Decision-Making in Situations of Uncertainty as School Mathematical Knowledge

Resumo

Background: One of the explicit objectives of school mathematics is to prepare students to make decisions. However, decision-making itself is not usually considered curriculum content. Recently, the Chilean school mathematics curriculum incorporated decision-making in contexts of uncertainty as a teaching object in differentiated secondary education. Objective: Discuss from a socioepistemological perspective how the teaching of decision-making in uncertainty is proposed in the Chilean curriculum, considering both the study programme and the official school text. Design: Based on a qualitative methodology, thematic analysis is used to identify historical-epistemological criteria and content analysis to review the activities of the curriculum texts. Setting and participants: Three textual corpora are analysed: a historical work, the syllabus, and the official school text. Data collection and analysis: By applying interpretative content analysis, the activities proposed for teaching decision-making in contexts of uncertainty are analysed, considering as a criterion the epistemological distinction between single-case decisions and decision-making processes, as well as the use of a priori and a posteriori probabilities. Results: The textbook provides more tasks or questions involving the student in decision-making than the syllabus, but not always explicitly, emphasizing calculation and formulas. Based on the defined analysis criteria, it was possible to classify all the activities except one related to the Monty Hall problem. Conclusions: The activities proposed in both the textbook and the syllabus almost exclusively promote single-case decisions, with a predominance of a posteriori probabilites, which generates a conceptual overlap between chance and randomness.