Learning difficulties experienced by students and their misconceptions relating to the concept of inverse function

It has been aimed by this study to determine learning difficulties experienced by students and their misconceptions relating to "inverse function" concept. The group under study was composed of 137 first grade students studying in Elementary Mathematics Teaching Department of Education Faculty existing in a city in Eastern Anatolian Region of Turkey during the fall term of the academic year of 2010-2011. The case study method was employed in the study. Data collection tool of the study was consisted of three different question forms each having one open-ended question. Also, students were interviewed to allow more detailed analysis about their responses given to the open-ended question and semi-structured interview records were used as a data resource in this study. As a result of the analyses conducted on the data, it was determined that the students experienced trouble in evidencing onto of a function in finding inverse function of a given function and had misconceptions like "if a function's inverse is not available, inverse image of any element in the range is not either" and "the expressions of inverse function, its inverse and inverse relation all have the same meaning". © Sila Science.