Cartographies of Research with Children in Mathematics Education: a Review of Works Published in Brazil

Abstract

In order to map the ways in which children appear as objects in Mathematics Education research, we reviewed papers published since 2012 in four journals and in proceedings of two of the
most important events in the area in Brazil. We selected papers that dealt with childhood or that
conducted research with children. Our selection resulted in 60 papers, 46 of which were published
in journals and 14 in proceedings of events. We discussed the following points: when conducting
research with children, Mathematics Education has not explicitly problematized concepts of childhood and children that guide its reflections; the papers operate with an equivalence between
the notions of child and student; Piagetian inspired cognitivism is the hegemonic regime for
reading children´s mathematical activity; the research has promoted an anticipation of the use of didactic-methodological tools of Mathematics Education for increasingly younger children, with
emphasis on papers that use Statistical Education and Mathematical Modelling in Early Childhood Education. The article points to the need to reconsider the problem of childhood in Mathematics Education in order to emphasize creative processes that escape the hegemonic regimes of producing children´s subjectivities.