Abstract:

This paper describes part of a research and development project carried out in the public elementary school whose objective was to update the mathematical and didactic knowledge of teachers in two consecutive levels: 7th grade in 2013 and 8°th grade in 2014. With this end, training was designed based on a Model of Professional Competence in Mathematics (Diaz and Poblete, 2004) which was validated and previously evaluated through the implementation of a national research Project Fondecyt N° 1010980, and based a strategy for teaching mathematics that considered the didactic treatment of content and learning assessment, based on types of problems and types of math competences (Diaz and Poblete, 2009). In this model, the mathematics teacher’s competences are defined as the effective and efficient abilities acquired when teaching mathematics with quality, in order to ensure a good formative educational performance.

The theoretical framework underlying this research was built on two pillars such as the Anthropological Theory of Didactics (TAD) Yves Chevallard (1991) and the Competences Approach as a scientific concept developed by a social science such as the Teaching Mathematics, aimed at the integral personal development oriented professional, social and civic exercise, based on a permanent learning throughout life (Gascon, 2011).

Due to the nature of this project, in which the process and the product are important quantitative and qualitative-descriptive-interpretative methodology was used. The population formed urban and rural schools in the region of Los Rios and Los Lagos region of southern Chile. For the selection of non-random sample, the school was considered as a unit, and the analysis focused on the competences of teachers and the learning achievements of students. To develop this project worked with a total of 164 primary school teachers without expertise in mathematics and 6.700 students from 117 schools in urban and rural municipal system of Chile.

The results show that teachers progress to teaching mathematical tasks substantially improving teacher performance and demonstrating specific competences such as the ability to apply disciplinary knowledge, the ability to use different teaching strategies; ability to promote learning by solving math problems and the ability to use evaluation forms updated.

Implementation of the project made it possible validate a strategy of continuous improvement in mathematics, based on the professional competences of teachers and their didactic transposition in the classroom, as an alternative to consolidate learning in school sectors considered vulnerable in two regions the country.

Keywords:

Professional competences, primary school teachers, problem solving, mathematical competences.