How are proof and proving conceptualized in mathematics curriculum documents in the USA and Japan?

Abstract

Only a few international comparative studies have reported on proof and proving in curriculum documents. This report proposes a method of comparing the meaning of proof-related words in two specific countries’ curriculum documents (the USA and Japan) through quantitative and interpretative analyses. Using a text mining approach to explore text data, we found that the co-occurrence network of the words “proof” and “prove” in curriculum documents from the two countries is quite different. In the USA, the word “proof” is concerned with justification and “prove” is used as a general process, while in Japan “proof” is more related to discovery and “prove” is more associated with specific theorems