Functional relationships and strategies of first graders in a functional context

Abstract

From a functional approach to school algebra, in this work we go in depth in first graders’ (6 years old) functional thinking within the Spanish context. Particularly, we focus on the functional relationships and the strategies that students use when solving problems, which involve linear functions. We analyse part of the data collected in a design experiment with a group of 30 students and individual interviews to four of those students. We find that the most frequent functional relationship was the correspondence one. Some students also identified the covariation relationship. Moreover, there is evidence of the connection between both functional relationships and the operational and counting strategies.