PROCEEDINGS OF THE 20TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON RESEARCH IN UNDERGRADUATE MATHEMATICS EDUCATION
2017
San Diego, California
Exploring undergraduates’ experience of the transition to proof
Page: 298
We report a qualitative analysis of 14 undergraduate students’ experience in a semester long introduction to proof course. Half were mathematics majors. Our research aims to characterize, conceptually and empirically, students’ transition from a focus on computation to proof in mathematics. Our analysis focused on how students saw the course as different from prior courses, whether it required new or different learning activity, how they described their work in proof-writing, and how they saw their confidence and success in the course. This approach— targeting students’ overall experience of the course—differs from prior research that has tracked students’ challenges, focused on their work on specific proof problems, and explored how to support and improve their work (e.g., Selden & Selden, 2003). Our work has promise for informing the design of transition to proof courses and how those courses are organized and taught.