Constructivism-based visual instructions for students learning the concept of a continuous function at a point
Authors:
International Journal of Education and Practice
: Vol. 11, No. 3. : 390-398
Publishing year: 5/2023
The concept of a continuous function at a point involves a key calculus idea, to help
students learn about the content in calculus. Therefore, developing a learning
environment where students can independently build concepts and related knowledge
when learning this topic is crucial. Previous studies show challenges for teachers in
designing lessons, however, there exist fewer number of studies discussing effective
solutions to support teachers. This study fills this gap through the exploration of
constructivism based visual instructions. This study employed an action research
methodology involving 12 pre-service teachers at Sai Gon University, organized into
three stages namely identifying issues when teaching the lesson of “a continuous
function at a point”, exploring solutions, and finally discussing the best application. The
findings demonstrated that using visual models in teaching helped students understand
and verify hypotheses, reject wrong ones, and construct new knowledge about the
continuous function at a point in an effective way. Four perspectives—numerical,
graphical, linguistic, and algebraic—were used during the teaching process to solve the
challenge of learning the concept of a continuous function at a point.
Action research methodology Constructivism Creativity and Invention Dynamic teaching Effective learning Visualization.