Pre-Service Teachers' Perception about the Concept of Limit

The purpose of this study was to investigate the pre-service teachers' conceptions about the limit of same partial functions given in the form of both graphical and symbolic, the misconception that the pre-service teachers have the concept of limit, and whether there were any differences between pre-service teachers' algebraic performance and their graphical performance. In this study, both qualitative and quantitative methods were used. In the collection of the data, the researcher employed the open-ended question test and interviews. The questionnaire was consisted of five items. Firstly symbolic representation of the questions was administered to 95 pre-service teachers, later graphical representation of the same questions were given to pre-service teachers. Finally, semi-structured interviews were done with eight pre-service teachers. In the data analysis, descriptive analysis method was used and also independent samples t-test was employed with alpha = 0.05 in the analysis of the differences of pre-service teachers' algebraic and graphical performance. The result of current study showed that some students had some misconceptions and misunderstanding related to the concept of limit. It was also observed that there were significant differences found between pre-service teachers' algebraic and graphical performances. The Pre-service teachers had higher scores in graphical representation than symbolic.