RUME 27
2025
Alexandria, Virginia
Is This a Proof? Students’ Initial Criteria
Page: 1081
Criteria for proof are important because future teachers will need to evaluate students’ arguments as proofs or nonproofs. This preliminary report examines how a group of prospective and practicing teachers in a reasoning and proof course began to collectively construct criteria for proof. Given a set of hypothetical student arguments, their initial criteria differed, despite common mathematics coursework, including an introduction to proof course. Ongoing analysis uses documenting collective activity to understand how collective criteria and definition were constructed.