The investigation of the operational and conceptual knowledge levels of the university students about function

The concept of function is a structure that forms the basis of mathematics and is also a field of application in daily life. Because it is a comprehensive concept, it is difficult to learn and teach. For this reason, many studies (misconceptions, learning strategies, historical development, etc.) have been made about the processes of learning and teaching this concept. Within the scope of this thesis, the operational and conceptual knowledge levels of the university students about the concept of function are discussed. In this context, 13 questions measuring operational and conceptual information were prepared under the headings "determining function, domain and range of a function, recognizing the basic algebraic properties of functions and applying basic algebraic techniques, drawing function graphs". In order to determine which type of learning (operational or conceptual) a question is intended to measure, an appropriate characterization scale has been used and the answer key has been formed accordingly. The questions were applied to a total of 65 university students studying at the faculty of science, literature and engineering of a state university. According to the results of the analysis, due to the scope and difficulty of the concept of function, it was observed that there were deficiencies in the students' conceptual and operational knowledge. It is concluded that conceptual information is generally incomplete from the definition of function and that the operational information is made by heart. It was seen that the questions based on procedural information were answered more and the rate of blanking was less than the questions containing conceptual information. In some questions, students were able to apply basic algebraic techniques and solve these types of questions. The questions were left blank or incorrectly answered due to lack of conceptual information and memorization information in the questions of defining domain and range of a function, explaining the function or not. In order to eliminate the deficiencies and to get away from memorization information, examination systems and curriculum should be compatible. Therefore, it is aimed to teach functional and conceptual information, one of the basic concepts of mathematics, to support and complement each other in secondary and higher education.