Abstract
In this paper, we report the results of an exploratory research in which the interest was to identify how beliefs that support teachers in service about the Pythagorean Theorem are indicators of a didactical reductionism on this mathematical result. Questionnaires were applied to five public high school mathematics teachers and a semi-structured interview with a teacher who imparts courses of physics and mathematics in an engineering course at a public university. The collected data were analyzed based on six beliefs categories. One relevant result of the work is that teachers conceive the Pythagorean Theorem as an isolated fact and not as an integrated approach to a highly structured network of ideas, covering a wide variety of mathematics knowledge branches. However, it seems suitable that teachers think about their own beliefs and implications that those beliefs have in the teaching activity.
Keywords:
Teacher's Beliefs; Didactical Reductionism; Mathematical Education; Pythagorean Theorem; Epistemological decantation