Detección de obstáculos psicopedagógicos en la enseñanza y el aprendizaje de los tópicos de razón y proporción en alumnos de sexto grado de Educación Primaria

Introduction: The research presented here consists of reviewing the strategies used by sixthgraders when solving simple, direct ratio and proportion problems, so as to recognize the cognitive process of their thinking, and determine how they structure their response when faced with a problem situation. Method: The study took place at a public primary school in Mexico city, where we worked with 29 subjects enrolled in the sixth grade. Methodological instruments were: direct classroom observation; indirect observation through informal chats with the teacher and the students, review of their text books and notebooks; design and validation of an exploratory questionnaire through a pilot run, and its final application. Results: This section presents results from the questionnaire and the kind of strategies used in working through each task. A comparison is then made with some of the investigations that were mentioned in the introduction. Discussion or Conclusion: Heavy reliance on algorithms was observed, but they were not used meaningfully. Scholastic education has not fully exploited students' qualitative thinking about proportionality, as was observed when students focused on only one dimension of a figure that they were asked to reduce or enlarge.