Developing further support for in-service teachers’ implementation of a reasoning-and-proving activity and their identification of students’ level of mathematical argumentation

Abstract

This is the third in a series of papers focusing reasoning-and-proving. Participants were in-service teachers enrolled in a continuing university education programme in teaching mathematics for grades 5–10. Data were collected from a course assignment in 2018 and 2019, where the in-service teachers reported about their students’ work with a reasoning-and-proving task. Their reports included an identification of the levels the students’ written argumentation reached, based on Balacheff’s taxonomy of proofs. The course assignment’s instructions were expanded for the 2019-cohort. Comparing in-service teachers’ proof level identifications to the researchers’ by statistical analyses, indicated an improvement of the general quality from 2018 to 2019. A higher consensus in 2019 included identifying generic arguments and an understanding that there might be examples falling outside of the taxonomy levels. Qualitative content analysis of the two cohorts’ justifications of their identifications revealed an improved understanding of what is considered generic argumentation. The results encourage and contribute to further developments of the concept.