PROCEEDINGS OF THE 21ST ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON RESEARCH IN UNDERGRADUATE MATHEMATICS EDUCATION
2018
San Diego, California
Stepping Through the Proof Door: Undergraduates’ Experience One Year After an Introduction to ProofCourse
Page: 102
Navigating the transition from computing to proof remains a key challenge for mathematics departments and undergraduate students. Many departments have developed courses to introduce students to proof and proving (David & Zazkis, 2017), but research on the impact of these courses has just begun. This paper reports the experience of four mathematics majors in a semester of real analysis. Each participated in our prior study of students’ experience in the introduction to proof course. Where the students’ work in that course supported their success in real analysis, they experienced real analysis in quite different ways. Two recognized and exploited the structures common to real analysis proofs; the other two relied on extensive practice with example problems. The results have re-oriented our view of the computation-to-proof transition and where and how students experience proof as problem solving.