Estudio didáctico del cero

In the first sections of this thesis, I included information about of the prior research, the theoretical elements, some historical revisions, and many explanations from textbooks where I could find the concept of Zero.

Other section includes the design and the application of one interview. The interview was about the school handling of the concept of Zero, but the intention was to recollect the student’s ideas about zero. This interview was applied to students in the first level of the engineering area. The samples were selected between two Universities: the “Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey, Campus San Luis Potosí” and the
“Centro de Investigación en Ciencia Aplicada y Tecnología Aplicada del Instituto Politécnico Nacional”. After that, I present the analysis of the results of this interview.

During the process of the interviews, I had to use some new technologies of communications (e.g. Internet and Skipe) to complete the different stages. In fact, it occurred with the support of a group of professors of both Universities in collaboration with me.

In the conclusions, I present a final reflection about the didactic handling of the concept of zero and how it was building through the observations recollected during the research. Also this thesis includes one definition of the concept of zero and some observations in the context of multiplication and division by zero.