Registros de representação semiótica: uma análise da abordagem de limites em livros didáticos

Abstract

Textbooks play a fundamental role as teaching instruments and their use as a research object makes it possible to understand learning difficulties, especially with regard to higher education. This article presents a bibliographic work, part of a doctoral research, of a qualitative nature with numerical support, which proposes to answer the question about how the textbooks Calculus with Analytical Geometry, by Louis Leithold and A Course in Calculus by Hamilton Luiz Guidorizzi, mobilize records of semiotic representation, to address the concept of limit. Thus, this research aims to investigate the way in which these Differential Calculus textbooks use semiotic representation registers to work on the concept of limit of functions of one variable. The methodology used consisted of identifying the types of representations of limits and functions that appear in the works, both in the text and in the exercises, as well as their transformations. For the treatment of the data, codification, categorization and construction of inventories and graphs were carried out, using Duval’s theory of semiotic representation registers to support the analyses. As a result, the predominance of algebraic language in the two analyzed books and the preference for conversions that depart from the algebraic record for the construction of graphs stand out.