Exploring students’ learning obstacles in understanding negative integers and their operations: A hermeneutic phenomenological study

Integer learning obstacles in Indonesian junior secondary schools have mostly been documented through error analysis, which shows what students get wrong but not how they experience these difficulties. This study explores the learning obstacles of seventh-grade students in understanding negative integers and their operations by combining Brousseau’s typology of epistemological, didactical, and ontogenic obstacles with van Manen’s hermeneutic phenomenology. Data were gathered from eight purposively selected students through a diagnostic essay test, semi-structured interviews, participatory observation, and documentation, and were analyzed through criterion-based deductive–inductive coding followed by holistic, selective, and detailed thematic readings. Credibility was supported by triangulation, member checking, an audit trail, and reflexive management of the teacher-researcher role. All eight participants applied sign rules without being able to explain them; for two, interview evidence indicated a self-justified epistemological obstacle, such as extending the multiplication sign rule to addition. Didactical obstacles were associated mainly with rule-based instruction, whereas number-line representations and games were recalled as helpful. Evidence of ontogenic obstacles was limited and tentative; prior learning trajectories acted as contextual conditions. The lived experience was characterized by fragile, conditional competence and self-generated contextual meanings. Integer instruction should address why sign rules hold, not only how to apply them.