I would like to start this editorial commentary with a quote I read: “The youth of today is spoiled to the root. They are mean, ungodly, and lazy. They will never be like the youth of before and they will never ever be able to hold on to our values”.
 This quote does not come from an article I read in a conservative province newspaper published 2 days ago nor it is part of a political discourse of a right-wing Chilean presidential candidate. This sentence rather is displayed on a Babylonian stone, which has been written more than 3000 years ago. Through the course of time, there has been a phenomenon known as the generation gap. This phenomenon is a popular term used to describe differences in cultural norms between members of a younger generation and their elders.

The aims of the present research are to assess the affirmative policies of the Medical School at Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG) to analyze professors’ work at Racial Quota scope and changes in the university due to such a process, and to better understand how professors in Medical School face racial topics. It must be done by understanding labor as a core dimension since without workers one could not talk about society, education, and economy. Therefore, this research addresses labor from a perspective that goes beyond utilitarian purposes. Questionnaires and semi-structured interviews were used for data collection. Professors in the Medical School Faculty, who have been teaching since 2013, were the investigated subjects - this year was chosen because this is the time when Racial Quotas were put in place at UFMG. Changes in the higher education scene due to the affirmative actions that have been taken and the understanding of the Teaching Function as an educative principle allowed professors’ work to overcome models imposed by the market logic.

One of the existing approaches in students’ performance evaluation is to use concept mapping. There are lots of studies indicate that concept mappings can be used to evaluate the knowledge of mathematical concepts in a useful way. The best and most comprehensive way of learning is organizing study. Organizing is an expanding meaning strategy. Concept mapping is a simple way to organize and relate information, if vaguely. Lines, words, signs, and symbols are used in concept mappings. In this study, the use of concept mappings in differential equations has been investigated. To do so, a case study of understanding differential equations unit has been conducted in 90 students from Azad University. To begin with, the students went under seven sessions of differential equations of grade one, and another group was taught differential equations in a traditional way. After that, the results obtained were evaluated using SPSS software and Mann-Whitney U test to reach the conclusion. The results indicate the effectiveness of concept mappings. The students show ability to recognize the structure of differential equations that cannot be seen in the results of a traditional teaching method. In addition, the misunderstandings in misconceptions of such structures can be revealed. Therefore, it can be recommended to use the concept maps about differential equations as a complementary assessment tool along with common written tests. 
 
 
 
 
 

In this paper, the purpose is to discuss results of a continuing education action with teachers, linked to the university extension project Computational Thinking and Interdisciplinarity in the classroom, developed within the Postgraduate Program in mathematics education at Sao Paulo State University (UNESP), Rio Claro (Sao Paulo), Brazil. The development of interdisciplinary activities by teachers using Scratch software is highlighted, pointing out how this is reflected in the classroom, from the development of an interdisciplinary activity in two classes taught by the teacher of Geography, a participant of this formative action. The qualitative approach was adopted, and the methodological procedures used were video recording of the meetings, writing of field diaries, prepared by all the involved proposers, and recording of all the developed activities. Data analysis highlights how important this partnership between university and school was because it contributed to transform the knowledge of teachers, researchers, and students through the development of Computational Thinking.

This study was developed with 76 students enrolled in a teacher education program in Mathematics, which is part of the Brazilian Open University System, at the Universidade Federal de Ouro Preto. It was conducted during the second semester of 2017, in 5 (five) educational centres (polos) located in the states of São Paulo and Minas Gerais, in Brazil. This research was performed according to methodological procedures used in case studies, by covering the collection and data analysis. Methodological procedures used in this study enabled the critical and reflective interpretation of the results through the elaboration of categories that emerged from qualitative data collected during the development of the fieldwork. The main objective of this study was the proposition of mathematical modelling as a virtual learning environment (VLE) that favours the development of a critical view of the reality and the reflection of students in solving problems that they face daily, by developing modelling projects by applying technological tools available in the Moodle platform. Through these projects, students problematized, contextualized, and investigated problems they developed in their projects in the VLE. As well, they elaborated questions that aimed to seek, collect, select, organize, and handle the information that allowed them to critically reflect about the role of mathematics in society.

La formación de los profesores puede considerarse como un aspecto clave en el desarrollo y calidad de los procesos educativos; también como un área/campo de investigación en el que confluyen los desarrollos en la investigación educativa y en las disciplinas académicas. En las últimas dos décadas, la investigación sobre los aprendizajes de los profesores de matemática ha tenido significativos desarrollos que incluyen la delimitación de constructos, enfoques y programas para el desarrollo profesional, modelos para describir el conocimiento del profesor, sus creencias, competencias y más recientemente, estudios que se centran en programas para la formación de profesores y en la formación del formador de profesores. Este documento ofrece una introducción (Editorial) del segundo número del volumen 19 de la revista Uni-pluriversidad que se dedicó a la investigación en formación profesional de profesores de matemáticas.

The conceptualization of teachers’ professional competencies has evolved in the last decades. The specification of the types of knowledge that teachers require, the inclusion of affective and motivational aspects and the acknowledgments of the processes that connect these dispositions to the behavior of teachers in the classroom are considered especially important. In particular, teachers’ diagnostic competence has been regarded as crucial for successful teaching because it allows teachers to understand students’ thinking and make a corresponding plan to promote learning. Errors have been recognized as a valuable source of information about students’ thinking and therefore, teachers’ diagnostic competence in error situation is the focus of this study. This article shares the design of a university course and the theoretical basis aimed at developing pre-service primary school teachers’ diagnostic competence in error situations within their initial teacher education programs. Its implementation in Chilean universities suggests a valuable opportunity for future teachers to learn and discuss about mathematics and its teaching and learning.

En este artículo se presentan desde una perspectiva analítica, interpretativa y crítica los resultados de diversos estudios que muestran los avances en investigación sobre la formación de futuros maestros de matemáticas desde el modelo realista-reflexivo. En concreto, se presentan cuatro estudios sobre diseño, aplicación y análisis de episodios desde este modelo de formación que incluyen un ciclo formativo; diversos recursos y estrategias didácticas para promover la deconstrucción de los conocimientos cotidianos (en adelante, CC) de los futuros maestros de matemáticas que pueden ser un obstáculo para su desarrollo profesional; la identificación de las marcas de autorregulación que permiten deconstruir CC y co-construir y reconstruir conocimientos profesionales (en adelante, CP); y, como síntesis de los estudios preliminares, la descripción de un modelo transformador de la competencia profesional de los futuros maestros de matemáticas.

El experimento de enseñanza es una aproximación metodológica útil en la investigación en educación matemática para estudiar cómo los estudiantes aprenden. El objetivo de este artículo es mostrar las características de esta aproximación metodológica, a través del desarrollo de un experimento de enseñanza en tercer curso de educación primaria con estudiantes de 9 años, que está dirigido a apoyar el aprendizaje del concepto de polígono. Ejemplificamos las características de esta aproximación a la investigación en educación matemática subrayando (i) el uso de teorías sobre el aprendizaje en el diseño de las actividades, y (ii) la diversidad necesaria de fuentes de información que favorece la triangulación de las inferencias que se puedan generar. Finalmente, se apuntan posibles usos de los registros de la práctica derivados de los experimentos de enseñanza para la formación de profesores.