PROCEEDINGS OF THE 22ND ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON RESEARCH IN UNDERGRADUATE MATHEMATICS EDUCATION
2019
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
Prospective high school teachers’ understanding and application of the connection between congruence and transformation in congruence proofs
Page: 247
Undergraduate mathematics instructors are called by recent standards to promote prospective teachers’ learning of a transformation approach in geometry and its proofs. The novelty of this situation means it is unclear what is involved in prospective teachers’ learning of geometry from a transformation perspective, particularly if they learned geometry from an approach based on the Elements; hence undergraduate instructors may need support in this area. To begin to approach this problem, we analyze the prospective teachers’ use of the conceptual link between congruence and transformation in the context of congruence. We identify several key actions involved in using the definition of congruence in congruence proofs, and we look at ways in which several of these actions are independent of each other, hence pointing to concepts and actions that may need to be specifically addressed in instruction.