GAME OF AFRICAN ORIGIN AT SCHOOL: AN INTERVENTION PROPOSAL FROM SHISIMA
Mathematics Teaching; Game as a teaching strategy; Shisima African game; Elementary School
This investigation believes in the importance of games as a didactic pedagogical strategy in working with mathematics education. Moreover, allied to this assumption, it perceives the need to insert the discussion of Afro-Brazilian traditions in the Brazilian educational context, given our ethnic matrices, in this case, through the rescue of games from that continent. To this end, it proposes research with qualitative and quantitative nuances—in the sense of proposing a pedagogical work that favors Shisima, a game of African origin—through the structuring of didactic-pedagogical strategies that allow the promotion of different actions that consider the context of children's sociocultural context, the objectives foreseen for the teaching year that will be the target of the research, in addition to the potential of the students involved. As a theoretical contribution, the research is based on D'Ambrosio (1985, Valentim and Backes (2008), Brasil (2018), and Passos (2021). Methodologically, it is based on the assumptions of action research, with elements of intervention research and, for structuring the work, the use of didactic sequences as a way of systematizing the activities to be proposed (Prodanov and Freitas 2013, Gil 2008, Zabala 1998, and Thiollent 1986). As the investigation is in progress, you see that the construction of the "state of the art" points to a significant expansion. However, minimal works in games of African origin are applied to mathematics teaching, with a more excellent representation in the northeast region with uses in elementary and higher education regarding teacher training, exploring geometry, and algebra. From the application of a work proposal with the concrete and online game in its gamified version (the second stage of the research), it does expect to recognize the potentialities of the Shisima application through observation and students' speeches, in addition to establishing specific knowledge of the mathematical field (pattern analysis through the game's mathematical and geometric logical reasoning possibilities). To contribute as a possible alternative to complying with Law 11.645/2008—the study of indigenous and Afro-Brazilian history and culture in elementary and high school curricula—through an area still little explored for this purpose—mathematics—in the sense of helping in mathematical literacy from a historical-cultural perspective, with technology as an essential element in this process. As a product, it proposes the organization of a manual with guidelines for using African games in an educational context, emphasizing Shisima in its concrete and digital versions.