LEVELING STRATEGIES AND DEVELOPMENT OF NUMERICAL THINKING IN SECONDARY EDUCATION STUDENTS

Abstract

The research relates the need for educational leveling with the purpose of promoting, in an integral, reflexive, and progressive way, numerical thinking in the Math subject. The objective was to identify the leveling strategies that influence the adequate development of numerical thinking of Secondary Education students of the Juan Montalvo Fiscomisional Educational Unit, of the Manta canton in Ecuador, attached to the ULEAM, in the first quimester of the 2022 – 2023 school period. It was evidenced as a problem that the lack of educational leveling processes affects the adequate development of numerical thinking. The research was based on a mixed approach and inductive, scientific observation and literary review methods were used, categorizing into five evaluation parameters: operations with whole and fractional numbers; whole number sequences and patterns; writing statements in mathematical language; and simple proportionality. The applied technique was a semi-structured base diagnostic test in eighth grade students of higher basic education. The results are shown through descriptive statistical analysis and interpretation, considering as the main result that a considerable part of the student population is close to achieving numerical thinking skills and it is necessary to establish leveling strategies, and the need to carry out teaching planning that considers diagnostic evaluation, the importance of temporality and spatiality, metacognition processes and the continuous use of ICTs was observed.