Futebol e probabilidade: uma proposta de ensino baseada na resolução de problemas

Abstract

Probability plays a central role in everyday life, supporting decision-making in situations of uncertainty and contributing, within Basic Education, to the development of critical thinking. In the school curriculum, key concepts include sample space, events, conditional probability, independence of events, and Bayes’ theorem. In this context, this study investigated how the use of the theme of soccer can motivate the learning of these concepts among students in Basic Education by contextualizing Mathematics through the analysis of matches and results from the Brazilian Soccer Championship. This qualitative research was conducted through a literature review and documentary analysis, grounded in authors who advocate problem solving and con- textualization as meaningful pedagogical strategies. The study proposes a didactic sequence composed of six activities, structured according to the problem-solving methodology and sup- ported by data from the 2024 edition of the Brazilian Championship, both male and female, in order to articulate probabilistic concepts within the context of soccer. The theoretical analysis indicates that this context has the pedagogical potential to spark interest among learners, fos- ter analytical thinking, and give meaning to concepts often taught in an abstract manner. In line with the guidelines of the National Common Curriculum Base and the Curricular Docu- ment of Tocantins, the proposal shows that probabilistic thinking extends beyond calculations, involving reflection, decision-making, and critical interpretation. Therefore, this monograph re- affirms the importance of Mathematics education that is connected to experiences in real-world contexts and opens space for more humanized learning, in which error, chance, and strategy, fundamental elements of probabilistic reasoning, become part of the learning process.