The development of a function concept inventory

This paper describes the development of a concept inventory, a test designed to investigate undergraduate students’ understanding of the concept of function. A central purpose was to address conceptual understanding. We outline a set of elements of the understanding of function, based on key properties of the function concept, which were used to construct test items. We describe the design and validation process for the concept inventory and comment on some implications for the refinement of the instrument and its use.