Proportional reasoning in basic education El razonamiento proporcional en educación básica

Abstract

This research article is the result of a research project on early algebraic thinking in technological learning environments and results on proportional reasoning are reported as a path to early algebraic thinking. The study was carried out with 109 basic education students from public schools, the State of Mexico and Mexico City and one of the objectives of the study was to validate an instrument on proportional reasoning. For this, a mixed methodology was used, an observational, longitudinal and comparative study with three stages: 1. Initial evaluation on proportional reasoning, 2. Validation of an instrument on proportional reasoning, 3. Open clinical interview. The results reveal that students manage to understand ideas of arithmetic and geometric proportionality and variation provides, and understand the problems that involve the functional relationship, as a consequence of the transition from additive to multiplicative thinking. With regard to the evaluation instrument, a hypothetical model of convergent and divergent construct validity was proposed in the measurement of proportional reasoning and the resulting model obtained acceptable practical indicators of goodness of fit and high reliability coefficients. In addition, the instrument showed convergent and divergent construct validity. Finally, we can conclude that proportional reasoning is a viable route to algebraic thinking, although the students have not yet developed all the cognitive and mathematical structures to understand the complexity of proportional thinking, the results of this study allowed us to elucidate early stages in the cognitive development of children with relevant tasks and approaches.