Mathematics Teachers’ Training: a look at BOLEMA's social and intellectual networks

Abstract

Our paper is part of the field of Mathematics Teacher's Training, with the purpose of analyzing the social and intellectual network of the articles that approaches the subject, published in the BOLEMA periodic (1985-2015). This study has a theoretical contribution of Fleck's epistemology, considering that knowledge is produced collectively, so that researchers share a problem, theoretical framework and common practices form a collective of thought. The research that gives origin to this text is qualitative and quantitative, developed from the Social Network Analisys (SNA) methodology with the help of the Gephi software, which provided statistics for the analysis. Based on the Fleckian categories, the analysis allows us to infer that: the production of the knowledge available in the periodic is strongly linked to the postgraduate level; most of the articles come from institutions in the Southeast region; the co-authoring network that emerges has low density, which implies in little representativeness before the shared relations; the intellectual network is concentrated in three clusters: the Initial Education; Continuing Education, and Continuous Education and Professional Development, which presents intra and inter collective circulation of ideas that allow the arising of new categories, addressing more specific issues.

Keywords:
Mathematics Teacher's Training; Bolema; Social Network Analysis; Intra and Inter Collective Circulation of Ideas; Fleck