This work describes a study about the written production present in a question that is common to the exams of the 8th grade of the fundamental education and 3rd grade of secondary education in the Mathematics Open Questions Exam of the Assessment of School Performance of the State of Paraná - AVA/2002. The methodological approach adopted here is predominantly qualitative, guided by the techniques of content analysis as a tool of inference and understanding of the written production of students in a sample of 97 exams. After correction and grouping, four question solution categories were identified. For each category an inference was made of the question formulation that students seem to have understood and solved based on the interpretation they made of the question proposed. In broad terms, results were that: a) strategies employed by students to solve the questions did not vary significantly between the two grades analyzed; b) the performance of students of the 3rd grade of secondary education was better than that of students from the 8th grade of fundamental education; c) most students solved the question using arithmetic operations such as addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, which is being considered here as an arithmetic strategy. The analysis also indicated that poor student performance is more closely related to difficulties in understanding the formulation of the question, and that students "master" part of the "mathematical content" necessary for its solution.
Mathematical education; Learning assessment in school mathematics; Written production; Right and wrong answers in mathematics
