‘It’s for people to have fun with mathematics’, argues Viana

IMPA’s director-general, Marcelo Viana, took part in the special edition “Rio, Capital of Mathematics”, from the Carioca Journal of Public Education. Published in July by the Paulo Freire Training School, the magazine brings together articles, interviews and reports of pedagogical practices by teachers from the school system on the challenges and achievements of teaching mathematics. The project is run by CREP-AT (Centro de Referência da Educação Pública da Cidade do Rio de Janeiro-Anísio Teixeira).

In the interview, Viana argued that mathematics should be an ally for students, breaking down the view that the subject is something bad or complicated. “What neuroscience teaches us is that we are born with a very plastic brain, capable of adapting to different circumstances, different propensities, preferences. So whether we like math or not depends above all on our initial experiences, the degree of stimulation, the way math is presented. […] It’s for people to have fun with math, math is fun!”

For him, teachers have been fundamental since childhood, including at home. “I often tell people that my first teacher in Early Years was my own mother. I think my love of math started even before that. Anyway, I was lucky. I don’t think I have any special merit. I was lucky to have always had very good teachers. So I loved mathematics,” she said.

These initial experiences are mainly due to the dynamics created by teachers in the classroom, but there are still many challenges in the teacher training process, as Viana says. “The great actor, the protagonist of the educational process is the teacher. […] And, in general, the teacher’s career lacks incentives for quality, for excellence. Our careers are not attractive, they don’t provide incentives for teachers to differentiate themselves. On the contrary, I have the impression that a teacher who sets himself apart becomes more of a nuisance in his environment. […] We need to build incentives for progression into teachers’ careers, as is done in other countries.”

A High School Mathematics Teacher’s Olympiad (OPMbr)the OBMEP (Brazilian Public School Mathematics Olympiad) awards for outstanding teachers in their schools, the PAPMEM (Program for the Improvement of High School Mathematics Teachers) and the PROFMAT (Professional Master’s Degree in Mathematics in a National Network) are some of the positive initiatives cited by Viana to improve the quality of the structuring of teaching careers in Brazil, but he argues that we need to go further.

“It’s extremely important to provide good initial training, and I believe that, in general, we have failed to do this, but also to create programs, activities, which go hand in hand with encouraging progression, encouraging excellence, and updating teachers,” he said, highlighting the lack of support from programs that make mathematics more attractive.

IMPA’s partnerships with City Hall

IMPA’s first undergraduate program, the IMPA Techwas also featured in the magazine. Funded by the Federal Government and created in partnership with Rio de Janeiro City Hall, the Bachelor’s Degree in Mathematics of Innovation Technology is located in Porto Maravalley, an innovation hub in the city’s port area.

“The degree is primarily aimed at the professional training of people who have no trauma with mathematics and feel comfortable with the subject. […] We want to train young people who have the knowledge, ability and propensity to use mathematics to solve real problems. And right from the start, together with the City Council, we designed a project, a degree course that attracts students from all over Brazil. We used OBMEP and ENEM for this, with OBMEP performance as the main selection criterion,” explained Viana.

IMPA Tech’s selection process is based on scientific olympiads such as OBMEP, OBM, OBI, OBQ and OBFEP, or the ENEM math grade. The second phase involves individual online interviews. Inaugurated in 2024, the degree is currently in its second class, with more than 150 students from the five Brazilian regions.

The students also receive student aid, as Viana explains. “Many of these students, the vast majority, come from poor families, so we provide them with accommodation, and this is courtesy of the City Council itself. […] We provide subsistence aid, food aid, etc., which comes from the federal government, which also pays for staff and building maintenance, among other things,” he said.

But IMPA’s partnership with Rio de Janeiro City Hall didn’t start with the degree program. In the interview, Viana also highlighted the rainfall analysis project created by the Pi Center (IMPA Projects and Innovation Center) in 2022, commissioned by COR (Rio Operations Center), and the OCM (Carioca Math Olympiad), organized by SME-RJ with the institute’s support since 2021.

The success of the OCM in Rio de Janeiro was a driving force behind the creation of the Olimpíada Mirim – OBMEP in 2022, which currently brings together 5 million 2nd to 5th grade students from over 34,900 public and private schools across Brazil.

“We’ve been doing the OBMEP for many years (we’re celebrating 20 years now), but we’d never really had the courage to do an Olympiad test for the early years age group, and therein lies a concern that, we know that the language has to be appropriate for the interlocutor, in this case, a child in the second year, third year, of the Early Years of Primary School. We knew that the language had to be different. So, when we started doing the CMO, as a partner, we discovered that it worked. The success of the OCM encouraged us very directly to start the Olimpíada Mirim,” explained Viana.

Check out the digital version of special edition “Rio, Capital of Mathematics” of Revista Carioca de Educação Pública and read the full interview.