It is widely recognized that students encounter difficulties with proof across all grades and beyond, yet standardized instruments related specifically to students' perceived self-efficacy for mathematical proof have not been readily available. The purpose of this study was to develop and investigate preliminary validity evidence for a new…

Learners in South African schools often respond poorly in questions related to the asymptote. Despite the fact that there are only a few functions in the South African curriculum that actually explore the asymptote, learners still show some deficiency in their understanding of the concept. This research examined Grade 11 learners' mathematical…

This paper reports on a study conducted with Grade 11 learners as participants, in four public high schools in a rural district of the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. The central objective was to investigate the mathematical discourses of Grade 11 learners related to the word, algebraic and graphic representations of asymptotes of the…

Within the South African school curriculum, the section on graphical functional relationships consists of signs which include symbols, notation and imagery. In a previous article we explored the role visualisation played in the way learners understood mathematical concepts. That paper reported on the learners' fixation with the physical features…

This paper is based on a study which explored the conceptual understanding of Grade 11 mathematics learners of graphical functional relationships, in particular their understanding of the Cartesian plane, notation, symbols and graphical terminology. The National Curriculum Statement (NCS) for Grades 10-12 in mathematics stipulates functional…