Função: concepções e estratégias de estudantes da 1ª série do ensino médio na exploração de tabelas

Abstract

This research analyzes answers given by students of the first grade of High School about the elaboration of tables with prototypical examples of functions in a collaborative environment in which the students worked in pairs or groups of no more than three members. The development of this research was based on the Design Experiment on which we established the Theoretical Methodological foundation that also served to establish a framework of teaching and learning of functions for this group. The starting point was the preconceived ideas about the concept of function and about operations on the set of integers, Z. The set of familiar, but unconventional tasks to introduce the theme originated from this central idea, operations in Z. These tasks and the recording of students' written responses are our instrument of data collection and analysis. That is, the students needed to explain or justify the procedures used. The analysis of the answers has revealed that many students come to High School without knowing that the term function is also used to designate a mathematical concept; that the notion of function for them becomes the idea of "making calculations" and that for some students, function is the calculation itself. Based on the considerations above, we believe that the challenge is to think how to intervene in the classroom so that the student is given the opportunity to review his notions and broaden his vision of the concept of function. As a result of this research, we present a didactic guide for teachers containing suggestions of tasks for the study of functions starting from some of the preconceived ideas