Description:
This article presents the results of an investigation into the construction of knowledge. We areparticularly interested in studying the processes involved in the articulation of conceptualmathematics systems which we have called processes of convention and mathematical articulation(Martínez-Sierra, 2005). More specifically, this work looks further into which alternatives may befeasible for the construction of the meaning of complex numbers in schools, under the hypothesisthat meaning can be built through the process of mathematical convention. The analysis of thestudents’ production, while working on a sequence of activities designed by us based on the abovehypothesis, provides evidence that in spite of the students’ insistence that “square roots of negativenumbers do not exist,” our sequence induced them to operate with them and in this way build ameaning on the operative plane.