Proceedings of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education · Volume 1
Ole Weigt, Timo Leuders, Katharina Loibl, Lars Holzäpfel
University of Education Freiburg
⬇ Download PDFTo date, there is only limited knowledge about the errors students make when solving differentiation tasks. This study presents an exploratory investigation of students’ errors in differentiation in high school–level tasks. 69 students produced a total of 2281 answers to differentiation tasks, resulting in 1231 errors. An inductive categorization of these errors revealed 26 distinct data-driven error categories. These 26 categories were assigned to four concept-driven error categories. A cluster analysis identified four groups of individuals with different error profiles based on these concept-driven categories. The findings provide insights into the heterogeneity of errors in differentiation and students’ general error behaviour. Moreover, the results show that the empirical data align well with the concept-based classification of errors.
Differentiation errorserror profilesexploratory analysis