PROCEEDINGS OF THE 17TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON RESEARCH IN UNDERGRADUATE MATHEMATICS EDUCATION
2014
Denver, Colorado
Teaching The Concept Of Mathematical Definition Using Student Construction And Self-Assessment
Page: 909
Definitions are an important part of the study of mathematics, yet many students struggle with successfully understanding and using this construct. It has been suggested that students may improve their understanding of mathematical definitions by engaging in the act of writing definitions (de Villiers, Govender, & Patterson, 2009). Through a mixture of survey and teaching experiment methodology this study explores pre-service elementary teachers’ understanding of mathematical definitions before and after engaging in a teaching experiment which provided many opportunities for the participants to write their own mathematical definitions for familiar and novel classes of quadrilaterals. Definitions were assessed as having necessary, sufficient and minimal conditions. It was found that while many students initially struggled to write definitions that meet these qualifications, the process of trying to construct their own definitions did improve students’ understanding of these characteristics of mathematical definitions.