The math teacher's look on the use of mancala as a pedagogical tool

The teaching of mathematics presents, historically, difficulties that are expressed, in a general way, in unsatisfactory learning results at all levels of education. To have a satisfactory, attractive, pleasant and contextualized learning with a focus on the student, the teacher must reflect on new teaching methodologies, such as the use of pedagogical games. Educational games have been used frequently in classrooms for some time, as a resource that can bring excellent results. As an example of games, we can cite the game mancala. This game can develop in the student important characteristics for learning mathematics, such as logical reasoning. In this perspective, the objective of the research is to understand the conceptions of mathematics teachers about the use of mancala, through a qualitative approach, using as a data collection strategy a printed questionnaire with the teachers of a primary school located in the city of Acarape, Ceará, aiming that these professionals reflect and list what they know about mancala, its use in the classroom and its perspectives of change if they apply it in the future. The results obtained revealed that the professionals knew about mancala even before they had training about it and that the bias of this knowledge was referred to UNILAB, believe that a mancala is a tool capable of explaining various topics of mathematics and even social, as for future applications most teachers would change something by applying it again.