Meaning attributed to integer numbers and their operations by students with visual impairment: interventions with manipulable didactic material grounded in conceptual nexus

Abstract: This research investigated meanings attributed to integers and their operations in interventions with the Soroban of Integers’ material. Methodologically, research-intervention was used as an approach as well as the qualitative analysis of interventions, which occurred separately, both in the Specialized Educational Service-SES, with a blind student and a student with low vision, both from ordinary schools. The results indicated that the Soroban of Integers grounded in the conceptual nexus of Chinese civilization, together with the tasks for their use and manipulation, allowed for observing the transformations of the nature of quantities in opposite movement operations. The study concluded that the meanings attributed by the students were: understanding negative quantities as absences; operational meanings, in which adding a negative number is equivalent to subtracting, and subtracting a negative number is equivalent to addition, and, as a result of understanding that consequence, there have been meaning attribution and validation of rule of signs for the multiplication of integers.