From Linearity to Rhizomatic Network: Content Organisation in Curriculum Development in Mathematics

Resumo

Background: The Mathematics curriculum expresses the control and power materialised in the teaching programmes through the presentation and approach of the contents and in the didactic and methodological guidelines. Objective: To explore references that guide the meanings of content organisation in the form of activities in curriculum development. Design: Discussion from the perspective of theoretical study anchored in the qualitative research approach. Settings and participants: Theoretical discussion that did not involve participants as research collaborators. Data collection and analysis: Critical reading and theories of the curriculum field and its implications for the proposals to educate through mathematics, considering curricula as operators of principles and practices. Results: The linear organisation operates the technical curriculum, leading to experiences of control and maintenance of the power that knowledge provides, while the organisation as a rhizomatic network provides the curriculum as a product of social demands, placing mathematics at the service of learning. Conclusions: The contradictions of principles and practices when mathematically educating indicate the relevance of studying and discussing curricula and how to organise the contents to create the conditions for the production of thought and criticism by Mathematics.