The starting point of this paper is to promote a discussion concerning the contributions that were brought to Mathematics Education from researchers from different areas, such as Psychology, Mathematics, Anthropology, History, among others. The focus will be on research based on Psychology, in special on the theory of conceptual field (TCF). To illustrate this position, the paper presents a descriptive study carried out with 103 primary school teachers, in which they were asked to elaborate four problems of addictive structure. The results, which are analyzed from the TCF perspective, point out that most of these elaborated problems (88,43%) were classified as prototypes ones, that is, those which require less cognitive effort. The study concludes that it seems that there is no worrying, or comprehension, from teachers in relation to explore problems that make their students' understanding easier or to expand the addictive conceptual field.
addictive structures; primary school teachers; descriptive study; cognitive psychology; mathematics education
