Matemática em ação: uma experiência de tomada de decisão unindo a educação financeira e a sustentabilidade

Abstract

The contact with students from the most under privileged segments of society brought tolight their strong desire for social mobility through Education. Most of them come from low income families. However, society pulses to the rhythm of a frenetic consumer culture, which often leads them to live under the shadow of debt. According to the Consumer Debt and Default Survey (PEIC), conducted by the National Confederation of Commerce in Goods,Services and Tourism (CNC), 78.5% of Brazilian families were in debt as of April 2024. Inresponse to this reality, we propose Critical Mathematics Education (CME), specifically through one of its branches: Financial Education (FE), to assist our youth in decision-making, offering alternatives beyond the consumerist existential strategy. To build knowledge and promote financial control, we conducted a workshop with students fromthe Bachelor of Environmental Sciences program at the State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ), where we developed an economic feasibility study for a hypothetical family to adapt their house hold energy consumption to a clean and sustainable energy matrix. Each group of students presented a project outlining financing or investment alternatives to raise the necessary capital.The resulting cash flows were compared to the monthly spending on electricity. To avoid the trap of "banking education," we chose Scenario-building as a methodology for Investigation through Mathematical Modeling (MM). The researcher-professor guided the groups during the investigation, and the collected data was discussed throughout the workshop. Our main goal was to introduce basic FE concepts that would empower students to make informed decisions and prepare them to face the challenges of unbridled consumption. There search question we set out to explore was whether FE can prepare young people for as table, sustainable life free of unnecessary debt. Our educational product (EP) was aligned with the dissertation’s theme and aimed to answer whether it is better to invest and buy in the future orto finance and immediately enjoy the benefits of clean energy. We developed the EPintheform of an e-book, titled “Workshop on Sustainability and Education – Scenarios for Financial Literacy,” so that other teachers and students could follow the step-by-step processand replicate what we did during the five sessions of our workshop. This work aligns with the research line “Teaching Methodologies and Technologies and Formative Processes.”We believe our objective was achieved, as students reported—via questionnaire—that they felt more confident in making financial decisions based on the knowledge they had built. Asforour research question, we also consider it answered: the students stated they would reconsider their financial behavior and consumption habits in light of what they had learned.