PROCEEDINGS OF THE 23RD ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON RESEARCH IN UNDERGRADUATE MATHEMATICS EDUCATION
2020
Boston, Massachusetts
One mathematician’s epistemology of proof and its implications for her comments and marks on students’proof
Page: 329
Balacheff (2008) offers the notion of epistemology of proof to account for researchers’ views on what a mathematical proof is from a teaching-learning perspective. This study argues that an awareness of mathematicians’ epistemologies of proof might provide insight into their rationales and actions when teaching university students how to prove. This argument is illustrated by the case of one mathematician who provided comments and marks on proofs submitted by her graduate students as part of her course instruction of topology. A commognitive framework is mobilized to discern the mathematician’s epistemology of proof.