
2004. The material presented by the group participants gives opportunity for
some brief considerations regarding the day-to-day school life of children and
for the presentation of modelling procedures for use in primary education, as
well as it invites reflections on the possibility of these procedures becoming
school practices in light of the level of training of the majority of teachers.

1. DAY-TO-DAY SCHOOLING
In everyday life, children perceive their envh-onment, obtain information
and select from it, compare it to what they already know, and after assimila-
tion, confer significance to the various scenarios that surround them. The
child is always interactively researching everything within his grasp. His
imagination surpasses the limits of the image, leading him to create symbols
or objects and to form ideas, giving form, color and sense to the world in
which he lives.
This complex process peculiar to the human mind passes basically
through three stages, which can be described as those of perception, com-
prehension and signification. This means that each sensation or perception
that the child takes in from his environment generates imagination and ideas
in his mind that, starting from the comprehension that he already has, may be
transformed into significance, a mental model that results into understanding
(Kovacs, 1997). Mental models, or representations of the world of which he
belongs, have an ever- increasing capacity to express and reproduce, in vari-
452 Chapter 4J

ous ways. This means that the child creates and re-creates models in his
mind that can allow him to establish ways of being and acting (Sacks, 1995).
Li most cases, children are inserted into the knowing and doing of things.
However, when they end up going to a formal schooling, concerns about
rules, convention and program curricula result in the fact that there is not
enough time left to stimulate creative and imaginative talents. The teaching
of mathematics, for example, frequently leads children to respond to specific
questions (generally arithmetic questions) in a certain standard way, without
considering the amount of information that they have already received from
the outside world, much less their particular capacities. This contributes to
passivity and inhibition on the part of the child in his resolution of signifi-
cant questions, becoming an obstacle especially when learning mathematics.
Several studies show that during the grade school years children tend to
apply strategies in a superficial way when solving problems, leaving out
their knowledge of the real world. Among the reasons for this, Bonotto
(2004) points to textual factors related to stereotypical problems in the text-
books associated with classroom practices which contribute to this dissocia-
tion between school mathematics and the mathematics applied to various,
day-to-day situations. A lot of empirical data points to the fact that teacher
education courses in various countries do not foster consistent or sufficiently
encompassing education in the future teacher, one which would enable the
use of alternative practices in the classroom in accordance with the socio-
cultural reality in which they perform (Palm, 2004).
Currently, in most countries, curriculum reforms and their accompanying
documentation more or less explicitly assume that one of the most important
objectives in mathematical education is to help students acquire the ability to
develop and use mathematical models as a means of making sense out of
day-to-day situations, which leads to making sense of the complex systems
that make up modem society (Blum, 2002). The purpose is not only to moti-
vate students by daily 'contextualizing', but also to create conditions in
which they can learn to research, and come to comprehend the significance
of what they are studying. Research shows that the use of applications and
mathematical modelling in teaching can enable students to learn and develop
abilities for making use of mathematics outside of the classroom and further,
it provides motivation for studies that are relevant to mathematics (Biem-
bengut, 2004).
Both curricula reform and research confirm that although mathematical
modelling has been shown to be an advantageous strategy for the student'
academic formation, it is hardly adopted in most countries, and even less in
the primary school. The justification of many teachers is that they do not feel
able to deal with the situations or questions posed by children in the daily
education practice, or that they do not feel able to explore the links between
4, L MODELLING AND APPLICATIONS 453

curricular and extra-curricular knowledge.

2. PROCEDURES IN PRIMARY EDUCATION

In the process of perceiving a real context, understanding and explaining
by means of a language or system of signals, followed by external descrip-
tion or representation, one can recognize the same mental processes that are
used to construct what has been perceived. That is to say, in making a model
of an observed phenomenon or in using a model for understanding or solving
something, one can identify the three phases of the cognitive process: per-
ception, comprehension and model-signification. In these terms, modelling
procedures in primary education are synthesized into three phases that will
be called perception and apprehension, comprehension and explanation and
signification and modelling. These procedures can be adapted at any level of
teaching in the course of the academic year, with some or all curriculum sub-
jects. Furthermore, these procedures can be realized in flexible phases in a
circular, give and take process.

1^^ phase: Perception and Apprehension

This first phase seeks to stimulate the perception and interest of children
with material and artifacts that illustrate the environment. The idea is to
promote activities that involve them with nature (beauty, harmony) and with
other participants and symbols that they already know in this context, as well
as to sharpen observation and attention towards things that are as yet unper-
ceived. This means that this context has value as a model or something that
motivates them, at another time, in the learning of mathematics. This is the
phase in which children seek to inform themselves from the context in ques-
tion and obtain the greatest number of facts (Gravenmejer; Winter apud
Schwarzkopf, 2004). Although perception is not the only source of knowl-
edge, it is without doubt essential to the first description of the environment
that surrounds them, allowing children to decode, effect representations and
furthermore, to deal with new situations, visualizing the occurrence of phe-
nomena, and judging and comprehending something in this respect.

T^ phase: Comprehension and Explanation

In this phase, we seek to promote activities that allow children to go be-
yond images already learned, leading them to conceive other images and to
delineate symbols, stimulating association of ideas and comprehension. It
consists of teaching children to understand the real world in a quantitative
sense and leading them towards using mathematical symbols as a means of
454 Chapter 4A

representing things that they observe and find interesting. Based on ideas
that they akeady have about comparison or measurements, for example, it
comes to be a means of teaching mathematical concepts symbols that are as
yet unknown. What is important is that it is a 'back and forth' process among
the materials and artifacts that surround the students and that they can handle
or observe the mathematical symbols. Mathematics needs to be learned and
understood as another language, another way of representing, visualizing,
comprehending and communicating. If mathematics is learned as a language,
or rather if the materials or artifacts can be described in mathematical lan-
guage, and vice-versa, then there is a better chance that the children will not
reject them, especially during the later phases of teaching (van den Heuvel-
Panhuizen, 2004). In accordance with the level of education of the child, ac-
tivities that integrate other areas of knowledge may contribute. In this way,
children do not disconnect mathematics from reality, while comprehension
of unknown facts is facilitated, by means of a process that assimilates such
knowledge or reduces it to already familiar facts (Bonotto, 2004).

3^^ phase: Signification and Modelling

At this phase, the child should recognize both the materials that surround
him and accumulate mathematical symbols and concepts, based on previous
knowledge and available references (mathematical or otherwise). According
to Steinbring (1999), symbols are necessary to the process of knowledge but
a referent context is required in order for these symbols to be understood and
interpreted. Learning is a circular process of construction of relations be-
tween these functional components of knowledge. Building relationships
between symbols and a referent context requires the creation of a sub-
adjacent conception (mathematical), which provides integration of the
knowledge within a theoretical structure (Schwarzkopf, 2004). Thus this 3*^^
phase, the most challenging, consists of sharpening the child's creative sense
in solving questions or making representations of some material in terms of a
model. The goal here is that children be encouraged to reorganize a variety
of situations, capable of being translated into mathematical language, which
permits them to inform themselves in detail about mathematics and the pos-
sibilities of using it to learn more about the complexities of the real world
outside of a school context.

3. POSSIBILITIES OF MODELLING AND APPLI-

CATIONS
In an ongoing research (cf. Biembengut, 2005) the above procedures
were applied for two consecutive years, in an experimental phase, with 2
4, L MODELLING AND APPLICATIONS 455

classes (70 children) from the 2^^ grade in 2001, and with the same children
in the 3°^ grade (64 children) in 2002, in primary education. One of the ac-
tivities developed with children from the 3"^^ grade was the growth of plants.
The mathematical content to be taught was the system of linear measure-
ment. As such, in the 1^^ phase the children were taken to the school's garden
to observe the plants around them to explain what they perceived, knew and
felt. Next, a container of earth was distributed to each group of two children
in order to plant com or beans. The containers were kept in a place suitable
for growing plants, to which the children had easy access in order to care for
them and accompany the development of their respective plants. Li the 2°^
phase, during the germination period, the children were taught, among other
programmatic contents, linear measurement. As soon as the plants started to
grow, each group of children took daily measurements of their plant and re-
corded data in table form. Li the 3^^ phase, they represented their respective
data on graph paper, obtaining graphic representation of the linear growth of
the plant in relation to time. Next, it was proposed to the children that they
compare their data and graphic representations with each other. Most of the
children verified that the growth data and graphic representations of each
plant did not coincide, but that the graphic representations seemed alike - in
the form of the letter 's'. Even without formalizing a 'logistical growth
model', the activities developed allowed the children: to observe and inter-
pret symbols and their significance; to relate, integrate and represent data
from external means and to comprehend the environment conceptually.

4. CONCLUSION
In the primary school, where the mathematical syllabus (elementary
arithmetic and geometry) can be richly and lively applied to the universe of
children, it is not difficult to plan activities that make children to understand
mathematical contexts and to play with the mathematical language. Empiri-
cal research has shown that curiosity and comprehension in children in re-
gard to the environment in which they live can be strongly stimulated. By
formalizing or representing different events or information perceived and by
elaborating particular categories such as, for example, symbols and mes-
sages, most of the children exhibited gradual advancement in their ability to
understand and respond to the activities proposed. This affected both evalua-
tion of what they know and what they do not know. Thus, children gifted
with a sharpened sense of imagination can dare to look for solutions and may
find effective means for predicting the course of events that occur around
them (Bonotto, 2004).
It is worth noting here that knowledge flourishes to the degree in which
different events or perceived information can be represented by means of
456 Chapter 4.1

symbols and messages. Thus mathematical modelling in primary education

can contribute to this 'flourishing' since the activities involved in the process
can lead the child to understand a situation or context and get to know the
mathematical language that allows him or her to describe, represent and
solve a real-life situation or context and to interpret/validate the result within
this same context.
This means that the teacher is in control of various areas that make up the
school curriculum, and has the means of facilitating various levels of expres-
sion (linguistics, mathematics, technological artistic) and feels capable of
modifying objectives and classroom content along the way. It is also positive
that teacher is going to deal with a significant number of children from dis-
tinctly different sociological and cultural realities, all of who require the
general education that is necessary and sufficient for taking part in the envi-
ronment in which they live. But the teacher has to be aware of this: changing
the beliefs, conceptions and attitudes of teachers is essential to turn mathe-
matical modelling a natural practice of teaching.

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