Resumo

GONZALEZ FLORES, Yosenith; MONTORO MEDINA, Ana Belén  e  RUIZ HIDALGO, Juan Francisco. Meaning of limit of a function expressed by undergraduate students. Educ. mat. [online]. 2024, vol.36, n.3, pp.242-273.  Epub 04-Abr-2025. ISSN 2448-8089.  https://doi.org/10.24844/em3603.09.

Abstract: The concept of limit is a central element in Calculus and has special interest in education due to its complexity and the difficulties in its teaching and learning. In this work, the meanings that students attribute to the concept of limit of a real function of real variable are analyzed and synthesized. A complete usable system of categories is provided, which allows to organize the students in 4 profiles of meaning. This is a descriptive study in which the answers to a semantic questionnaire of 38 first-year university students who are beginning their training on this subject are analyzed. The analysis of the data was carried out through a content analysis and the synthesis of the meanings through a cluster analysis. The elements that characterize the meanings such as object, process, reachability or exceedance, are blended with those that must be taken into account, others that focus on properties, uses and representations and allow the responses to be synthesized in four profiles. Most students show few mathematical characteristics of the notion of limit but they enrich them by proposing application examples or modes of use of the limit that relate to intuitive interpretations.

Palavras-chave : meaning of a mathematics concept: concept of limit; calculus; under-graduate students.

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