A criatividade matemática de John Wallis na obra Arithmetica Infinitorum: contribuições para ensino de cálculo diferencial e integral na licenciatura em matemática

Abstract

The research which arose this doctorate’s thesis had as purpose examining in which ways John Wallis’ ideas, emerging in Arithmetica Infinitorum, dated 1656, has presented contributing innovations for the didactic and conceptual guiding of Differential and Integral Calculus’ curricular components basic notions, in Mathematics Licentiate course. For that matter, we evaluated the production’s pedagogical potential to subsidize mathematical concepts’ teaching, mainly integral notions, aiming theim provement of students’ understanding about these mathematical ideas, which are contemplated in the Mathematics Teachers training course. Acknowledging that the students need to expand the number of paths which lead to the development of a Mathematical idea, in this study we propose to answer the following question: how can the didactic exploration of a mathematician’s creative exercise contribute to the pedagogical approach for the Calculus and Analysis teaching, in Mathematics Licentiate course? For that we leaned on the creativity criteria discussed by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, due to considering it substantial in the thinking cycle explanation regarding the Mathematics creation. We relate to these principles the processes developed by Advanced Mathematical Thinking, suggested by Tommy Dreyfus, in order to highlight how these processes attach to creativity notions. Therefore, we formulated a model to examine the writing Arithmetica Infinitorum pointing its pedagogical potential to subsidize mathematical concepts’ teaching, based on aninvestigative character. This way, it was possible to establish a connection proposal between mathematical knowledge historically developed by different mathematicians and their conceptual and epistemological potentials, with a possibility of being implemented in Mathematics teacher’s actions, Mathematics teacher’s trainer, in order to grow expertise and abilities for a forthcoming actuation of the training teacher.