Evaluating Lexical Ambiguities About Brazilian Students in The Fifth Year of Elementary School Towards Statistical Graphs and Tables

Abstract

When words that are part of everyday language are used differently from the way they are used in formal classroom language, it is said to present lexical ambiguity. Thus, this study aims to understand possible lexical ambiguities regarding knowledge about representations of statistical graphs and tables of 74 students in the fifth year of elementary school (approximately 10 years) of a municipal school in Barueri, São Paulo, Brazil. This research was exploratory, with a qualitative and quantitative approach, in which data were collected through a questionnaire available on Google Forms. An Automated Content Analysis was carried out using the IraMuTeQ software (R Interface for Multidimensional Text and Questionnaire Analysis) performing multivariate statistical analyzes (Descending Hierarchical Classification - DHC and Factorial Analysis by Correspondence – CFA). The results show the predominance of words and verbal expressions of the common language related mainly to the intuitive meaning and its use in everyday life. It was also noticed indications of the formal construction of tables and graphs associated with guidelines carried out in the classroom.