Didactic Sequence for the development of variational thinking of university engineering students

This article is about the effect of a didactic sequence on the development of the variational thinking of university students entering engineering careers. For this purpose, an applied research was carried out with a quasi-experimental design. They were handled with 104 civil engineering students distributed in three groups: one of control (43) and two experiments (40 and 21) of a population of 329 students. For data collection, a questionnaire was designed and validated with 05 items related to the analysis of functions as representation models of variation and change. The methodology of the didactic sequence was based on variational activities carried out in 7 sessions with the experimental groups, while the traditional teaching methodology was used in the control group. The achieved results showed that there was significant influence of the didactic sequence in the development of the variational thinking of the students.