Habilidades matemáticas: una aproximacion teórica.

We found that existing theory about mathematical skills is not appropriated when using it to analyze students' performance. This fact suggested us to discuss such theories and to propose a new conceptualization of the term 'mathematical skills'. The latter improves the existing ones and allows to know how students evolve in their skills. The new conceptualization includes students' control about his own performance in addition to the requirement of getting a correct answer in a right way. This article focuses in the theoretical approach to the concept, explaining the reasons that guide our work, and we establish relations between skills and heuristics. Finally, we propose considerations that could be the beginning of future research work to improve its adquisition. The methodology used is qualitative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]