PROCEEDINGS OF THE 22ND ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON RESEARCH IN UNDERGRADUATE MATHEMATICS EDUCATION
2019
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
Characterizing transition to proof courses: The case of liberal arts colleges
Page: 1148
Many undergraduate students experience significant difficulty in learning to prove mathematical propositions nationwide. A previous study by David & Zazkis (2017) used document analysis of publicly available syllabi to create a national portrait of approaches to supporting students’ transition to proof across a large sample of R1 and R2 universities. Liberal arts colleges (LACs) operate under different sets of institutional constraints and thus offer the possibility of different approaches to this issue. We report results of a preliminary survey study, the goal of which was to enhance previous work on approaches to the transition to proof by specifically focusing on the case of LACs. Analysis of the survey data show that LACs’ approaches have distinctive features as compared to R1 and R2 universities. Notably, discrete mathematics courses served as a transition to proof course in almost half of the surveyed institutions.