Impact of university courses in algebraic skills training formation

Abraham Cuesta Borges, Juana Elisa Escalante Vega y Marco Antonio Méndez Salazar

Resumen: Abstract: This article deals with the analysis of competences and difficulties of university students when solving problems of determination of maxima or minima of real-valued functions with a geometrical context or verbal statement. The research has been motivated by the concern about knowing if the university level mathematics courses improve the students’ competence of translating verbally stated situations to algebraic language, which is a necessary requisite to apply methods from differential calculus. One relevant finding is the fact that students fail to understand the problem qualitatively; moreover, they fail to transit, not only from verbal to algebraic language, but also from arithmetical to algebraic thinking.

Key words: Competences, difficulties, university students, algebraic language, algebraic thinking.

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