• Research in Mathematical Education
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.157-173
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• 2024

Researchers continue to emphasize the centrality of proof in the context of school mathematics and the importance of proof to student learning of mathematics is well articulated in nationwide curricula. However, researchers reported that students' performance in proving tasks is not promising and students are not likely to see the need to prove a proposition even if they learned mathematical proof previously. Research attributes this issue to students' tendencies to accept an empirical argument as proof for a mathematical proposition, thus not being able to recognize the limitation of an empirical argument as proof for a mathematical proposition. In Korea, there is little research that investigated high school students' views about the need for proof in mathematics and their understanding of the limitation of an empirical argument as proof for a mathematical generalization. Sixty-two 11^th graders were invited to participate in an online survey and the responses were recorded in writing and on either a four- or five-point Likert scale. The students were asked to express their agreement with the need of proof in school mathematics and to evaluate a set of mathematical arguments as to whether the given arguments were proofs. Results indicate that a slight majority of students were able to identify a proof amongst the given arguments with the vast majority of students acknowledging the need for proof in mathematics.

• Journal of the Korean School Mathematics Society
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.299-314
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• 2008

The purposes of this study were to investigate what attitudes students have toward learning proofs and what difficulties they have in learning proofs, and to examine how the use of dynamic geometry software, the Geometer's Sketchpad, helps students' proof learning. The study involved 117 9th graders in 2 high schools. According to questionnaire data, over 50 percent of the total respondents(116) indicated negative attitudes toward learning proofs, on the other hand, only 16 percent of the total respondents indicated positive attitudes toward the learning. Memorizing and remembering many kinds of theorems, definitions, and postulates to use in proving statements was the most difficult part in learning proofs, which the largest proportion of the total respondents indicated. The study found that the use of the Geometer's Sketchpad played positive roles in developing students' understanding of proofs and stimulating students' interests in learning proofs.

• Research in Mathematical Education
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.71-78
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• 1998

This paper investigates the practices of proof education in Korea by analyzing the teaching and learning of proofs in classes in the second year of middle school. With this purpose, this study examines the features and deficiencies of the ways of teaching proofs and investigates the difficulties which students have in learning them. Furthermore, it suggests methods for the improvement of teaching proofs.

• School Mathematics
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.501-524
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• 2011

The purpose of this study was to develop teaching-learning materials for informal activities geared toward teaching the nature and structure of proof, to make a case analysis of the application of the developed instructional materials to students in an elementary gifted class, to discuss the feasibility of proof education for gifted elementary students and to give some suggestions on that proof education. It's ultimately meant to help improve the proof abilities of elementary gifted students. After the characteristics of the eight selected gifted elementary students were analyzed, instructional materials of nine sessions were developed to let them learn about the nature and structure of proof by utilizing informal activities. And then they took a lesson two times by using the instructional materials, and how they responded to that education was checked. An analysis framework was produced to assess how they solved the given proof problems, and another analysis framework was made to evaluate their understanding of the structure and nature of proof. In order to see whether they showed any improvement in proof abilities, their proof abilities and proof attitude were tested after they took lessons. And then they were asked to write how they felt, and there appeared seven kinds of significant responses when their writings were analyzed. Their responses proved the possibility of proof education for gifted elementary students, and seven suggestions were given on that education.

• Journal of Educational Research in Mathematics
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.13-28
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• 2003

Practice of proof is considered in, the view of language and meta-mathematics, recognizing the role of proof that is the means of communication and development of mathematical understanding. Linguistic components in proof texts are symbol, verbal language and visual text, and contain the implicit knowledge in the meta-mathematics view. This study investigates the functions of linguistic elements according to Halliday's functional grammar and the rhetoric skills in proof texts in math textbook, teacher's note, and student's written text. We need to inquire into the aspects of language for mathematics learning process and the understanding and use of students' language.

• Journal of Educational Research in Mathematics
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.185-206
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• 2009

In the study, I conducted the teaching experiment designed to instruct proof to four 7th grade students by utilizing the analysis method. As the results of this study I could identified that it is effective to teach and learn to find proof methods using the analysis. The results of the study showed that four 7th grade students succeeded in finding the proof methods by utilizing the analysis and representing the proof after 15 hours of the teaching experiment. In addition to the difficulties that students faced in learning proof utilizing the analysis were related to the search for the light conditions for triangles to be congruent, symbolic representation of the proof methods, reinterpretation of drawings given in the proof problems.

• School Mathematics
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.59-90
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• 2004

This study has been established with two purposes. The first one is to development the learning-teaching model for enhancing students' creative proof capacities in the domain of demonstrative geometry as subject content. The second one is to aim at experimentally testing its effectiveness. First, we develop the learning-teaching model for enhancing students' proof capacities. This model is named the generative-convergent model based instruction. It consists of the following components: warming-up activities, generative activities, convergent activities, reflective discussion, other high quality resources etc. Second, to investigate the effects of the generative-convergent model based instruction, 160 8th-grade students are selected and are assigned to experimental and control groups. We focused that the generative-convergent model based instruction would be more effective than the traditional teaching method for improving middle school students' proof-writing capacities and error remediation. In conclusion, the generative-convergent model based instruction would be useful for improving middle grade students' proof-writing capacities. We suggest the following: first, it is required to refine the generative-convergent model for enhancing proof-problem solving capacities; second, it is also required to develop teaching materials in the generative-convergent model based instruction.

• The Mathematical Education
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• v.48 no.4
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• pp.387-398
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• 2009

In this paper, we investigated the influence of technology, which gave an impact on students through the process of teaching & learning for the proof of an additive law of sine function in the mathematics education for the gifted. We chose students who were taking a course in enrichment mathematics at Science Education Institute for the Gifted in Mokpo National University, and analyzed their processes of a mathematical inference or conjecture, an algebraic description and a proof by visualization using technology. We found the following facts. That is, the visualization using technology is helpful to the gifted students in understanding principles and concepts of mathematics by intuition. Also, it is helpful to ones verifying various cases and generalizing principles. But, using technology can be a factor that disturbs learning of students who are clumsy with operating technology.

• The Mathematical Education
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• v.63 no.2
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• pp.139-163
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• 2024

The purpose of this study is to examine the capabilities of ChatGPT as a tool for supporting students in generating mathematical arguments that can be considered proofs. To examine this, we engaged students enrolled in a mathematics pathways course in evaluating and revising their original arguments using ChatGPT feedback. Students attempted to find and prove a method for the area of a triangle given its side lengths. Instead of directly asking students to prove a formula, we asked them to explore a method to find the area of a triangle given the lengths of its sides and justify why their methods work. Students completed these ChatGPT-embedded proving activities as class homework. To investigate the capabilities of ChatGPT as a proof tutor, we used these student homework responses as data for this study. We analyzed and compared original and revised arguments students constructed with and without ChatGPT assistance. We also analyzed student-written responses about their perspectives on mathematical proof and proving and their thoughts on using ChatGPT as a proof assistant. Our analysis shows that our participants' approaches to constructing, evaluating, and revising their arguments aligned with their perspectives on proof and proving. They saw ChatGPT's evaluations of their arguments as similar to how they usually evaluate arguments of themselves and others. Mostly, they agreed with ChatGPT's suggestions to make their original arguments more proof-like. They, therefore, revised their original arguments following ChatGPT's suggestions, focusing on improving clarity, providing additional justifications, and showing the generality of their arguments. Further investigation is needed to explore how ChatGPT can be effectively used as a tool in teaching and learning mathematical proof and proof-writing.

• East Asian mathematical journal
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.299-320
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• 2009

In mathematics, the education of the geometry proof has been playing an important role in promoting the ability for logical thinking by means of developing the deductive reasoning. However, despite of those importance mentioned above, considering the present condition for the education of the geometry proof in middle schools, it is still found that most of classes are led mainly by teachers, operating the cramming system of eduction, and students in those classes have many difficulties in learning the geometry proof course. Accordingly this thesis suggests the other method that is distinguished from previous proof educations. The thesis of Kai-Lin Yang and Fou-Lai Lin on 'A Model of Reading Comprehension of Geometry Proof (RCGP)', which was published in 2007, have various practical examples based on the model. After composing classes based on those examples and instructing the geometry proof, found out a problem. And then advance a new teaching model that amendment and supplementation However, it is considered to have limitation because subjects were minority and classes were operated by man-to-man method. Hopefully, the method of proof education will be more developed through performing more active researches on this in the nearest future.