Mathematics Textbooks as Sources of Research: A Look at Political and Cultural Aspects

This article discusses theoretical issues and examples of what we can know about textbooks when we carry out investigations supported by qualitative methods and based on the theoretical framework of Cultural History. Research carried out on mathematics textbooks, written by Brazilian authors, Germanic immigrants and a Russian author from the Soviet period, seek to answer the investigative question: what can the analysis of mathematics textbooks teach us about contents, teaching methods, textual documents or imagery and ideology in a given geographical, cultural, social and historical context? For the treatment of data, discourse analysis was used. The period covers the first half of the twentieth century. We verified that the school books analyzed had an intentionality, which can be read in their texts and images, and they are a representative mirror of the imaginary of a collectivity. In the case of their mathematics books, they clearly contain ideologies to be imposed on students in the early years.