Conversions Between Trigonometric Representation Systems by Pre-service Secondary School Teachers

Abstract

Understanding trigonometry relational system is a school mathemat-ics demanding topic. The angle, the unit circle and the trigonometric functions are its foundational notions. Trigonometric contents mean-ing and their understanding involve these three concepts and their re-lationships. This research aims to deepen in the pre-service teachers’ understanding about the angle, the unit circle and the trigonometric function when converting notions between two trigonometric repre-sentation systems based on the unit circle and the trigonometric func-tions. The results indicate that pre-service mathematics teachers’ pre-sent a lack of connections between the goniometric and the analytical representation system.