Derivation is one of the fundamental concepts in the learning of university mathematics. It is a prerequisite for other concepts in undergraduate level and its traces are visible in the majority of mathematical courses at university level. Students have difficulties in the learning of this concept which mostly come back to lack of conceptual understanding. The purpose of this study is to investigate the reasons of difficulties, which faced students in conceptual understanding of derivation. The design of this study is qualitative analysis of open-ended questions, and its subjects consisted of 63 undergraduate students. The findings showed students have serious difficulties in understanding conceptually of derivation. The students' responds indicated that main reasons of difficulties in conceptual understanding of derivation come back to focusing on symbolic aspect more than embodied aspect, lack of making logical connection between these aspects, and weakness of dealing with generalized question. Findings of this study provide information to undergraduate instructors and students to overcome learning difficulties of derivation.

Derivatives and integrals are two important concepts of calculus which are precondition topics for most of mathematics courses and other courses in different fields of studies. A majority of students at the undergraduate level have to master derivatives and integrals if they want to be successful in their studies However, students encounter difficulties in the learning of derivatives and integrals. Most of these difficulties arise from the students' weakness in problem solving. This paper presents a learning strategy which has been designed to overcome these difficulties based on mathematical thinking and generalization strategies with prompts and questions.

This study proposes a learning strategy of derivatives and integrals (LSDI) based on specialized forms of generalization strategies to improve undergraduate students' problem solving of derivative and integral. The main goal of this study is to evaluate the effects of LSDI on students' problemsolving of derivative and integral. The samples of this study were 63 undergraduate students who took Calculus at the Islamic Azad University of Gachsaran, Iran. The students were divided into two groups based on their scores in the pre-test of derivative and integral. The results indicated that there was a significant difference between the achievements of students in experimental and control groups after treatment. Thus, the findings reveal that using generalization strategies improves students' achievements in solving problems of derivative and integral.

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Undergraduate students often experienced difficulty in solving problem related to derivative and integral topics. The main goal of this study was to investigate the reasons of students’ difficulties in solving derivative and integral problems based on mathematical thinking approach. The participants of the study consisted of 63 undergraduate students. A test contained derivative and integral problems was given to students and the results was analyzed by quantitative and qualitative methods. Results revealed that the reasons of students’ difficulties in solving problems were inability to use suitable problem solving framework, weakness in recalling previous knowledge in entry and attack steps of specialization and generalization, weakness in making connection between embodied and symbolic worlds of mathematical thinking and using symbolic world rather than embodied world.