Awi Zone Preparatory Secondary School Students’ Misconceptions on the Concept of Limit, Continuty and Differentiablity
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Date
2011-05-30
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Addis ababa University
Abstract
The main purpose of this study was to investigate both the type and extent of Awi zone preparatory secondary school students’ misconceptions on the concept of limit, continuity and differentiability. The research approach in the study was employed qualitative – quantitative approach which is mixed approach with descriptive survey design. Workout Problem Test (WPT) and structure interview were the data gathering instruments used for this study. Simple random sampling and purposive sampling techniques were used to select the data sources of the study for WPT and interviewing respectively. One-hundred eighty six (186) grade 12 students were involved in the study as a source of evidence and source of data. Accordingly, the result of the study indicates that students have misconceptions by considering existence of limit at a point as a sufficient condition for a function to be continuous at that point and there was a misunderstanding between limit, continuity, and differentiability due to the confusion of their relations, and confusion between limit and the function value. Furthermore, the findings shown that, students have misconception by perceiving a function has to be continuous and defined at a point to have a limit at that point, they thought that if the function f has a limit at a point, and then it must be continuous and defined at that point and they thought that a limit can be found by a method of substitution were the major types of misconceptions that students have formed . Majority of students in Awi zone have misunderstanding and confusions about the conditions of continuity (59%) and about differentiability (61%). A little less than half of the students (49%) confused on the concepts of the existence of limit of a function at a point and continuity of a function at that point.
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investigate both the type and extent of Awi zone preparatory secondary school students’ misconceptions on the concept of limit, continuity and differentiability.