What is involved in consolidating a new mathematical abstraction? This paper examines the work of one student who was working on a task designed to consolidate two recently constructed absolute function abstractions. The study adopts an activity theoretic model of abstraction in context. Selected protocol data are presented. The initial state of…

The framework for this paper is a recently developed theory of abstraction in context. The paper reports on data collected from one student working on tasks concerned with absolute value functions. It examines the relationship between mathematical constructions and abstractions. It argues that an abstraction is a consolidated construction that can…