Students’ learning obstacles in the understanding inverse function

The inverse function is one of the topics discussed in high school. This study aimed to determine learning obstacles to learning that students face when studying the inverse functions. This study is using the didactical design research that involved ten students who had completed this topic. Students’ responses toward examinations and interviews are analyzed to determine how they solved the inverse functions problems. The findings indicated that students encountered learning obstacles classified as epistemological, ontogenic, and didactical obstacles. The first result is that students experienced obstacles to determine the domain of the inverse function. They were capable of determining the inverses of functions but not their domain. Another obstacle that students face is a lack of understanding of the exponential and logarithmic functions and difficulties in sketching their graphs, which results in students being unable to address the problem of the inverse functions. The last obstacle is students’ limited knowledge of fundamental topics in solving inverse functions.