The Analysis of the Gaze Characteristics of 4th Graders who Explore the Function Table

The purpose of this study was to find out how 4th graders respond to the function table according to their functional thinking and characteristics of function tables. For the purpose, the researchers presented 24 function table tasks classified into 3 types and 2 shapes to 9 4th graders and conducted eye tracking experiments while the students solve the tasks. As a result of the study, first the students who think the function as a correspondence relationship considered two variables with similar duration on the function table, while the student who think the function as a recursive pattern intensively looked for the dependent variables more. Second, the students considered the two variable areas for similar duration in the far value search function table and the non-indextical function table, but they looked at longer the dependent variable area than the independent area in the basic function table. Third, the students tended to look at longer dependent variables than independent variables in vertical function table, but they considered the two variables for the similar duration in the horizontal function tables. Based on the results, this study suggested the implications for research and education related to functional thinking.