CLASSIFYING SOME TESTS ACCORDING TO BALACHEFF’S TYPOLOGY

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to analyze some tests made by 35 students of the senior year of the High School of the Institute Federal Fluminense - campus Cabo Frio. Therefore, we used the typology of Balacheff, which differentiates mathematical tests into two broad categories: pragmatic evidence (more related to handling and examples) and intellectual evidence (which is distant from the examples and uses up more of abstraction). Among the pragmatic evidence Balacheff distinguishes three levels: the naive empiricism, the crucial experience and the generic example and among intellectuals evidence he highlights the mental experience. These levels were used to classify the evidence of the students and so understand a little more of their reasoning and justifications. Data analysis showed that most of the evidence held by these students is between naive empiricism and crucial experience.