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ERIC Number: EJ1117129
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2016-Nov
Pages: 18
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0013-1954
EISSN: N/A
Available Date: N/A
Three Concepts or One? Students' Understanding of Basic Limit Concepts
Fernández-Plaza, José Antonio; Simpson, Adrian
Educational Studies in Mathematics, v93 n3 p315-332 Nov 2016
In many mathematics curricula, the notion of limit is introduced three times: the limit of a sequence, the limit of a function at a point and the limit of a function at infinity. Despite the use of very similar symbols, few connections between these notions are made explicitly and few papers in the large literature on student understanding of limit connect them. This paper examines the nature of connections made by students exposed to this fragmented curriculum. The study adopted a phenomenographic approach and used card sorting and comparison tasks to expose students to symbols representing these different types of limit. The findings suggest that, while some students treat limit cases as separate, some can draw connections, but often do so in ways which are at odds with the formal mathematics. In particular, while there are occasional, implicit uses of neighbourhood notions, no student in the study appeared to possess a unifying organisational framework for all three basic uses of limit.
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: N/A