Investigating Seventh-Grade Students’ Slope Preconceptions
Crisólogo Dolores-Flores 1 * , Martha Iris Rivera-López 1 , Adán Tlalmanalco-Ramírez 1
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1 Research Center in Mathematics Education, Faculty of Mathematics, Autonomous University of Guerrero, MEXICO* Corresponding Author

Abstract

This paper reports the results of research in which the objective was to explore the preconceptions of slope in seventh-grade students. Preconceptions are understood as students´ knowledge prior to the formal teaching of a certain concept. For data collection, task-based interviews composed of ten tasks applied to 21 Mexican students were used. The data analysis was carried out using the Thematic Analysis method. Results indicate that the students have several preconceptions in which they consider the slope as any of the following: an intersection with the X or Y-axis, an arithmetic operation, a length, an object, a height, and something to do. These findings pose the challenge of achieving conceptual changes from these preconceptions. In this sense, science education has been the field most exploited in mathematics education; a collaboration between teachers and researchers from both fields could contribute to finding strategies to face this challenge.

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This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Article Type: Research Article

EURASIA J Math Sci Tech Ed, 2021, Volume 17, Issue 12, Article No: em2053

https://doi.org/10.29333/ejmste/11417

Publication date: 12 Dec 2021

Article Views: 1535

Article Downloads: 1250

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