Exploring students’ misconceptions of the function concept through problem-posing tasks and their views thereon

Abstract

Many studies have investigated students’ problem-posing activities. However, there has not been a strong focus on affective aspects in mathematical problem-posing. Also, students’ understanding of the function concept whilst generating functions has not previously been investigated. This paper investigated students’ misconceptions of the function concept through problem-posing tasks. It also delineates students’ views on the problem-posing experiences in a functional context. The participants of this study were 74 female high-school students, of whom six were selected according to their performance on a problem-posing test to air their views. The findings show that problem-posing was a good approach for pinpointing students’ misconceptions about function concept, some of which are presented in this paper. Students’ interviews also indicate that, besides being productive and enjoyable for students, problem-posing activities helped them to develop a deeper understanding of the function concept through reflection. Indeed, exploring students’ views in depth made it possible to provide a better analysis of the factors that can inform the effective use of problem-posing in mathematics education.

KEYWORDS:

• Problem-posing
• function concept
• misconceptions
• students’ views
• affect

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.