Mathematics educational values of college students' towards function concept

Abstract

Mathematics is usually seen as a field in which there is value-free. Such a situation causes only a few studies about values teaching to be done in mathematics education. But, mathematics is a field that has various values in it, and that must be considered seriously from this perspective. Values are taught implicitly rather than explicitly in mathematics classes when comparing to others. Function concept also take place among the most essential concepts of mathematics. It concept has affected the whole maths cirruculum. Therefore, being unable to comprehend this concept will make mathematical concepts understanding harder. Knowledge defiencies of teachers and undergrade students this concept understanding much harder. So, in this article, it has been tried that the mathematics students' mathematics educational values towards function concept have been determined. The subject of this work consist of undergrade students who have studied at Cumhuriyet University in Sivas and also Cumhuriyet University's Mathematics Educational Department in Sivas. Data were collected from 10 open-ended and 11 items reasons of question choose. As a result of this research, it was realized that the students from all grades preferred, in terms of learning the function concept, those questions that hold the formalistic view values, relavance values, instrumental understanding/learning values, accessibility values, and reasoning values. Copyright © 2005 by MOMENT.