Early Notions of Functions in a Technology-Rich Teaching and Learning Environment (TRTLE)

This paper focuses on notions of function Year 9 students hold as they begin to study functions. As these notions may be fragile, the questions, tasks, and ways of interacting orchestrated by the teacher to elicit depth of understanding, or allow observation of changing notions, are of interest. Extended tasks where students were required to make choices about solution paths provided opportunities for students to develop and consolidate their concept images. Discussion between small groups provided the best evidence of developing and stable conceptions held by students in contrast to written scripts where the strength of these understandings was not evident