Resumo

LEON GOMEZ, Nelly A.. The study of probability in basic education 7th grade textbooks. Investigación y Postgrado [online]. 2006, vol.21, n.2, pp.177-200. ISSN 1316-0087.

Change is part of all contexts involving humans. This fact determines its importance as a part of a person's mental development. Probability, a branch of mathematics, offers concepts and methods that can help a person's decision making process and uncertainty management. As part of the official curriculum for basic education, the probability content for the 7th grade is organized in two areas: the resolution of non deterministic problems, and the representation of events using tree diagrams. Textbooks are an excellent resource for the teacher and the student; therefore, the author must design the content with a didactic approach that transforms the “known knowledge” into a “school knowledge” comprehensible to the student. This article reviews four 7th grade math textbooks according to four criteria: content scope, sequence, examples and problems, approach to probability and use of terminology. The goal was to show the specificity of language use and detect ambiguities that may result in misinterpretation of probabilistic concepts.

Palavras-chave : probability; textbooks; probabilistic terminology; mathematics.