ERIC Number: EJ1050470
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2015-Jan-20
Pages: 22
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1473-0111
EISSN: EISSN-1473-0111
Available Date: N/A
A Glimpse into Secondary Students' Understanding of Functions
Brendefur, Jonathan L.; Hughes, Gwyneth; Ely, Robert
International Journal for Mathematics Teaching and Learning, Jan 2015
In this article we examine how secondary school students think about functional relationships. More specifically, we examined seven students' intuitive knowledge in regards to representing two real-world situations with functions. We found students do not tend to represent functional relationships with coordinate graphs even though they are able to do so. Instead, these students tend to represent the physical characteristics of the situation. In addition, we discovered that middle-school students had sophisticated ideas of dependency and covariance. All the students were able to use their models of the situation to generalize and make predictions. These findings suggest that secondary students have the ability to describe covariant and dependent relations and that their models of functions tend to be more intuitive than mathematical--even for the students in algebra II and calculus. Our work suggests a possible framework that begins describing a way of analyzing students' understanding of functions.
Descriptors: Secondary School Students, Knowledge Level, Mathematics Instruction, Mathematical Concepts, Models, Middle School Students, Generalization, Prediction, Mathematics Skills, Algebra, Calculus, Secondary School Mathematics, Correlation, Mathematical Logic, Interviews, High School Students, Junior High School Students
Centre for Innovation in Mathematics Teaching. 5th Floor Rolle Building, Faculty of Education University of Plymouth, Drake Circus, Plymouth, PL4 8AA, UK. Tel: +44-1752-585346; Fax: +44-1752-585344; e-mail: feedback@cimt.org.uk; Web site: http://www.cimt.plymouth.ac.uk/journal/
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Secondary Education; Middle Schools; Junior High Schools; High Schools
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: N/A