Onto-semiotic analysis of the emergence and evolution of functional reasoning

Developing students’ adequate functional reasoning requires paying attention to the design and planning of teaching from the first educational levels. This implies considering and progressively articulating the diversity of meanings of the function, attending to the generality and formalization levels that emerged in its historical evolution. In this paper, we review historical and epistemological studies on function using theoretical tools of the Onto-semiotic Approach to characterize different levels of functional reasoning. We interpret meaning in terms of systems of operative and discursive practices related to solving types of problems. In line with previous research, we identify partial meanings of function (operative-tabular, operative-graphic, algebraic-geometric, analytic, arbitrary correspondence between numerical sets, and mapping between arbitrary sets) that should be part of the overall reference meaning in the planning and management of function teaching and learning processes. This study provides a complementary view of the multiple investigations that describe the phylogenesis of the concept of function in mathematics with a historical and epistemological approach.