Reports on a study on the construction of examples and counter-examples in a college-level calculus course. Verbal and written productions of the students were classified as one of activity, expression, content, and correctness. Finds two types of strategies, global and local. Analysis also distinguishes between "winning" and…

Examines the value of concept maps as instruments for assessment of conceptual understanding, using the maps to compare the knowledge of function that experts and two groups of students (N=28)--traditional and nontraditional--enrolled in university calculus classes hold. Discusses the differences between the student and expert groups as well as…

This paper describes student difficulties in first-year calculus classes and suggests some instructional strategies to address these difficulties. Participants in this study were 200 low socio-economic background freshmen majoring in business in Brazil. Results show that the main difficulties are related to lack of understanding of algebraic…

Reports on part of a study that was conducted with individual students (n=5) and five groups of students who worked together in the first course of experimental calculus classes. The goal of the study was to discover how the concept of inverse function can be learned. (26 references) (DDR)

This paper documents how eight high school students in a precalculus class enhanced with graphing calculators think about functions. Three models of thinking about functions emerged from students' function images observed over a period of 9 months. In the graph model, students believed that functions are essentially graphs; in the equation model,…

Describes a game used in precalculus that builds interest and confidence in the uses of inverse functions. The game is preceded by a worksheet that enables students to discover that f(x) and f-1(x) are mirror images of the line y=x. (DDR)

Discusses research findings related to students' ability to make connections between analytical (symbolic) and graphical representations of functions in calculus. Describes graphing tasks and typical student interpretations. Implications for teaching are suggested. (Contains 17 references.) (MKR)

Reform efforts in mathematics aim to increase conceptual understanding, an aim that can be supported through concept maps. This study compared the conceptual knowledge of function held by college students in reform and traditional calculus sections at a large state university. Fourteen students from reform sections and 14 from traditional sections…

This study was designed to determine students' abilities and difficulties in articulating the relationship between function and derivative. High-school students were presented 15 problems during two 75-minute interviews in which they were asked to construct functions experimentally in three different contexts: motion, fluids, and number-change. In…

These conference proceedings include two invited lectures, three working group reports, three topic group reports, two Ad Hoc group reports, a round table report, a list of participants, and a list of previous proceedings. The invited lectures were: "Values in Mathematics Education" (Ubiratan D'Ambrosio) and "Remarks on…