• The Mathematical Education
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• v.51 no.2
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• pp.161-171
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• 2012

Generally mathematics is regarded as a subtle subject to grasp their true meaning. And teacher's personal conceptions of mathematics influence greatly on the teaching and learning of mathematics. More over often teachers confess their difficulties in explaining the true nature of mathematics. In this paper, applying the theory of epistemology, we tried to search factors that must be counted important when trying to understand the true nature of mathematics. As results, we identified five characteristics of mathematical knowledge such as logical reasoning, abstractive concept, mathematical representation, systematical structure, and axiomatic validation. Next, we tried to investigate math education major students' conception of mathematics using these items. To proceed this research we asked 51 students from three Universities to answer their opinion on 'What do you think is mathematics?'. Analysing their answers in the light of the above five items, we got the following facts. 1. Only 38% of the students regarded mathematics as one of the five items, which can be considered to reveal students' low concern about the basic nature of mathematics. 2. The status of students' responses to the question were greatly different among the three Universities. This shows that mathematics professors need to lead students to have concern about the true nature of mathematics.