Oinarri-aldaketako kontzeptu eta prozedurei dagozkien akatsen azterketa: Unibertsitateko 1. mailako aljebra

Abstract

This report describes on-going research on the study of the errors made in a first year university linear algebra exercise concerning «base change» in vector spaces. To do this, we firstly look at the importance of this type of study in research into Mathematics Education. Then, there is an exhaustive bibliographic review of how Maths teaching-learning errors have been classified. For this report, we have chosen the classification by Hernández, Socas and Camacho (1998) as it adapts best to the study of university level algebra errors. Secondly, analysis is presented on a «base change» in vector spaces exercise from the February exam for the 2006/2007 academic year where the errors made by 257 students have been classified according to the chosen classification model. The results obtained show that there are no significant differences in errors due to gender, language or teacher. However, there is as significant difference in the mark obtained according to the type of error made in this exercise. This leads us to verify that the teacher correcting the exercise, without knowing about the classification beforehand, had structured a quite similar classification to score the exercise being studied. This means that the student got a different mark depending on the importance of the error or the type of error. Once we know the most frequent type of errors and the errors that are considered to be the most serious in this type of exercise, we are in a position to incorporate this analysis into our classes in order to minimise these errors in the years to come.