“Is It Valid or Not?”: Pre-Service Teachers Judge the Validity of Mathematical Statements and Student Arguments

Abstract

There is a wide recognition that reasoning abstractly, constructing arguments, or critiquing arguments should be an important educational goal in the mathematical experiences of all students in the standards for school mathematics. Seeing these standards as an essential element for developing deep mathematical understanding; however, call for a strong knowledge of proof for teachers. Thus, the purpose of this study is to investigate how pre-service middle school teachers (PSMTs) decide whether a presented mathematical statement is true or false and how they verify student arguments presented for these statements. 50 PSMTs participated in the study. Individual interviews were conducted with 7 PSMTs to further delve into the verification processes of the PSMTs. The results of the study demonstrated that meeting the expectations of the current standards is not an easy feat by documenting that most of the PSMTs struggled with evaluating mathematical tasks and constructing arguments.

True or False Strategy Learning: Mediators Increase Students' Active Role in Class

“…By discussing students can exchange opinions. According to Simsek (2021) by listening to various opinions, students will be challenged to think.…”

Mathematical Argumentation in Higher Education: A Systematic Literature Review

“…Furthermore, some studies involved the design and implementation of a series of activities, including task-based interviews (Inglis et al, 2007;Marchant et al, 2021;Morris, 2007;Simsek, 2021), collaborative work among students (Walter & Barros, 2011), validation of skills in mathematical arguments (Bleiler et al, 2013;, open-ended questions illustrating the thinking process and the development of students' argumentation (Nagel et al, 2018), argumentative tasks (Erkek & Bostan, 2019), explaining geometry tasks (Simsek, 2021), the use of a common socio-scientific scenario, climate change (Ariza et al, 2021), a submodule on mathematical modelling (Ledezma, et al, 2022), and collaborative argumentation and proving processes using dynamic mathematics software GeoGebra (Urhan & Zengin, 2023).…”