• Journal of Educational Research in Mathematics
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.225-240
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• 2015

In this study, we investigated the representativeness of proofs in school mathematics, based on the extension of the midpoint connector theorem for the quadrilateral. To this end, we considered a variety of quadrilateral and proved their extensions of the midpoint connector theorem, and identified the relationships between them, therefore seemed that the proof in school mathematics has a representativeness. On the other hand, in the survey based on this information, students were found only some types of quadrilateral and completed easily the proofs for each quadrilateral they found, but students tended to use other proof or mathematical concepts, if the target figures changes in despite of proving the same mathematical fact. Thus, students were more difficult to figure out the relationship between the proofs. From these facts, we know that students are poorly understood the representativeness of proofs to understand the relationship between concrete proofs and to generalize it, though they are able to proof to the specific figures. Therefore it can be seen that the proof activity needs to be done with organic and semantic.