Interpretação gráfica das derivadas de uma função por professores estagiários de Matemática

Abstract

The Portuguese secondary school mathematics curriculum draws on results of research conducted in the Mathematics Education field to stress the importance of teaching mathematical concepts using, whenever possible, their different representations. Numerical, analytical and graphical approaches to the teaching of the derivative concept are indicated as essential to enhance conceptual meanings and relations. However, in general, students show a preference for analytical approaches in detriment of the graphical one, which may be the result of predominantly analytical teaching approaches. In this context, the goal of this study was to investigate mathematics student teachers difficulties in interpreting and relating the graphs of a function and those of their derivatives. A questionnaire about graphical representations of the derivative of a function was applied to 19 mathematics student teachers and an interpretative analysis of the results was performed.