Secondary Teachers’ Views about Proof and Judgements on Mathematical Arguments

Despite its recognition in the field of mathematics education and mathematics, students' understanding about proof and performance on proof tasks have been far from promising.Research has documented that teachers tend to accept empirical arguments as proofs.In this study, an online survey was administered to examine how Korean secondary mathematic teachers make judgements on mathematical arguments varied along representations.The results indicate that, when asked to judge how convincing to their students the given arguments would be, the teachers tended to consider how likely students understand the given arguments and this surfaces as a controversial matter with the algebraic argument being both most and least convincing for their students.The teachers' judgements on the algebraic argument were shown to have statistically significant difference with respect to convincingness to them, convincingness to their students, and validity as mathematical proof.