Capital cultural e desempenho escolar em matemática: uma análise estatística segundo as teorias de Pierre Bourdieu

Abstract

Official educational indexes demonstrate that math teaching in elementary school goes badly. The cause of this failure is neither simple nor immediate, but in the specific case of this discipline, qualities such as effort, dedication, perseverance and work ethic are needable for the study of math. However, such virtues are not innate and can be developed through a good orientation. The present work, which brings as theme "Cultural Capital and School Performance in Mathematics: a statistical analysis according to the Theories of Pierre Bourdieu", has as main objective to analyze the influence of the cultural inheritance, in light of the theories proposed by Pierre Bourdieu, in the school performance in mathematics of a group of students of the State Public Network. Nevertheless, a dialogue was established with Pierre Bourdieu's theories, especially those dealing with cultural heritage, cultural capital, individual provisions and family arrangements for the study. For this reason, the data were analyzed statistically using the non-parametric chi-square test to identify if there is a relation between the math students performance and their cultural and family heritage. The results show that math performance is positive when those responsible for the students are people who attend school meetings; talk with their children about school events, set a schedule for students to sleep at night, and encourage books reading. besides these variables, it was also verified that the performance in mathematics is also positive when the students were never retained in some grade, never dropped out of school at some point in their school career and do not engage in paid work. The relation of these research findings to Bourdieu's theories lies in the cultural capital accumulated by these families and transmitted to the heirs (students), in other words, the type of routine that they establish in the family that does not overestimate the education of the children has negatively influenced the students' school performance.