Diagnóstico de conocimientos previos sobre la parábola en estudiantes universitarios

Abstract

The purpose of this work was to diagnose previous knowledge of the parabola in freshmen at a university through the conceptual framework of Duval's semiotic representations, in order to develop a didactic proposal that improves their learning. For this purpose, an instrument was designed to assess whether a student understands the main characteristics of the parabola in its various representations, as well as the ability to perform conversions between verbal, algebraic and graphic registers. It was applied to a sample of 55 engineering freshmen before receiving instruction on the topic. It was found that the most difficult treatment activities were the graphic and algebraic records, while in the Conversion activities the lowest performance was observed from the graphic to the algebraic and from the verbal to the graphic. On the other hand, the Treatment activities in the verbal register, and the conversions from the graphic to the verbal, from the algebraic to the graphic and from the verbal to the algebraic were found to be strengths. Therefore, students' prior knowledge of the parabola was diagnosed which will contribute to support a didactic proposal aimed at improving the learning of this topic.