Arab Educational Information Network

This research attempts to investigate the misconceptions, and their eventual causes, of the students in the concept of the first derivative of a function defined graphically. A group of 90 grade 11 participants was chosen from two public secondary schools in the southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon. A test was administered to the participants; this test contains two parts: I) the graphs of functions are given and derivatives are to be found; II) the derivative(s) of a function at a point and other calculus concepts closely related to the subject are given and convenient graphs are to be drawn. The results of the test were categorized depending on the misconceptions of the participants, and then 36 participants were chosen to have one-to-one interviews. Their 4 teachers were also interviewed. The misconceptions of the participants vary among eight forms and the reasons of these misconceptions vary among eight eventual causes. (Published Abstract)