O objetivo do presente artigo apresentar a investigação realizada sobre o conhecimento de alunos do Ensino Médio referente aos atributos definidores do conceito de polígano. Os participantes do estudo foram 253 alunos do Ensino Médio, que responderam um teste de atributos definidores, sendo que seis deles foram selecionados para entrevistas individuais, do tipo semi-dirigida, as quais foram audiogravadas e transcritas para anáise. Os resultados mostraram que a média geral (M = 6,0), no teste de atributos definidores, foi baixa, e o teste estatático apontou diferenças significativas (p < 0,05) nas porcentagens de acertos em quatro afirmações, das 14 que foram analisadas. Porém, o teste não apresentou diferenças significativas entre as médias de cada série. A análise também mostrou que os entrevistados tiveram dificuldades em identificar três atributos definidores de polígonos: figura plana, segmentos de reta e figura simples.
The objective of this article is to present the investigation realized about the knowledge of high school students on defining attributes of the concept of polygon. The participatings of the study were 253 students of high school, who answered a test of defining attributes, and six of them were selected for individual interviews, kind of semi-conducted, that they were audio-recorded and transcripted for analysis. The results showed that the general average (M = 6,0), in the test of defining attributes, was low and that the statistic test pointed out the significative differences (p < 0,05) in the percentages of rights in four affirmations from the 14 which were analysed. However the test did not present significative differences among the average of each series. The analysis also showed that the interviewed people had difficulties to identify three defining attributes of polygons: flat figure, straight line segments and simple figure.
