Representaciones sobre el Concepto de Función en Estudiantes de Primer Nivel de Ingeniería

This article aims to disseminate the results of an investigation whose objective was to determine the representations that students have about the concept of function. For this, the theoretical contributions of the Johnson-Laird mental representations were used. The research methodology was framed under a non-experimental design with a quantitative-descriptive approach developed in three phases: formative, evaluative information collection and interpretive. The study was applied on a sample of 84 students representing 80% of the population that was in the first level of engineering at the Universidad Politécnica Salesiana of Ecuador. The results of the investigation showed that the mental representations associated with the concept of mathematical function are present in a high percentage of students, the propositional representation being the most used, even when a significant percentage uses it with errors. In conclusion it could be interpreted that there are flaws in the teaching-learning processes since very few students managed to build mental models efficiently.