CONCEPT MAPS IN TEACHING AND LEARNING PROCESS OF RATE OF CHANGE CONCEPT

Abstract. The implementation of concept maps in the classroom allows both the teacher and the student discovering and describing meaningful relations among the concepts object matter of the study (Novak & Gowin. 1988), making it possible to create connections between them and the context in which activities are developed. That is the reason why teaching and learning process are related to the rate of change, in order to provide students with a tool which allows them evidencing in an organized way several relations of the concept to events of the environment, such as a plant’s growth in relation to time, a country’s currency price variation with respect to other country’s currency, water temperature variation when submitted to a burner in relation to time, etc. 1. Reference Framework During the first years of education, mathematics faces students with situations in which they can use algorithms such as those from addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, among others, in order to relate two magnitudes which do not vary, from which an answer having the same characteristics is obtained. At the end of the basic education cycle, algebra studies begin; it introduces “variables ” which can have several meanings according to the context from which stated problems have been extracted. From a mathematical point of view, this school pathway is characterized by going from arithmetical studies to algebraic studies. This brings new challenges to students, as operation alternatives are wider, new and different meanings are given to the answers