The Impact of Modeling in the Teaching-Learning Process: a symbiosis between problem solving and modeling everyday life

Modeling has great potential in the teaching-learning process, although it is not used in class as much as would be expected. As teachers, one of our roles is (should be) to prepare tasks involving real problems for the students' daily life. This will allow them to be aware of the possible symbioses between problem solving and modeling of those kinds of situations. In this paper, I present and discuss some possible situations to introduce graphs theory from modeling daily life situations in different grades. The tasks where prepared with the goal of allowing students to build their own knowledge and the ability to make connections between different contents and contexts. This may lead them to recognize the mobility of those concepts thorough a conceptual network. I will also discuss some aspects related to the teachers' practice and professional knowledge as well as the implications of this kind of approach for the teaching-learning process.