Anneli Blomqvist 90 percent seminar: Exploring conceptual and operational aspects of functional thinking
Functional thinking concerns relationships between varying quantities, representations, and generalisation. Anneli Blomqvist’s thesis explores its conceptualisation in research literature and how it is expressed through mathematical tasks and students’ written and oral responses.
Anneli Blomqvist. Foto: Sören Andersson.
In her thesis, Anneli Blomqvist examines aspects of functional thinking, including its conceptualisation and its manifestation in students’ written and oral responses to tasks. She also investigates the relationship between task characteristics, task demands, and functional thinking, which involves examining what a task enables students to demonstrate in terms of different levels of functional thinking. In addition, the thesis explores changes in students’ performance on tasks involving functional thinking between Grades 4 and 5.
The thesis employs both qualitative and quantitative methods. To investigate the conceptualisation of functional thinking, a formal concept analysis was conducted, yielding a cosine similarity matrix that indicates how close or far apart the various conceptualisations are. The matrix was then analysed using intrinsic mathematical properties to identify core aspects of the definition.
Students’ oral responses to tasks involving functional thinking were analysed using data derived from video-recorded observations and semi-structured interviews with grade 7 students. The quantitative methods involved statistical analyses of students’ scores on tasks involving functional thinking, drawn from the Swedish national test in mathematics for grade 6 and the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) 2023 longitudinal data from four education systems.
The thesis comprises one published article and three manuscripts:
Blomqvist, A. (Manuscript in preparation). Examining students’ response profiles across functional thinking tasks: exploring a proposed progression.
Blomqvist, A. (Manuscript under review). Moving across levels of functional thinking: Grade 7 students’ arguments.
Blomqvist, A., Sollerman, S., & Sumpter, L. (Manuscript in preparation). What large-scale assessments can tell us about functional thinking.
Seminar Participants and Roles
Role | Name |
|---|---|
External reader | Eric Knuth, Professor visiting Halmstad University, Program Director of STEM Education at U.S. National Science Foundation |
Supervisors | Samuel Sollerman and Lovisa Sumpter, Stockholm University. |
PhD student |
Participate via Zoom
Last updated: 2026-10-29
Source: Department of Teaching and Learning