MEANINGS OF "MATHEMATIZATION" OF TEACHERS AND STUDENTS OF A DEGREE COURSE IN PHYSICS: A CASE STUDY

We present a study about how the Mathematics is understood and worked on a teaching and learning medium, in a course of education for physics teachers, from a public University in Sao Paulo, Brazil. To this objective, we studied different proposals in this research field. We found that the term Mathematization has been introduced in order to represent processes by which learning of physics gain significance when considering formation of skills, such as: observation, description, idealization, local logical analysis, axiomatization and, application. We followed for a year, different subjects of physics in several semesters by filling a daybook. There we registered basic information, contents and development of the classes. Based on the daybook' analyses, we elaborated an observation guideline with indicators to detect the presence and the way that teachers and students developed processes of Mathematization. With the final guideline, we observed during a semester, a group of several other disciplines. We did a content analysis on the material produced. We note that the fact of observing subjects from different levels of course, didn't present differences in the performance of teachers neither students. Looking for the presence of Mathematization processes, we cannot talk that doesn't exist, since both students and teachers go in search of comprehension of physics contents. However, there is no evidence of deep development of Mathematization features offered by the researchers in this topic.