Johannes Meister, Annette Upmeier zu Belzen
Functional thinking while constructing line graphs in the teaching of biology
In order to include mathematizations in the teaching of biology, a lot of approaches have been developed (cf. Retzlaff-Fürst, 2013). Nevertheless, these approaches focus on concrete biological contexts that are made accessible with mathematical considerations and do rarely investigate basal mathematical competencies that are essential for it.
One example is the use of diagrams. The competence structure model developed by Lachmayer (2008) describes competencies while dealing with diagrams but it contains associated aspects of mathematical thinking only implicitly. Therefore, this study will include essential mathematical competencies which focus on constructing and interpreting line graphs. These diagrams are mostly graphical representations of mathematical functions. Hence, this study puts its interest on cognitive aspects while working with functions (functional thinking, cf. Vollrath, 1989; Swan, 1982; Nitsch et al., 2014). The aim of this study is to create and evaluate a model which contains aspects of functional thinking that are essential for the construction of line diagrams in order to describe biological contexts.