Abstract:

The contemporary technologically world is changing human interaction and communication. The COVID-19 pandemic has led to fundamental changes in many society sectors, namely in the education, in which technology has played an important role. Distance learning began to be increasingly popular, implying changes in communication and collaboration between teachers and students, and between students. Pandemic adversities and the excessive use of social networks have contributed to reducing face-to-face communication, affecting interpersonal and emotional skills.

The teaching and learning processes rely on the behavioral and affective intervenient characteristics. Research on this subject shows that improving the soft skills of students develops positive relationships, effective communication, collaboration, group-working and problem-solving skills, and an affective relation with the subjects to learn. The range of competencies comprised in the soft skills is transversal to all areas. Thus, it makes sense to improve these skills across distinct scientific areas, developing the students’ academics and personal competencies. Working soft skills in academic contexts bring us some challenges, mainly when students do not have empathy for a particular scientific area, or feel difficulties in working with it. In these cases, arousing good emotions or feelings in students becomes a more demanding task. The following questions, naturally, arise: Which contexts, tasks, methodologies or resources must be considered to promote the development of soft skills? Should the strategies adopted be influenced by the students' personal characteristics?

In a mathematics curricular unit of the Basic Education course of a portuguese university a group work involving Mathematics and children’s literature was proposed. This work consisted in the analysis of José Saramago children’s book, A maior flor do mundo, aiming to recognize mathematical concepts representations or opportunities to develop mathematical ideas. With this task it is intended that mathematical ideas emerge, perceived by the students in a different perspective and context, aiming at the development of transversal competences. The literary contexts arouse emotions and are rich in metaphors representing ideas and concepts in a simple and emotional way. Thus, we decided to integrate mathematics and literature to stimulate good emotions, a positive performance, collaborative work and, in some cases, an increase in the affective relation with Mathematics. Since these students will be future educators or teachers of elementary levels of education, we choose a book recommended by the Portuguese National Reading Plan and written by the winner of 1998 Literature Nobel Prize. It is also our intention to challenge students to identify mathematical ideas using their sensibility and creativity. This book fulfills this purpose since it was written without any mathematical intention.

In this paper we analyze influences of the proposed work in students’ soft skills development. In this sense, an individual questionnaire was designed and applied to students focused on transversal skills considering the five major domains suggested in the OECD Survey of Social and Emotional Skills – Technical Report (2021): task performance; emotional regulation; collaboration; open-mindedness; engaging with others. Here, a quantitative and qualitative analysis and discussion of the responses to the questionnaire, will be described.

Keywords:

Mathematical representations, Children’s literature, Soft skills, Initial training of educators and teachers.