An APOS Analysis of students’ understanding of the concept of a limit of a function

Abstract

This article reports on a study which used the APOS (Action‐Process‐Object‐Schema) theory framework to investigate university students’ understanding of limits of functions. The relevant limit concepts were taught to undergraduate science students at a university in Kwazulu‐Natal in South Africa. This paper reports on the analysis of students’ responses to four types of questions on limits of functions. The findings of this study confirmed that the limit concept is one that students find difficult to understand, and suggests that this is possibly the result of many students not having appropriate mental structures at the process, object and schema levels.